Hektor (PC) Review

The primary premise behind Hektor is a deeply satisfying one. As the player moves through the labyrinthine environment, they are met with a constantly changing world. Remember that room at the end of the hallway with the locked door? Go back to it and discover it's been turned into a patient care facility. Venturing around a maze of seemingly endless dead ends? Try taking a different turn and then coming back to discover a new staircase.

This works really well, at first. The sense of a never ending environment change rushes over gamers and fills them with dread and suspicion at every turn. This doesn't last long, however, as it becomes apparent this is a puzzle. Getting a new area to appear is a matter of trying to approach it from different angles, which requires a lot of trial by fire. The game is very short, so it doesn't take long to deduce how to unlock the next area, yet constantly retracing steps can lead to a high amount of tedium.

Of course, basking in the slow insanity fills up some time between swapping a dingy hallway with a security office. Taking medication prevents the screen from twisting the environment around like silly putty. A lot needs to be taken in order to prevent the environment from melting in to a nauseating acid trip á la a Jefferson Airplane video directed by Rob Zombie. It's a nice touch, but it comes with a price.

It would be easy to assume the game is a graphical powerhouse that kicks any CPU into molasses mode upon boot up. However, the lagging, dragging graphics are intentional, and are actually pleasant, to start with. Again, this adds a sense of morose and tension to every frame early on. Coupled with fast disappearing images, this leads to a copious amount of "What was that and where did it go?" moments.

Then the effect wears off (not in game) and Hektor becomes more about waiting for the cursor to pop up at the right time so a door can be accessed without it disappearing. This leads to a lot of wasted time trying to angle the camera at the right spot on the door, which isn't always the handle, in an effort to open it and progress.

The sound is another 50/50 shot Hektor takes in an effort to send chills down the player's spine, and another example of almost nailing it. Screams and pleas for help echo throughout the facility, and many of them are haunting. Several of them, however, are boring. Some invoke images of horrible medical experiments and dastardly prisons, tombs manufactured for people no one cares for or ever wants to hear from again. Then some evoke the image of someone the game designer knew, sipping a cup of coffee behind the spit screen of a mic in their apartment. It's a shame, as when the voice acting works, it works very well. Still, when it doesn't, it hits the ground hard. The music is also pretty minimalistic. This is a high point of the game, though, as the music does so little, yet speaks to so much. It builds a tone of dread and helps people truly appreciate the doom they are facing. It also feels a little like '80s slasher music. Too often it builds up anticipation for a moment that never arrives, only to set up a real scare coming later on, or at least to keep the player off guard.

There's a monster in the game - well, to be precise, there are a few. One monster, however, seems to be the dominating force behind the more visceral fears. This is probably the biggest glaring issue the game comes across, as nothing made this monster feel alive. Sure, it moves and chases the player, but it never feels like anything to care about. The more subtle horrors in the game are much more frightening, which raises a very important question: why even include a monster that actually attacks gamers?

Graphically, this once again feels odd. The environment has pretty good attention to detail and feels fleshed out. Control panels, curtains, and even the aforementioned monster look pretty cool, and the whole of the environment feels very alive, yet then there are the player's arms. This may seem like a minor grievance, but more than anything else in the game, the player's arms are visible. There are other, living humans in the game, who look perfectly fine. However, the arms placed in front of the camera look very amateurish. This doesn't drastically degrade the look of the game, but it is odd that in such a fleshed out world, the one thing constantly placed in front of the camera looks so weird and out of place.