A Nightmare Rooted in Turkish Legend
There is something terrifying about a horror experience taking place in a home; a place worse than any haunted hospital, graveyard, or school. It’s worse because the home is where, hopefully, you feel the safest in the world and where you feel most at ease. So, when something supernatural breaks into your domestic space, where do you go next?
Apartment No 129 is a game based on an Turkish urban legend about two girls who, in 2009, performed a satanic ritual involving candles in the titular apartment. An earthquake struck, they died, and legend has it that anyone who has entered the apartment since has died as well. Are you ready to venture in?
Going Viral
This is a first-person survival horror game developed by a small team in Turkey. The game’s main premise is based on a true story, though if you do a bit of digging, it turns out to be more of an urban myth. Surprisingly, the story starts with a real video cut scene.
You play Emir, an up-and-coming YouTuber who is persuaded by a friend to take his camera down to Apartment No 129 to go ‘viral’. Emir does this, and of course, things go wrong immediately, leaving him fighting for his life against all sorts of demonic forces.
I liked the story and the setup a lot. I always enjoy playing games made in different countries, as they mostly allow the chance to experience stories from different cultures, and this one remained intriguing throughout. There is a lot of lore to read in the form of letters and documents found along the way. However, the biggest problem is that the translated text is very small; even with my best glasses, I struggled to read what was on the screen.
Sensitivity and Console Porting Problems
In fact, I struggled so much that I did something I don’t normally do when playing games: I looked at other reviews. Most of them are for the PC version, on which the game was first released. However, this is a console release, and I just don’t feel that the translation to this platform has been as rigorous as it should have been. For a start, the moment you begin playing, the camera is all over the place. You can’t work out where to look because it is so sensitive that it renders the game pretty much unplayable. My advice is to go straight into the settings and turn that sensitivity way down before you even try to play.
Further, the control system takes a while to get used to, as it features some strange key mapping on the controller. For example, you press the B button to interact with reading material, but then the A button to actually read it. It is not very intuitive, and the inventory menu is something I really struggled with at times.
Apartment No 129 isn’t helped by the fact that it is a dark game, both in terms of content and lighting, so a torch is one of the items you acquire early on. Without the torch, most areas are pitch black, so you need it more than a gun. However, batteries are required to keep it going – a mechanic I always find annoying in games.
Broken Mechanics
There are also a few bugged moments. For instance, when you interact with a cupboard in the kitchen to open it, the sound effect of the cupboard opening plays, but visually, it never opens to reveal its contents. Maybe this is the work of the satanic ritual, but the real problem is that there are valuable resources inside that you cannot reach.
And then, there is combat in the game, first with an axe and later with a gun. It is very basic and feels so light that you don’t know if you are hitting anything; even with the gun, it is hard to tell if you are making an impact. It is a horrible mechanic.
Thankfully, the visuals show early promise. It is good to see the apartment interiors and some of the strange, ghostly foreshadowing, such as a skull bleeding on a doorway or a room full of figures covered in white cloth. However, the creatures attacking you up close lose some of their impact after the tenth death. And whilst the use of real video footage at the beginning is a strange choice, personally, I liked it. The sound effects are creepy enough, with plenty of creaks and moans to make your hair stand on end.
A Decent Horror Buried Under Broken Elements
Apartment No 129 is a tricky game to review because, essentially, there are a lot of broken elements, and the control system is mayhem at times. But if you can somehow get around that, there is a reasonably decent, creepy game underneath.
For me, it feels as though the Xbox console port just hasn’t worked well enough, amplified by a couple of personal dislikes to throw in – the combat and the torch mechanic throughout.
Important Links
Step Into the Shadows – Apartment No 129 Launches on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 – https://www.thexboxhub.com/step-into-the-shadows-apartment-no-129-launches-on-xbox-series-xs-and-ps5/
Apartment No 129 is on the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/apartment-no-129/9n7n7606ch70
