“Let our pain be our immolation.”
Hailing from Warsaw, Poland is indie developer: Duality Games, with their first foray into the horror circuit with: Unholy. Offering a somewhat stylistic hybrid between stealth, action and horror, Unholy tries to be a jack of all trades whilst ultimately having a bit of an identity crisis. The game takes place in an alternate Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, showcasing a city that’s living in fear of the authoritarian cult that thrives off the emotions and stability of its citizens. Having released on Steam on the 20th July 2023, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game drop tomorrow on the 13th September 2024; as usual I’ll be going over both the good and the bad when it comes to the PS5 port, ultimately discussing whether it’s worth your time and money when it releases tomorrow.
From Dario Argento’s excellent Suspiria (1977) to David Bruckner’s The Ritual (2017), horror movies featuring or centred around a cult, are a trope that is as old as the genre itself. Arguably one of the first instances of a cult in horror media would be that found within the cosmic horror classic from H.P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cuthulu (1926), worshipping the ol’ great one himself, heralding his return from his underwater city of R’lyeh. Ritual sacrifices for a giant cosmic squid aside, Lovecraft’s use of cults to convey horror is done so effectively by exploring themes that fall into the unknown; hidden knowledge, cosmic insignificance, and the fragility of human understanding, all reinforce that grander sense of foreboding that suggests that humanity is not only insignificant in the vast cosmos, but also unknowingly vulnerable to forces far older and more terrifying. The cult from Call of Cuthulu represents the dark undercurrents of society, holding forbidden truths that, when revealed, shatter the sanity of those who encounter them. Similar themes have been used in video games too, with The Order from Silent Hill (1999) standing as a good, comparable example (all hail Samael). What made The Order so effective in Silent Hill was their blending of religious fanaticism, psychological torment, and occultism to create an atmosphere of deep, unsettling fear that permeates the entries where they are not present just as much as the ones that they are (see my love for Silent Hill 2 here).
This use of religious fanaticism and fear is something that Duality Games was clearly inspired by when creating their first horror title: Unholy, as the themes present throughout the game pay clear homage to the likes of Silent Hill whilst still retaining it’s own identity. Unholy places you in the shoes of protagonist and mother: Dorothae, who is thrown head-first into her own personal nightmare as her son: Gabriel is ritualistically sacrificed by a cult moments after the game begins. A few months later, Dorothae is wracked with grief and has become a social pariah in the post-soviet living complex that she finds herself in; compelled to visit her father’s eastern bloc apartment, Dorothae meets an old woman in the elevator, who urges her to continue the search for her son in the Eternal City (the authoritarian cult that oversees the town has their own world) by performing a ritual in her father’s apartment with items that reflect memories of her past and her son’s. Once Dorathae initiates the ritual, she’s thrown directly into the Lovecraftian Eternal City where the emotions of her former townsfolk weave the very fabric of the otherworld itself, and if their emotions run foul, then the Eternal City suffers as a result, with Dorathae’s presence causing the city to erupt in a violent plague. With promises of finding her son at the heart of the city’s cathedral, Dorathae fights her way through the city against its authoritarian footsoldiers, ultimately discovering a side to her family’s history that she didn’t realise existed. Straight out of the gate, if the above sounded hard to follow, then I have effectively conveyed my experience with Unholy’s narrative throughout the 5-6 hours I spent with the game. For a game where narrative is at the forefront, Unholy shows a distinct lack of context, throwing you headfirst into a story that feels like part of an ongoing plot, where you’ve turned up halfway through.
Year Zero: The Eternal City is woven by the emotions of the citizens that the cult has domination over, with Dorathae’s presence causing the world to turn upside down on itself with a plague.
Gameplay in Unholy is a bit of a mixed bag, suffering somewhat of an identity crisis. The game is broken down into ten chapters, and across those the game will shift between horror and stealth action on the fly, with environmental challenges thrown in to heighten the tension when you’re being hunted down by glue zombies or the religious order equivalent of the SS. Outside of stealth sections, the game awards exploration with your main means of traversal also being your main means of defence: an otherworldly slingshot, that can use different types of emotion crystals that you unlock as you progress through the game (breaking walls, disrupting circuit boards, setting off traps etc.) which can allow you to plan your moves ahead of the curve, especially when moving through particularly difficult puzzles (of which there are more than a few). For a short, linear progressed horror game, there’s also a progression tree offering ‘god-like’ abilities such as carrying extra ammo or the ability to slide whilst sprinting, which feels extremely shoe-horned in, going back to my point about the game having an identity crisis. Another mechanic of note is the game’s masks, which get upgraded as you progress through the story, offering the ability to see which way to go, immunity to poison gas etc. Which once again, feels like it was designed at one point to be much larger in scope.
Despite the story being hard to follow and the gameplay being somewhat of a mixed bag, the atmosphere in Unholy is actually pretty good, most in part for its environment design and use of excellent use of ambient sound and lighting. Whilst the initial soviet bloc areas are accurately recreated, you’ll spend most of your time in the other-world known as the Eternal City, which looks like a cross between 1920’s New York and Europe that’s been ravaged by a plague, causing the earth itself to twist out of the ground with decaying vines, brutally integrating with decaying corpses and architecture alike, channelling an aesthetic that looks like the lovechild of H.R. Giger and David Cronenberg with a bit of Clive Barker thrown in for good measure. Alongside this is the enemy design, which is another mixed bag. The generic glue zombies as I’ve coined them are standard fare and unremarkable, however the footsoldiers of the cult are far more interesting, looking like a cross between the Third Reich and Knights Templar, really drumming home the atmosphere of an authoritarian theocracy to excellent effect. The sound design is also worthy of a mention, offering a break-neck paced thrill during some of the game’s faster paced section when being chased, alongside a subtle ambient soundscape during the slower, horror sections which are made all the scarier with Sony’s proprietary Pulse 3D headset for the PS5.
Cronenbergian: Unholy’s art design takes clear inspiration from some of body horror’s greatest visionaries, offering a twisted vision that fans of David Cronenberg and Clive Barker can appreciate.
Performance is where Unholy tanks, as I cannot think of another game in recent memory that feels this bad to play. For starters, the game runs at an extremely choppy 30fps cap, which most of the time the game doesn’t hit. Running on the Unity engine, one would assume the engine’s reputation for having faster load times and more consistent frame rates would be apparent here, however that could not be further from the truth. During intensive sections where there’s a lot going on, the frame rate turns into chop city, dropping to around 10fps which is the definition of unplayable (I chugged through it for the sake of the review). In addition to the monstrous frame rate is the game’s textures, which are actually really nice one loaded, but suffer with glitching and texture popping, long after the game area has loaded in. Resolution wise I’m playing on a 1440p 165hz monitor, and whilst the textures do pop in, there wasn’t much in the way of screen tearing indicating the refresh rate is maintained to a solid enough level. In addition, a personal gripe of mine was the controls, which wouldn’t be such an issue if there was an ability to remap them. Standard FPS controls are almost universally the same across the board, and despite Unholy trying hard to be an FPS at points, they’ve gone with a control scheme that is just downright annoying, with L3 hard toggling between sprinting and walking, Square to crouch, jumping with Circle etc. Hopefully the performance issues and control remapping are addressed in a day one patch, or not too far down the line.
Overall Unholy is a pretty disappointing experience, on numerous fronts. Despite having a pretty solid atmosphere, and the more story and pacing related elements comimg down to personal opinion, the unoriginal gameplay design, tonally off narrative and performance issues bog this one down to a point where it’s a hard push to recommend to anyone in its current state. Wait for this one to go on sale hopefully in a patched state, or potentially go for the PC version if that’s an option.
A PlayStation 5 review code was provided by Noovola PR.
