Sometimes, you take a gamble when it comes to booking press appointments for an event like PAX East. When it came time for James and myself to divvy up the appointments for the THQ Nordic booth, for example, he went with the likes ofWreckreationwhile I decided to go with Alone in the Dark and something called “Project Train.” With the former game, I thought it would be a safe bet, being a re-imagining of a survival horror classic that has since become dated and thus deserves the enhancement more than others. With the latter game, I was rolling the dice on something I didn’t know beyond a name, since I never forgave myself for turning down a game at a previous PAX that turned out to be Donut County. But one way or another, I felt at least one of them would be an interesting experience.
In the end, both of them turned out to be interesting…just in completely different, more head-scratching ways than I had expected.
To get one thing out of the way, none that translates to either game being bad. In fact, I would say both of them were coming along well so far. But choice of what content was actually on display for demo purposes puzzled me. Take Alone in the Dark, for example. This version of the game is set to feature both Edward Carnby and Emily Hartwood as playable characters with unique differences, what looks like more intense combat, and an even more complex psychological horror story…none of which was on display in the demo, which featured the prologue, Grace in the Dark, centering around the child character of Grace Saunders.
In fairness, this prologue – titled Grace in the Dark – showed off several other aspects of the game well. The New Orleans setting of Derceto Manor is played up even more than ever, creating more of a haunting Southern Gothic feel, even including actual sections of bayou as reality goes out to lunch while Grace tries to get a letter mailed, with sections of the house changing with each opening door. We also get to see more of Jeremy Hartwood this time around, who in contrast to their fate in the original games, is very much alive here and is simply missing when the game begins, so the plot will have tweaks. And we get a look at quick puzzles, such as when Grace has to tip over a taxidermied bear in order to cross a bayou and avoid the swamp monsters within.
The goal with the prologue is to clearly establish the atmosphere of the game, and also that it’s a re-imagining that significantly changes things up, and in that case, mission accomplished. The manor is nice and creepy, the soundtrack is impressive, and the characters seem interesting. It has me invested, but at the same time, it feels like cutting out the actual main characters and the meat of the gameplay – mainly the “survival” part of survival horror – can make it a tough sell for others, especially players not familiar with the original games. It just felt like an odd initial hands-on showcase for Alone in the Dark, but it still seems like quality stuff, so we’ll see how it fares later on.
But then there was the elusive Project Train, which revealed itself on the PAX East expo hall floor to be…Unannounced Train Project. No, seriously, that’s the name it went by. Please allow me to include a photograph in order to prove that this was indeed the name they went with at the time.
Okay, it was a bit odd that they simply just didn’t announce the game with a better working title at the time, but things got more odd. As it turned out, Unannounced Train Project is an RTS game, one where you command a group of six soldiers with various skills – grenadier, marksman, medic, etc – as they headed out to protect a village from a band of evil forces. Taking them out involved combat where you’re able to pause the action and assign each member a cover spot to snap to, which was fun, and it culminated in a section where we had a limited amount of time to send team members to rebuild a bridge and take out the enemy commander before a mortar could destroy the village. It didn’t come across as anything wholly unique to me, but it was fun, and RTS fans will likely get a kick out of that.
You may find yourself, however, asking “Wait, where does the ‘train’ part of Unannounced Train Project come into play?” Good question indeed.
…I have no idea what the answer is. No one does, aside from the team working on the game.
Yes, in what felt like a completely baffling move, the developers would not reveal what any part of this game had to do with a train. They had a quick four-second clip of a train to show off, but that was it. And for all we know, this could be the central mechanic, or the one that makes the game unique, or a vital part of the story. Heck, THQ Nordic even announced their PAX East lineup by saying “All Aboard the Crazy Train.” And yet as of this moment, the train’s role remains a secret, as do other plot details. Again, the game itself feels enjoyable so far, but why they left out the part that was advertised remains a mystery to me.
So overall, I rolled the dice on two of THQ Nordic’s upcoming games, and while I didn’t get what I had expected, what was there seemed to be interesting so far. Now here’s hoping that rest of these games will show off their better parts as well later on between now and when they launch.
