The Occultist Review

Everyone has those lower budget films that they happily enjoy going back to from time to time. They’re not always particularly good, but you’re glad they exist. For me, Session 9 is one of those films – a 2001 release directed by Brad Anderson and starring David Caruso and Josh Lucas about a cleaning crew who take a job in an abandoned mental hospital, and naturally, things go awry. It’s a film packed full of eerie atmosphere but undone by the story and some ordinary characters. Still, those 100 minutes give you something that a blockbuster can’t. Which is how I feel about DALOAR and Daedalic Entertainment’s The Occultist, a first-person supernatural thriller that bats above its average in the visuals and atmosphere department, but can’t quite get the rest of the experience to match that same level. Still, I’m glad that The Occultist exists.

You’re Alan Rebels, a paranormal investigator who has come to the remote abandoned British island of Godstone in search of your missing father Gabriel. Godstone was inhabited until the 1950s by a cult performing a bunch of unsettling rituals, and since then the island has remained an untouched ghost town. To find the answers he seeks, Alan will need to explore the island, uncover its dark secrets, and deal with the lingering entities.

Welcome to the Godstone Circus

If there’s one thing that The Occultist does well it’s the visuals and atmosphere. Built on Unreal Engine 5, the abandoned Godstone’s ramshackle buildings, cult iconography, and eerie landscapes create a hauntingly immersive world, one that I constantly wanted to explore. There’s one chapter that sees Alan investigate a deserted circus, which is built next to the sea. It’s a cracking setting that has plenty of atmosphere but highlights one of The Occultist’s main issues – it’s just not that scary. Dealing with the supernatural should be a somewhat intimidating experience, but Alan barely reacts to anything that happens, making it hard for the player to care. There’s a smattering of cheap jump scares that you’d expect in these types of games, but it doesn’t use its atmosphere to create any truly unsettling moments.

Uncovering the truth behind Gabriel’s disappearance will see Alan use his skills as a paranormal investigator, and thankfully Alan has a handful of tools that will make getting the job done possible. Alan’s main tool is his nifty pendulum that allows him to see and manifest items that were previously there, such as a note, a painting, or other items of use. As the game progresses, Alan adds three more abilities to his skillset. These allow his pendulum to manipulate time on specific objects (a fallen vase or a stuck elevator, for example), control a spirit raven to access out-of-reach areas, and control vermin. The pendulum will glow or flash when a clue is nearby, meaning you don’t have to pixel hunt.

It’s a neat collection of mechanics that has potential for some cool puzzle solving, but far too often the puzzles require you to track down a handful of items to unlock a door or acquire an item needed to progress. And when you factor in puzzles that ask you to draw a pattern, write someone’s name or guess a combination, it’s just all a bit repetitive. None of the puzzles are overly hard either, as all of the clues Alan collects can be found in his journal, which does make it easier to look back at info you’ve previously found but forgotten, such as a code.

Pendulum vision

Alan is not a fighter, and as such he’ll need to avoid encounters with entities or use their attacks against them. While the concept of hide-and-seek/stealth gameplay can work, for me, there’s a fine line between making them engaging or tedious, and unfortunately, The Occultist leans too far on the tedious side. There’s one sequence that has a granny in a supercharged wheelchair stalking the hallways for you – it’s hilarious, and easily avoidable. You just need to slip into the nearest room and she’ll forget you’re there, going back to doing blockies in the hallway. Another enemy is a doll that will blow itself up when it gets close enough to Alan, and once again it’s easy to set these off, run away, and continue with your search. But these are constantly thrown at you, making them more annoying than anything. There are also a couple boss fights that require the use of your pendulum, and these feel like an odd inclusion given Alan’s dislike for confrontation.

Unfortunately, Alan isn’t the most captivating protagonist ever written, and the gravelly Doug Cockle (who sounds like he always does, which is to say Alan sounds like Geralt) sounds like he’d rather be anywhere else than recording lines. Granted, he isn’t given the best material to work with, but I’d go far as saying that Cockle’s voice doesn’t really fit Alan’s character. Plus, he constantly unleashes dry one-liners that rarely land. It’s a shame, because Alan’s story is actually interesting, and some more emotive voice work could have given the experience a much-needed emotional layer.

Still, despite all of the game’s issues, I wanted to see how Alan’s story ends. There’s enough meat on this bone to get you through the 8-hour runtime, I just wish I cared about Alan a little more than I did. Performance on PS5 isn’t too bad either. Which is to say I didn’t suffer any major bugs. There were the odd bugs that saw random items float in the air, but the biggest gripe was a visual issue that made items unreadable unless using the text option, and another, which, as my partner said, made Alan’s hand look like it was covered in ants.

Bang bang dolls

Final Thoughts

In this day and age, games like The Occultist should be celebrated for existing. I know that’s a strange thing to say after I’ve spent most of this review criticising it, but we need more AA single-player games that aren’t afraid to introduce new characters and generally just have a crack. The flip side of that, unfortunately, is that The Occultist is just a pretty average video game. It has plenty of promising ideas, a cool premise, and stellar atmosphere, but the voice acting is dull, Alan is dull, and the gameplay loop is dull. If investigative games are your jam, you might find more joy than I did.

Reviewed on PS5 Pro and PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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