Review written by KrustyManMeat
Most survival horror games go down the First Person route these days so when Claire: The Extended Cut kept from the PS Vita to the Xbox One I welcome the opportunity to try the survival horror genre from a different perspective. Claire: The Extended Cut is set in a hospital where you take control of the title character. While visiting your Mother you start to experience strange and haunting visions and it's your job to find out what is causing these visions.
The game throws you straight into a sequence which eases you into the game's mechanics. It's a creepy little introduction that sets you up for what's to come. This nightmare sequence also serves to introduce you to Claire. What are initially nightmares soon become reality for Claire and at the hardest difficulties she can even die from panic attacks.
The maps are a lot larger then I was expecting and I found myself getting lost on multiple occasions even when using the map. The hospital and apartment complexes are suitably creepy but that's also in thanks to the 8 Bit graphic style used here. This is also part of the games downfall because the levels have so many doors then all look the same because of the style used and it's hard to distinguish one from the other most of the time and I was frequently walking round in circles trying every door I found. The level design is poor to say the least.
Claire: The Extended Cut doesn't hold your hand either. There is very little way in direction and most of the time you rely on guesswork to work out what your suppose to be doing. There are multiple endings that depend on what you do and find during our playthrough and with levels this large and confusing your in for the long haul. At certain points in the game you will meet various characters who wit ask you to travel through the exact same areas multiple times especially when it's so easy to get lost. Reaching your objectives soon becomes a chore and would frequently quit just to let off steam.
When the nightmares begin you must stay away to avoid getting panicked and killed. The monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are very human in shape, some crawl carers the floor on all four limbs and some are huge giants that tower above Claire. There is no way for you to fight these monsters so a game of hide and seek is your only chance of surviving because if they get hold of you they just beat you to death or if your lucky you will die new panic attack first.
The panic bar really does help to ramp the tension up especially on the harder difficulty settings. Fleeing the nightmarish monsters becomes all the more urgent if you see wows panic bar start to fill because even the slightest glimpse of them on harder settings is enough to fill up your panic bar. But despite these challenges very little changes. New monsters or locations do little to change the way you play the game. It just becomes repetitive very quickly. Go to a location collect an item then avoid some monsters and then rinse and repeat for every subsequent level. It's a disappointment because there is a lot of atmosphere here and it feels wasted on samey gameplay.
Claire: The Extended Cut offers plenty of scope for those completionists who want to witness every ending the game has to offer because of its cryptic and branching storyline. But the levels are samey, bland and ultimately confusing to navigate around. Your never quite sure what your suppose to be doing to move the story forward either which strips away any enjoyment.
