Anthology of Fear Xbox Series X Review 4/10 “Five Minutes on YouTube” 🏥 @AnthologyofFear #IndieGame #GameDev

Walking down corridors and having something shout “boo!” is great, but they do wear thin after a while, and as much as I love horror, I definitely need a break from the horror walking simulator genre. Well, after playing Layers of the Fear a couple of months ago, I booted up Anthology of Fear put on my walking shoes and headed down the creepy corridors.

In Anthology of Fear, you play as a man searching for his brother Nate, who has been missing for some time. His investigation has led him to a hospital that uses experimental dream therapy treatment. The very aptly named ‘Dr Hypno’ has now run his experiments, and it is our protagonist’s hope that he will uncover the truth and find out what happened to his brother.

The story has some interesting twists and turns and later on, goes into some really dark territory. Throughout the tale, I was never bored as there was always something that grabbed my interest, but I must admit by the end of the narrative, I just don’t think it all comes together, as the credits rolled, I felt a little disappointed. It’s not the worst ending in the world, but with how engaging I found the plot - it was a bit dissatisfying; I feel some of the more intriguing things that could have been explored, just don’t get explored.

Obviously - being a horror game - the horror is key, and I must say I was quite surprised with how well they dealt with this aspect. Usually, these games love to throw scare after scare at you but Anthology of Fear has a lot of restraint, they take a slow-burn approach, letting suspense and tension build before they throw a scare at you. Many times I tensed up thinking, ‘Here it comes…’, only to find… nothing. I tip my hat to the developers as I much prefer this style of jump scare; I love the slow build as opposed to the barrage.

Now, where I'm glueing my hat to my head is in relation to how generic the scares are, a bit of thunder, an object moving suddenly, ‘oh no it’s creepy mannequins’, it has all been done before, to the point that the dead horse is basically paste by now, so while I have absolute respect for the build-up to the scares, the scares themselves are so generic that they have absolutely no impact, and that's sad as they had done the hard part in building up the suspense.

Generic scares are one thing, but game-breaking bugs are just unacceptable. I had heard that Anthology of Fear had the tendency to crash, but oh boy… was I not prepared for just how bad they were. I had managed about two and a half hours without a single one, and I was prepared to shake my fists and scoff at all the people who experienced crashes, thinking they were all in some kind of weird conspiratorial cult, but then  - BOOM! My game crashed, so I loaded it up… and it crashed again. After another two attempts, I gave in and realised that it was going to keep crashing harder than a certain bandicoot, so instead of finishing the game and getting my sweet 75 gamer points… I watched the last 5 minutes of the game on YouTube, so not only did I find the end a bit disappointing, but how I had to view the ending was also regrettable.

This is genuinely a first-time experience for me - other than the time Skyrim would crash when you entered the water, and my last save happened to be on a small Island surrounded by water – I’ve never experienced a game-breaking bug, hopefully, just like the water problem it will be patched out and all will be well, but it’s really not a good look.

SUMMARY

Sadly, I found Anthology of Fear’s negatives outweighed its positives. Although I loved the build-up of suspense and found the plot engaging, the generic scares and game-breaking crashing were simply too much.