Deadly Premonition‘s status as a “so bad, it’s good” game is due to its greatness despite its flaws. Thanks to the bizarre acting, directing, and goofy game design, it was greater than the sum of its parts, but most importantly, it was playable. DreadOut 2 came close to reaching “so bad, it’s good,” but was held back by its impenetrable game design and unfair combat.
DreadOut‘s premise always had promise. Being an Indonesian take on Fatal Frame is a concept pregnant with possibility. The sequel had a multiplatform release, but the first game was stuck on PCs for a decade. However, that’s about to change with DreadOut: Remastered Collection.
The original PC version of DreadOut was notorious for its roughness and lack of polish. With all the time that has passed, there was always hope that the “remastered” console release would do more than sharpen things up. Refining its playability could go a long way in establishing DreadOut‘s deserved status as a cult classic. It is too bad that DreadOut: Remastered Collection is neither a remaster nor a collection.
DreadOut: Remastered Collection
Developer: Digital Happiness
Publisher: Soft Source Publishing
Platforms: Windows PC (as DreadOut), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
Release Date: January 16, 2025
Price: $29.99
DreadOut begins promisingly enough for a low-budget Indonesian horror game. Linda is thrown into a semi-tutorial that also serves as a nightmare, a deadly premonition of things to come. Key moments to take away from this sequence are the lack of direction when solving puzzles or hidden paths revealed by Linda’s smartphone and its complete unreliability.
The prologue sequence has a puzzle that demands players make an insane leap of logic and even then, it won’t be enough. There is a part involving some candles that makes no sense and looking up a guide became necessary because I had to see if it was intentional.
Compared to DreadOut 2, the combat is more fair and easier, but still barebones. One of the coolest aspects of Fatal Frame was that spirit photography had depth and players could tweak the camera obscura, level up stats, and equip it with parts. There was a damage system based on what kind of film was used, proximity, and you had special attacks.
The DreadOut games have none of the depth of Fatal Frame. Linda won’t need to keep foes perfectly centered this time around, making exorcisms a lot easier now and she won’t have to worry about the heinous melee combat encounters either. DreadOut is as basic as it gets for a horror game. All Linda can do is run around and take snapshots.
The bare simplicity is a blessing in disguise because as the sequel showed anything more complex leads to disaster. The mechanics are recontextualized in puzzle-like scenarios to give the impression of variety. This ultimately works pretty well and feels satisfying to solve some stupefying mysteries when they make sense.
A good puzzle is aligning a shot that forms an image in the environment revealing a hidden key in a previously explored area. Combat is also kept to a minimum since Linda sucks as an exorcist. She moves too slow and can only take a few hits before she is sent to limbo and has to walk a few feet to retry the fight with the specter which gets its health reset.
Some battles feel like they require a little luck since Linda’s phone sometimes won’t register and has too long of a cooldown. Worse yet, Linda is easily stun-locked and takes forever to get back up. The twitchy camera makes it more disorienting since you’ll overshoot your view.
Moving around feels weird since it’s like Linda has an eight-way movement with interpolation as opposed to a true 360-degree analog movement. This is a tell-tale sign that this is a lazy port of a PC game. The developers missed the opportunity to include gyroscopic controls to assist with accuracy.
DreadOut is also kind of an ugly-looking game, but a weird horror game with bizarre sudden bouts of comedy from Indonesia should look ugly. The female character models look sexy and the designs of the creatures are genuinely unsettling. Musically, DreadOut is an unnerving experience too, instilling palpable tension.
DreadOut‘s flaws could have been forgiven if it weren’t for the fact that it is still a hopelessly buggy game like it was on PC. These aren’t the kind of bugs that players can bypass with a simple checkpoint reload. DreadOut will permanently lock gamers into an eternal glitch and the only way forward is to restart the act, losing hours of progress.
There is no guarantee a glitch like this won’t happen again. Nobody in their right mind would dare to retry and hope it will work. DreadOut is also a deliberately paced game with huge environments. Linda gets no maps, so replaying segments is extra painful since retracing your steps in a rush becomes extra confusing.
It is a shame that it has come to this and that playing DreadOut is like playing Russian Roulette. Fans of the genre would like this for its creepy atmosphere, hilarious cutscenes, and the overall weird design choices that give it some charm. The insane puzzle design will undoubtedly put off everyone else. Expect to use a guide to understand what the game wants.
It may say “Collection” in the title, but players won’t be getting DreadOut 2. You only get the first DreadOut and the disappointing DLC expansion. Keepers of the Dark leans heavily on the game’s most unrefined feature; the combat. Yes, it’s true; the bonus chapter is a collection of boss fights with almost no exploration.
Some bosses are puzzle-like and require several steps to defeat. The problem is that boss fights aren’t interesting on their own. What makes a boss exciting is the lead-up to a boss. Fighting the Stray Demon in Dark Souls isn’t fun because it’s a good boss – it’s a good boss because of the context of the scenario that elevates it.
Keepers of the Dark drops Linda in a small hub area with doors that lead to each arena. All of the environments are recycled assets from the core game and the impression is that the bosses were ideas the team had but couldn’t implement into DreadOut. It feels less like an expansion or bonus chapter and more like disjointed playable cut content.
DreadOut: Remastered Collection isn’t even remastered by much. It looks and runs decently on Nintendo Switch, but that should be expected with a game like this which is already 10 years old. Lots of textures look like smeared feces and there are some hilarious 3D models used in the background. Some effects appear broken, like the water which resembles a mess of black squares.
DreadOut is not beyond salvaging. It desperately needs an update that addresses the game-ending bugs. Adding gyro support would be nice too. Given how long it has been broken on PC, it isn’t likely to be fixed on consoles. DreadOut is an amusing curiosity that stands out from other horror games due to being steeped in Indonesian horror folklore.
In its current state, you’ll be lucky to beat this game. There is no telling what causes some of the bugs. It feels random, but maybe during a full moon on Friday the 13th, DreadOut might not throw up all over itself. It could have been “so bad, it’s good”, but instead it’s “so bad, it’s unplayable”.
DreadOut: Remastered Collection was reviewed on a Nintendo Switch using a code provided by Soft Source Publishing. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. DreadOut: Remastered Collection is now available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.