OBSERVER- XBOX One Version

All the LSD in the WORLD…


Today I finished two things. I finished reading Philip Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” As well, I finished the Bloober and Aspyr Media’s game, “Observer”.

You see, I have been on this “Cyberpunk” kick. I’m sure you get that.

I also have been reading reviews of “Blade Runner” and how it compares to Dick’s “Electric Sheep” book, and I know the two stories share some of the same names, but are, for the most part, completely different stories.

Observer stars the voice acting of the late Rutger Hauer, who sadly passed on in 2019, the same year this game was made. In the game, Daniel Lazarski is the main character for whom Hauer provides the voice. Lazarski is an “Observer” (a kind of Cyberpunk cop, laden with implants giving him scanning and computing capabilities far beyond those of normal smart-phone savvy humans), working in Krakow, Poland in the year 2084. Now, despite in-game posters and signs being all Polish (with subtitles), everyone speaks English (OK, fine, I need that to complete this game, for sure).

Lazarski is sent to investigate a crime in a building that ends up in a lockdown. No one in or out. During his mission, which I shall not BEGIN to spoil, he uses all his wares to investigate several bodies he finds, at least one even still alive, including multiple scanning methods, and a brain-chip jack kind of device which allows him to piece together memories of the recently murdered. It is here that the heavy acid-tripping comes in.

To say the graphics are powerful is an understatement. Anyone who suffers from epileptic seizures should stay FAR AWAY from this one. The "Virtual Reality" scenes flicker and morph, shifting from one scene to another in seconds; voices are “heard” and surreal situations pop up out of nowhere. Insane strobing and color shifting light, screaming, sobbing, sounds of babies crying, a non-stop assault on the vision and hearing that puts any nightmare to shame. Getting through one of these long, horrifying scenes was enough to make me pause for a nice shot of sake and a few slugs of beer. These are scenes you are playing through, mind you, not video scenes you are simply watching. The best way to sum up the experience is, “Jesus FUCKING Christ!!”

The graphics are incredible, the sound and music is incredible, the control is perfect. I found NOTHING clunky or otherwise bad or falling short with the control. Spot-on.

I also have to say that this game probably connects with Dick’s “Electric Sheep” book as much as, if not more than, the Blade Runner movie- in it’s own way. The run-down building follows the descriptions of building structures in the book better than Blade Runner does; the mentioned history of a war that has decimated humanity; the presence of “kipple” is pretty much as frequent and overwhelming as the book; and there is even a shorn “electric sheep” that you follow for awhile. (Or, perhaps it is a baby "electric deer?" I say it's a sheep.)

Not too many cons here. In fact, all I can say is, maybe, MAYBE the head-jack “Virtual Reality memory” scenes were a bit long, perhaps too long. PERHAPS. But this one lays new ground, I seriously hope there is a second one, yeah, and it becomes a franchise that goes on indefinitely. I’d LOVE to see a VR version of it, but I seriously fear I would go INSANE playing something like this in a VR format.

This game is available on XBox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. It is WAY worth a spin.

Observer is what it is, and it nails it. A Cyberpunk puzzle-solver with a first-person perspective, light on action and only a small bit of stealth, heavy on story and graphics. Where’s my sake?? I give it a 10/10.