In Propagation: Paradise Hotel, you play Emily, a young barkeep who has somehow lost her sister Ashley in the world’s worst Travelodge. You’re tasked with finding her, but there are a couple of problems. Namely the aforementioned zombies, and a slew of puzzles to be solved.
If being trapped in a creepy building with a bunch of the undead and a load of puzzles sounds a bit like Resident Evil to you, well, you’re pretty spot on. Have a house point, and maybe treat yourself to a bit of cake. Sometimes the line between “inspired by” and “rips off” can be a little blurry, and it certainly is here. That isn’t necessarily a complaint, though.
The hotel itself is a suitably creepy setting. Scratch that. It’s genuinely terrifying. And that’s down to two main things. Firstly, the décor. It’s dark and full of gore. Literally. It’s like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen popped 'round with the contents of a butcher’s window and a box of grenades to spruce the place up a bit, with inevitable results.
Armed with a torch to see by whose batteries need to be closely and carefully managed, the game keeps you constantly on edge. The other main thing that adds to the terror is the fact that the game designers have thrown the cardinal rule of zombie killing out of the window (at least initially – it changes later in the game), and that is to shoot them in the head.
Now, headshots killing evil stuff should always work, unless we’re talking about Dead Space. It’s one of life’s constants; water is wet, the sky is blue, and giving a zombie an ounce of lead in the ear makes it go away forever. But it doesn’t in this hotel.
It sounds counterintuitive and almost a bit cheap, but the fact that you’ve sent them off for a brief nap rather than to meet their maker allows for their revival. And when you couple that with the fact that if you don’t keep an eye on your torch batteries, you’re basically blind and could be grabbed by a zombie at any given moment, we’re firmly in brown trousers territory.
I spent the 3 or so hours it took to complete this game on edge, which is exactly what you want from this sort of thing. I was never quite sure when I was going to hear the sound of a not-quite-vanquished foe coming back for another round. There are plenty of zombies around the place and not knowing which ones are dead and which are still a threat really ramps up the tension.
So, you’re creeping around trying to keep the noise down like it’s 2am on a Saturday and your wife is asleep, doing your best to snooze as many zombies as you can, and they expect you to solve puzzles while all that’s going on?!? Well, yes and no.
Whilst it’s true that you can be fiddling with a puzzle while looking very much like an all-you-can-eat buffet for the living dead with a blinking neon “EAT ME” sign over your head, exploration is rewarded in this game. There are plenty of collectables to pick up, allowing for some replay value, but more importantly, those who are diligent in searching the environment for clues will likely find the solutions to the puzzles keeping them from finding Ashley.
“It all seems pretty gravy so far, any bad points?” I hear you cry. Well, there are a couple of areas that could do with some polish but nothing too detracting from the experience. Yes, the voice acting isn’t the greatest, although I found it quite endearing in its slight clunkiness if I’m honest.
Yes, there could be more items to interact with in the game to bring a deeper feeling of immersion. Yes, the ammo counter on guns is weird (honestly, I will never understand why the devs decided to show a count of what’s in the mag, excluding the one in the chamber rather than how many rounds you have available for causing naps). Yes, there are the usual mild tracking issues that plague every game on the Quest 2. Although I’m starting to think maybe my headset might be faulty.
SUMMARY
Anyway, the point is that if you want a good way to spend 3 or 4 hours being creeped out of your skin, solving puzzles and taking out the undead, there are worse ways you could spend your time and money.
I mean, sure, you could spend it on Resident Evil VR, but Capcom is loaded, they don’t love you, and you’ve played it already anyway.
Buy this instead and you can support a smaller dev house and still have a whale of a time being scared witless.
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