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The Chant review: needs more weirdNot quite unsettling
Not quite unsettling
Only last week I was praising games that wanna be weird, and as such I must commend the weirdness ofThe Chant, a third-person action adventure where a retreat akin to Jared Leto’s definitely-not-a-cult finds itself crashing into a weird nightmare realm akin to the Upside Down fromStranger Things. The thing is, if anything I don’t think it’s weird enough. If you’re going to do a game where the main character uses flaming witchhazel sticks to lash energy-crystal monsters with vagina-flower faces, my view is that you go hard or go home.
The Chant - Teaser TrailerWatch on YouTube
The Chant - Teaser Trailer
Apparently, nobody else bothered to kick even a single tyre around the place, or ask something like, “Hey, so what was your family’s deal again, Tyler?”, but almost as soon as Jess turns up things go seriously off the rails to destination Spooky Town, our final stop. Tyler slips everyone some mushroom tea and starts a group chant, which cracks open portals to The Gloom (everyone starts calling it that just on general consensus, I guess) and causes each member of the group to have a freak out themed around their personal issues and the colour of crystal necklace they’re wearing. Kim, for example, has outbursts of anger, so has a rage-out with her red crystal. Sonny’s yellow-crystal need for respect and affirmation leads him on a selfish crusade into a disused mine full of monstrous toads.
This one kind of looks like the landstriders in The Dark Crystal, but mean
this is Tyler, he’s totally cool dw
I can see how it makes sense - Jess has established triggers, for example, related to her sister’s death - but I’m still not sure how I actually feel about it. Varying mileage and so on. Having your health bar effectively split out into three, however, does work, and keeping an eye on each and maintaining a kind of balance became bascically my main concern in the game, and it’s far more interesting than your standard health/stamina dual bars.
They also don’t refill after cutscenes or when you return to the camp, which is a small thing, but one I appreciate. It keeps you slightly anxious about each encounter, and helps to make The Chant feel like one continous ordeal. It’s actually quite a compact game, and even though Jess has to go to different areas, finding Resi-ish keys to open locked doors and shortcuts, there’s even a kind of fast travel system through the Gloom if you can’t bear to walk around what is quite a small island. This compression does apply to the storytelling, though, to the extent that you get an explicit speedrun of each character’s issues in dialogue almostimmediatelybefore they become relevant. It’s a very noticeable pattern and I can’t help but think it could have been teased out a little more.
The Chant gets a bit predictable, in other words, both in terms of the story and the weirdness. For me the intelligent things it does didn’t quite balance that out, which makes it, once again, a game that would work really well for Game Pass.
