It’s been a while since we’ve had a new game from Spec Ops: The Line director Cory Davis. As far as I can tell, the last game he made was 2016’s Here They Lie, a survival horror game. He’s currently working on another horror game in fact, Sleep Awake, which is a horrendous name, though I think it’s doing some interesting things. Weirdly, he’s making the game alongside Nine Inch Nails guitarist (for live shows, anyway) Robin Finck, and while the game doesn’t have a release date, it did just receive a demo.
Lemme tell ya, if there’s one thing you can take away from Sleep Awake it’s that PS3 games are back! Let me define what I mean here so I don’t just sound like I’m trying to press some buzz words for the fun of it. I think a key thing about the PS3 era of games is that there was so much more scope for much more intimately designed, linear spaces, with much more room for detail compared to the PS2, but not quite enough resources to design something completely lifelike.
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In a lot of ways, these intricately designed games often just had facades up, they looked bigger and more impressive than they actually were. The upside is that it also often made for interesting art direction, and a better established sense of space. So many big budget games now do look life-like, but the tradeoff is that all of this detail gets lost through the sheer quantity of it.
Sleep Awake’s demo was only short, and very much felt like one long corridor, but it was an interesting to look at corridor. Your classic case of random bits of graffiti and wall carvings to denote story, interacting with random objects that does nothing but let you look at them close-up, data logs with bits of flavour text to build up the lore, it’s all there.
Speaking of lore, or story I suppose, this game is set in a world where there’s some kind of weird illness thingy that whisks people away if they fall asleep, so the protagonist is doing what they can to stay awake at all times, which occasionally leads to some hallucinations.
To be perfectly honest, the narrative didn’t feel all that compelling. As mentioned, the demo was short, and did quite a bad job of bringing me into this world, it felt too jarring and disconnected. There also just wasn’t really anything to actually do apart from walk around, look at some bits, and one very short section at the end where I had to hide from an enemy. I’d be remiss to not mention the fact that the writing was stilted and awkward, and the main character’s performance matched that feeling a little too well unfortunately.
Still, the atmosphere and visuals pulled me in all the same. There’s parts that are intercut with live action footage which, to its credit, actually unnerved me. A real arthouse, ’70s vibe about it I feel I could really get down with. It is certainly going for a unique look, and I felt charmed by its 2009 throwback vibes, even if I’m uncertain of whether it’ll be any good or not.
Still, it’s a curious thing to have a game from someone that designed one of the most discussed games of the 2010s, and someone that plays guitar for Nine Inch Nails sometimes. Worth a punt! You can try it out on Steam.