Game #884: Remothered - Broken Porcelain

  It's broken alright....

 Talk about disappointing, while the first game, 'Tormented Fathers' was a bit lacking in a few ways, it was also quite promising, being a decent tribute to the classic Clock Tower games. It was scary and cheesy in all the right ways. Remothered: Broken Porcelain ups the cheese, lowers the scares and couples them with an ungodly amount of bugs and glitches that range from funny to heartbreaking, as a matter of fact, the game can't be beaten without downloading the patch. It's that bad.

 Let's start with the story, I watched trailers such as 'Whispers', and it looked really interesting. You'd continue Rosemary's story while also delving deeper into Celeste's story, the missing girl from the first game. But it's so poorly told. At first the game does a boring, extensive info dump on the player in the way of boring dialogue that goes on and on. And then we delve into Celeste's past, and they try to build up her relationship with her friend, Linn, throughout flashbacks, but... they are poorly paced and sometimes very cringy, the Piano scene is meant to be romantic, but it looked ridiculously silly. Lip movements are so minuscule that sometimes it looks as if characters aren't moving their lips when speaking, and if you pause during a dialogue, for any reason, the subtitles will get out of synch from the audio. Assuming the scene has subtitles, because some scenes are unsubbed.

 They tweaked a few mechanics, now you play as Celeste most of the time, and she can carry a limitless amount of defensive items, said items also respawn regularly inside the Inn. You can 'craft' items, which means adding extra stun effect to a few defensive items, but every now and then the game will remove these enhanced items from you inventory just because. Oh, and after cutscenes your equipped items will get unequipped, so be wary lest you get murdered because you couldn't defend yourself. There are also sneak attacks against Stalkers, which is alright, I guess?

 Celeste also gets super powers, which are never properly explained WHAT they are(It's as if you take control of a disembodied spirit? The game mentions telekinesis at one point, but this doesn't feel like telekinesis) or how to use them. The game just says "Press Right to use your powers" and then... nothing. Figure out on your own that you have to use R2 to fly forwards. And it's so clunky, it's easy to get stuck on the tiny vents the game expects you to send your.... telekinesis? through.

 The game runs like butt. Seriously, the framerate seems to be on the lower 20s most of the time, and it isn't a particularly good looking game. Sometimes moving the camera around in order to interact with objects is a pain in the butt, I don't remember having this issue in the first game, so I don't know why or how they managed to break something that worked fine before. There's a new upgrade system, which is a really neat idea. You can collect Moth Keys around the Inn and then use it in designated spots to upgrade different abilities. Problem is... the game will regularly remove keys from your inventory. It seems to be tied to reloading, either because you died or because you exited the game, which is just annoying.

 Look, the game would be downright unplayable without Autosaves, I was a victim to so many soft locks it isn't even funny. I'll proceed to list everything I came across:

Firstly, the worst one, during the fourth chapter you are supposed to collect a Recorder and use it to record a voice. I collected the item but it didn't count as a tool item, so I couldn't use it. I reloaded my last save, the last autosaves, but it never worked. I even reloaded an old save and got through a very annoying boss fight again and.... the item still wouldn't count as a tool. But the BEST part about it? The patch fixes that issue with the recorder... but now you can't interact with the safe! I even came across youtube comments saying the same thing. THE GAME IS STILL UNBEATABLE, at least on PS4. Unbelievable.

 There was this time I got into a locker and the stalked forced me out of it. I mashed X and got inside the locker again and.... the controls stopped working. Had to restart. Another time I sneak attacked a Stalker as it opened a door and... soft lock. The stalker got stuck and I got stuck, the controls stopped responding too. Another time I got into a locker RIGHT before a scripted sequence happened and.... controls stopped working.

 This one time, there's a boss jump scare. But I was fooling around and triggered my super powers, which highlights bosses.... so I shot at him before he was triggered and nothing happened. I tried to use the microphone the game expects you to use and... he got up from his hiding spot, but wouldn't move! I kept shooting at him, I tried sneak-attacking him, but nothing would outroot him from his spot. I saved my game, reloaded and.... the game thought I finished the boss fight and let me proceed!

 There's this sequence in which you have to trigger a jukebox through your powers. I mashed X against the jukebox, since I wasn't sure if I was triggering anything and... the game didn't proceed as it should. A character gets to a door and... wouldn't open it. I reloaded, pressed X on the jukebox once and everything went as it should. There's this silly, cringy basketball mini-game against Linn, and every time she misses Celeste repeats the same line, I thought I had entered an endless loop for a while.

 Then there's the overall feeling of sloppiness. There's a boss fight in which you have to use a fire extinguisher, and you're not told how to use it. Firstly, getting to the fire extinguisher is a bit of a hassle, because the Stalker is right in front of it, and Stalkers are very aggressive, it's very easy to die if they just touch you once, because your hitstun is so lengthy that they can just keep hitting you without giving you a chance to get away. This is true for most Stalkers, but at least once you get the Defensive item prompt you can stun them for a bit and get away. Regardless, say that you manage to get the fire extinguisher, your natural instinct will tell you that you should hold L2 to aim and then hold R2 to spray him with the extinguisher. But nope, that will only get you killed in seconds flat. You actually have to get close to the enemy, and press R2 ONCE to hit him with... pressurized air? And then GET AWAY for the thing to.... recharge? And then repeat the process a few more items. It's very clunk, very counterintuitive and it makes no sense as to why it should work this way.

 What an utter piece of garbage. Remothered: Tormented Fathers was SO enjoyable, so much fun. Sure, its low budget showed through some of its clunkiness, but it was very, very playable. The entire time I played this game it felt as if I was fighting against it, very early through the playthrough I just stopped having fun entirely. And it's sad, because I was really starting to like the new characters, I liked the direction they went with the story, bad dialogue aside, but this game should've never been released in this state, and it's downright criminal that such a promising series might be cancelled because they rushed this game for Halloween.

 1.5