{"id":100724,"date":"2019-09-24T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/paper_dolls_original"},"modified":"2019-09-24T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T15:00:00","slug":"review-paper-dolls-original-a-horror-wannabe-that-fails-to-raise-a-scare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/09\/24\/review-paper-dolls-original-a-horror-wannabe-that-fails-to-raise-a-scare\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Paper Dolls Original &#8211; A Horror Wannabe That Fails To Raise A Scare"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/paper_dolls_original\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/paper_dolls_original\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<aside class=\"picture embed pictures\" id=\"screenshots\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99436\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99436\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Paper Dolls Original Review - Screenshot 1 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Ever since <strong>Amnesia: The Dark Descent<\/strong> first gave gamers the heebie-jeebies back in 2010, we\u2019ve seen a number of games try to imitate its success. Some, like <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/outlast_bundle_of_terror\">Outlast<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/alien_isolation\">Alien: Isolation<\/a><\/strong>, have been remarkably well-received, whilst others, like <strong>Slender: The Eight Pages<\/strong>, haven\u2019t been <em>quite<\/em> so successful.<\/p>\n<p>The latest attempt to meld first-person gameplay with straight-up survival horror tropes comes from publisher Gamera Games with <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/paper_dolls_original\">Paper Dolls Original<\/a><\/strong>, a game that brings more of an Eastern flavour to a largely Western-dominated genre. But it also fails to understand just what makes its contemporaries so effective, relying on cheap jump scares and excruciatingly clunky gameplay in a futile effort to dredge up some semblance of fear.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing comparisons with <strong>Silent Hill<\/strong>, Paper Dolls starts with our unnamed protagonist awakening within an ancient mansion following a horrific car accident. He\u2019s lost his daughter and must navigate the dark corridors and ominous rooms to find her. \u2018Dark\u2019 is the key word here: you\u2019ll want to turn the brightness up a bit with this one, because its recommended setting is simply far too dark to actually see anything, even with the game\u2019s torch.<\/p>\n<p>Navigating the mansion requires you to collect a vast number of keys to unlock its many doors, all of which are only discernible by their colours. You&#8217;ll move at an incredibly slow pace, even more so than the games it takes influence from. Heck, even sprinting doesn&#8217;t prove to be much use, as you&#8217;ll go breathless after just a few shorts steps. Puzzles are functional but uninspired; you\u2019ll mostly be collecting various items hidden within the rooms and combining them with other items, but there are flutters of inspiration, such as gazing into a rotating mirror to locate the correct doorway or holding a warped vinyl disc over a flame to straighten its edge.<\/p>\n<p>Encounters with the game\u2019s ghosts are pretty terrifying, but only because of how frustrating they are, not because they&#8217;re <em>actually<\/em> scary. After a predictable jump scare making the camera go absolutely haywire, the game forces you to take part in quick-time events that send you right back to your last save point should you fail to hit the right buttons. Not fun.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s nothing wrong with trying to emulate another game\u2019s success, as long as it\u2019s done effectively. Paper Dolls Original borrows every horror trope under the sun, but fails to implement them in any meaningful way. It\u2019s painfully boring, and considering its price is comparable to other, more accomplished horror games on the eShop, you\u2019d be best off leaving this ghost in its mansion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since Amnesia: The Dark Descent first gave gamers the heebie-jeebies back in 2010, we\u2019ve seen a number of games try to imitate its success. Some, like Outlast and Alien: Isolation, have been remarkably well-received, whilst others, like Slender: The Eight Pages, haven\u2019t been quite so successful. The latest attempt to meld first-person gameplay with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}