Test: The Inpatient

Are you crazy or just imagining it? "The Inpatient by Supermassive Games is set 60 years before the dark events of the survival horror adventure Until Dawn. But it doesn't matter if you don't know the British developer studio's 2015 PS4 title. You only have a few scraps of memory anyway and can't assess what's happening around you. What could be better than a spooky VR experience?

Confusions, turmoil

A little warning: the PSVR adventure is not quite as terrifying as you might think at first, but you will encounter some jump scares and musty mutants. However, it's less about your self-defence or running away: "The Inpatient" takes a completely different approach to the game mechanics, which is more in the genre of the interactive film. As in "Heavy Rain" and the soon to be released PS4 neo-thriller "Detroit: Become Human", you make decisions based on your emotional state, which influence the course of the game and the end of a story.

Say it in your own words

In the first few minutes of the game, you are tied to a wheelchair. At first, you have hardly any influence on the game using the gamepad or the PS4 Move controller. Instead, you are always shown two different answers to questions, to which you can even respond with Sony's PS4 voice control by parroting the answer options that appear. This works surprisingly well.

However, new events do not occur once you answer a question like "Why am I tied to the chair?" with a grumpy tone or loud yelling. Depending on the scene, it is always a matter of deciding between two moods such as "energetic" or "friendly" and "sad" or "happy". These answers do not always shape the later course of the game. If you do not react for a longer period of time, the system seems to choose one of the answers. If you are straightforward in the dialogue, a butterfly flares up, which seems to indicate that an important decision has just been made.

Comfortable VR experience

The actors' facial expressions and gestures are particularly impressive, although the developers could have saved themselves some of the many similar response options. In time, however, you are allowed to move freely in the room, pick up objects and activate various switches. The control with the PS4 DualShock controller works according to the classic full locomotion principle. You can move in all directions in pleasant 40-degree turns. However, the control with the PS4 move bars takes some getting used to. Although this makes your hand movements seem more realistic, the aiming is a little diffuse because you use the LED light ball to aim at the respective compass direction while walking. It looks a bit like a point-and-click adventure game from the nineties. In contrast, you often press door handles or the light switch by raising and lowering the DualShock controller's position sensors.

Sitting or standing

Overall, the immersion could have been raised to a higher level with a few additional graphic tricks. In survival horror adventures such as "Resident Evil 7", the hands pushing forward with gentle animations reinforce the impression of being in the thick of things. The developers let me know on request that the experience can be played both sitting and standing. Apparently, one should always from You can choose to stand or sit at the start of the game and not switch to the other position after a break. So if you suddenly feel like a two-headed giant squeezing through doors that are far too small, it's only because of this, although other titles like "Batman Arkham VR" usually don't cause any problems with a higher camera position for both operations.

Crystal clear 3D sound and beautiful details

However, the developers are less concerned with the controls and more with a dense atmosphere. The 3D audio of the PSVR comes across particularly well in the dialogue, even if you haven't connected the most expensive high-end headphones to Sony's VR jack. Every creak penetrates through the auditory canals, while the voices of the good speakers can be heard precisely from all directions. Because sometimes you have to follow obscure noises in endlessly long corridors to get ahead if you don't find flashing clues like door grates or wall panels right away.

Not only the detailed characters with their realistic facial features and shadows contribute to the psycho experience, but also the finely textured walls and columns of the large building complex later in the game. Because during the whole amnesia you are not only in a room of the insane asylum, but you also want to escape somehow. But I don't want to give too much away about that.

Three hours of fun

Just this much: If you walk through "The Inpatient" in one piece and quickly recover from the jump scares (there are only a few), you will spend a good three hours in the adventure. The good thing about it: you may also play through the title a second or third time due to the possibly different story endings of the two main characters. So far, we have only managed one playthrough shortly before the release. But the desire for a second round with the female inmate is there, because even in a run-down psychiatric clinic, you only like to share a cell with an inmate of the same sex.

"The Inpatient" by Supermassive Games is available from Wednesday for Fr. 39.90 in the PSN Store.