Afterlife VR (PlayStation 5) Review

Afterlife VR's story takes place in a mental hospital; the hospital where the Police protagonist, Adam Bernhard's, sister is seeking treatment. The opening does a good job of setting the scene but already there is a little roughness on display. During the cutscene where Adam is driving, if players reset their position by holding option, it places them in the centre of the car away from the hands they are supposedly controlling. There are no cutscenes as such, instead the game plays out from the protagonist's point of view at all times, increasing the immersion.

Gameplay is quite smooth, and the control scheme works well with the Sense controllers. Players have an inventory accessible from both hands that is used by holding a button and selecting with the stick. It takes a little getting used to. Most other PSVR2 games have relied on physically attaching items to the player's character to be grabbed in-game so this menu system can be a little weird to operate. Walking itself is quite traditional using the left analogue stick; this can be adjusted for comfort by using snap turning. Combat is a little clunky with aiming not always being as exact as it could be, but it has a decently solid feeling and nice meaty sound effects. There are also some supernatural elements to play with in combat which give it a little more girth than expected.

There are moments in the game where the lower budget can start to have a knock-on effect for the immersion. Things like a jump scare animation being stiff, crows that teleport to the player when they get too close, slightly odd scaling of objects, etc… They are small niggles but when combined they can detract from the experience. It also would benefit from an overhaul of the tutorial and a message warning about the game's contents. The tutorial is set in a small area that lets the player get used to the control but in the back of the first room is a hanging body, which, if players are sensitive to this kind of thing, could have been noted in the boot up screens.

Sound design on a whole is pretty great with positional audio and some nice environmental sounds. Some of the effects work is a bit rough but voice acting is decent throughout. The main characters don't emote much but do react in suitable ways to their odd situation. The game overall manages to maintain quite an intense atmosphere using dark and quite interesting visual design with the atmospheric sounds mixed in. There are lower poly models, stiff animations and some oddities in scale as mentioned earlier but overall, it is convincing enough in practice to be genuinely spooky at times and even sometimes excellent looking.

Although the game is quite fun, it does ultimately suffer from a very short playtime too. Clocking in at about two to three hours long and while this is great for the story, as it doesn't have to pad itself out. However, it unfortunately also means players will likely experience the game once and then not play it again due to the limited design choices. A little more replayability would have been great.