Dead Take

Dead Take was provided by Pocketpair Publishing for review. Thank you!

I am a mixed bag when it comes to horror games. I enjoy them, but I get scared very easily. Still, I enjoy and respect the artistry behind them and how they can make something so haunting, creepy, and scary. Dead Take is one of those horror games that I not only loved, but came out with a new appreciation and respect for developer Surgent Studios. Even with its short runtime, this is an experience worth having and will be one of the few horror games I will remember.

The crux of what makes Dead Take so memorable is its story and presentation. You play as Chase, an actor, who is vying for the role of Willie in Duke Cain's latest picture: The Last Voyage. However, your friend Vinny has secured the part, but afterward, has gone missing. He was last at Duke's mansion for a party. Worried about his friend, Chase will travel into the mansion to figure out exactly what went down there and where Vinny is.

What happens next is a journey into the actions of an egocentric, traumatized mind that is willing to do whatever it takes for his artistry. The story is told in a non-traditional format, with the bulk of the details being written in documents and emails that can be found across the mansion. Usually, I don't enjoy this kind of storytelling much; I like being a more active component and seeing events play out in front of me, but the subject matter was interesting enough to keep reading on, and I am so glad it was.

We also have real-life video to find and watch in the cinema, which gives us more clues about who Duke Cain is and the psyche of our two main characters, Chase and Vinny, our other actors, and how they were affected by Duke's crooked methodology. This was awesome to experience. Not only did it give a real look at who these people are and their personalities, which are as complex as our twisted director, but are expertly portrayed by some of the best video game actors and actresses, including Neil Newbon, Ben Starr, Jane Perry, Alanah Pearce, and even features some smaller appearances from Sam Lake, Laura Bailey, and more. Watching these real actors in the videos was captivating and helped their virtual counterparts feel more alive.

The surrealist environment, coupled with these videos, created an unnerving atmosphere that was difficult to get rid of. The short runtime of the game helped make sure its creepy surroundings never overstayed their welcome. Just walking around put me on edge, and I love when horror games are able to evoke that kind of response without resorting to cheaper jump scares.

Speaking of the horror elements, I love the emphasis on atmospheric and psychological horror. The creepy sound effects continually made me nervous as I walked around the dimly lit rooms. There are some of those jump scares, which I very much dislike, but the bulk of the horror was created through the environment and frightening performances of the actors, Duke Cain's chilling voice messages, and the overall message throughout.

Gameplay-wise, Dead Take is more on the basic side. We walk through the mansion, solving countless puzzles to move the story along. The puzzles are primarily enjoyable, with most not being too hard to solve and making me feel smarter afterwards, but there are a couple that just felt impossible to complete. There were a few, with one puzzle with four weapons in particular, that took me significantly longer to complete. There's little direction with some of the puzzles, like that one, and it made it more difficult than it should have been. I wouldn't say it was aggravating or frustrating, but it wasn't enjoyable.

There are some cool aspects to the gameplay mechanics, like finding USB drives and splicing together individual videos we find to create new ones. This leads into the side content, where people can unlock additional footage by finding specific notes and documents throughout the mansion. It isn't straightforward for this either, but I actually enjoyed it here. Figuring out what to do to get this extra footage was something I discovered by chance, and I felt great afterwards.

Dead Take's gameplay isn't too deep, and generally is easy to grasp. We will find a bunch of items and have our own inventory, where we can interact with some of them to uncover the next clue. However, unlike other games that have more basic gameplay, I wasn't longing for more depth. This was a short, sweet, horror-filled experience, and it fulfills it with clear quality and passion from Surgent Studios.

Dead Take - Steam Deck Performance

Dead Take was rated Steam Deck Verified ahead of its launch, and while it is playable, it definitely needs some compromises to run well. Even though this is a small game overall, it is very demanding. There are some spots that do run very well when there aren't many objects around you, but it can be quite draining on resources in more complex or outside areas. Finding a balance for visuals with these scenes isn't the easiest, but in the end, I would consider it solid at 30 FPS with some sacrifices.

The game has XeSS 2, TSR, and Nvidia Image upscaling, but neither of them will provide a stable 30 FPS at their lowest possible settings. TSR at 33% render scaling will get a mostly stable 30 FPS, but there are areas towards the end of the game that will have some drops. Putting the rendering scale that low also makes the game look blurry, and text will sometimes linger on the screen when looking away, so I don't recommend going too low.

The three upscalers look very similar to each other, so I would comfortably say you can go with any of them. However, when comparing between all three, I found that TSR at 60% rendering scale was the sweet spot. XeSS 2 had some pixelation around where light was being cast that TSR didn't and Nvidia Image Scaling had more noticeable ghosting.

While some areas of the mansion run well, there are more areas that drop more heavily. Because of that, we can set it to 30 FPS and raise some quality settings, like Texture, above their default Low preset. It does say the Low preset is best for Steam Deck in-game, which I appreciate a lot. There is a "Lowest" preset as well, but I don't recommend using it since it changes the way the game looks completely, for the worse. Still, at these settings, it's very playable and I enjoyed it on the Deck.

アクセシビリティ

The game does have an accessibility tab, which contains options for controller sensitivity, vibrations, analog stick and trigger deadzones, toggles for motion blur and screen shake, and a slider to change how much the camera bobs when moving or standing still. We can also change the text size, which I recommend setting to large, language, showing the reticle, changing different controller presets, and moving audio sliders.

I would also recommend increasing controller sensitivity, as the default movement speed is too low for my taste.

The game does support 16:10 resolutions and has both cloud saves and controller support. There are no HDR settings.

結論

Dead Take is a horrifying game that uses its short run time to create a memorable time. The way Surgent Studios uses surrealistic architecture, creepy atmosphere, and real-life videos to tell its disturbing story is wonderful. While some puzzles can be a little difficult to figure out without any help, the bulk of the game's basic gameplay is enjoyable when considering how brief the game is. Still, this is clearly a quality over quantity discussion, and I would say this is a quality experience that is worth playing through.

Even with some compromises to visuals and the need for upscaling, it's a great game to enjoy on the Steam Deck. Sitting in my bed and playing Dead Take at night was awesome, even though it had ended up scaring me shitless.

このレビューはPC版に基づいています。

このレビューをお楽しみいただけたなら、SteamDeckHQ の他のコンテンツもぜひご覧ください！私たちはあなたのゲーム体験に役立つこと間違いなしの様々なゲームレビューやニュースを取り揃えています。ニュース、ヒントやチュートリアル、ゲーム設定やレビューをお探しの方も、最新のトレンドを知りたい方も、ぜひご利用ください！