Injection
Ï€23 ‘No Name, No Number’ is a horror game developed by Abramelin Games, a title
that is as curious as it is long, which is why I’m referring to it as simply
Injection 23 from now on. The developers claim that it harks back to solid survival
horror games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. We ran the game through its
paces, does it stand up to the claims or fall scarily short? Let’s see.
Starting up
Injection -23 gives you it’s first taste of its roots within seconds of loading
it up. Asking you to choose between two fairly old-school graphical styled
flags, one for Spanish and one for English. After selection you then go on to
the main menu which is done in a similar style. I’m not sure if the design was
a deliberate homage, a design choice or simply lack of experience from a design
perspective. It was way too soon to start making judgements so I chose the homage.
I started a new game, and off we went.
The intro
was in essence a series of images, that played with light, dark, flashing
imagery and a few old tropes such as a living, and bleeding tunnel. Odd and
eerie sounds emanated out of my controller, while the games protagonist spoke
cryptic (and sometimes badly translated) words. Through the distorted imagery
and odd words, I could figure out that basically your dog had run away and you
had left your home for the first time in a long time to find him. I also realized
at this point, that the intro had disturbed me a little bit, sure they’re old
tropes, but they did set the stage quite well for a horror experience.
When the playable
section of the game starts, you see your character alone in an abandoned
Spanish village. The buildings, dark and foreboding, the only light being the
odd streetlamp or the fire burning behind you.
What lies
before you in the form of gameplay is a fairly solid pastiche of games like
Resident Evil or Silent Hill, at least in style though there are certainly
things that Injection 23 doesn’t do as well. Sure, it has the basics; you’re
given an abandoned, eerie and mostly dark area to explore, scattered with
puzzles that reveal new areas once you solve the puzzles, and a grab-bag of
weird and hideous creatures trying to stop you.
However,
this is kinda of where any similarity ends, due to the odd design decisions or
poor implementation of interesting ideas.
For
example, Saving is not friendly. You game is autosaved at the start of each
chapter, but outside that there are very few save points. This is made even
more annoying by the fact, that you can’t just use them, or use a typewriter ribbon
like in Resident Evil.
No, instead
you need to find 2 sacred waters and 5 thorn sticks in order to save.
Items you don’t exactly trip over during the game, plus add into that the fact
that the puzzles are sometimes very difficult, and the enemies are often pretty
deadly. Not bad if you love a challenge, not so good if you only have a limited
amount of time.
Items can
be tricky to find, a glowing red handprint shows when you’re near an item or
interactive point, but you sometimes have to be positioned absolutely correctly
for it to show up. There’s also an interesting function of the joypad, where
the light can be used to indicate close enemies, items or health. Though, you
have to be fairly close to the object for it to work.
On to those
enemies, you have to be fairly far into the game before you’re given any type
of weapon. Which means you spend the first half running away from enemies, or
hiding from them. There is a glowing eye
that indicated how hidden you are, and you do rely on this for the first half
of the game. Though, it was the lack of saving that was scarier to me than the
monsters I was running away from. I’m not saying you should have an AK47 from
the get-go, but a knife or sharpened stick wouldn’t have gone amiss.
That aside,
maybe all of that was purely down to my own personal tastes. My heart was still
racing, fear was definitely a factor, and the puzzles were interesting, and due
to the non-hand-holding approach, there was a sense of achievement once you finally
solved them.
The
inclusion of four different camera views was a nice idea, and I felt they added
more to the game than they took away. Obviously, first person view gave you a clearer
close-up view of things, but generally one of the third person views was better
for overall play.
Graphically,
it was difficult to decide whether the slightly low graphical quality was a
deliberate choice to emulate those earlier horror classics or down to a lack of
experience from a developer. Though what it lost in graphics it gains in sound.
The use of the joypad controller speaker, added to the effect, and although you
could argue that the background sounds were a little stereotypical of the
genre, they worked for me ensured a certain background anxiety while playing.
Injection 23 is a fairly tricky game, though the annoyance is
not due to the difficulty of the game but due to the lack of a decent save
function. Several times enemies killed me and I was thrust back to the start of
the chapter, so depending on you deal with that, it’s either extremely annoying
or a motivating factor.
Honestly, I can’t think of any reason to play this again once you’ve played it through once. There are no multiple endings, or Mode+. If you are one of those people that loved every minute of this game then maybe, but I’m suspecting there aren’t too many of those. However, for only £7.99 maybe you don’t need to play it more than once.
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Jim Franklin
Jim Franklin is a freelance writer, living in Derby UK with his wife and his player 3. When time allows he likes nothing more than losing himself in a multi-hour gaming session. He likes most games and will play anything but prefers MMO's, and sandbox RPG's.
