With remakes of Dead Space and Resident Evil 4, it has been a good year for horror fans but there’s more to come. With Halloween just around the corner, more horror games are releasing, including Ad Infinitum, a brand-new experience that reminded me of some of A24’s best work. No cheap popcorn horror here, Ad Infinitum adds a dark and mysterious layer which I’m pretty sure horror fans will appreciate. This might be the biggest sleeper hit of the year for horror fans.
Stuck between reality and nightmares
In Ad Infinitum, you play as a young German soldier haunted by the horrors of the Great War. During the opening minutes, you are trapped in a vast family mansion that’s filled with clues about what’s happening to you. When you trigger a certain event, you are transported to the trenches of WW1 where you must fend off terrible, nightmarish creatures that are coming after you. Throughout this psychological horror experience, you’ll constantly shift between the trenches and the mansion, slowly lifting the veil of what’s really going on. The story is a key part of the experience so I won’t spoil a thing in this review but I must say it’s very well done. Right from the start, the mystery of the mansion got me in its grip. There’s a compelling void in the family house I never really could shake off, pushing me further into the mystery with every step I took. Where the mansion segments focus on exploration at first, the trenches are where the true horror appears.
It’s never really clear until the end what you are seeing but it feels like our young German soldier is suffering from a severe case of PTSD. He’s seen some things during the Great War and those things are hunting him in his nightmares. What I appreciate the most about Ad Infinitum’s story is how well-rooted in reality it is. This is an artistic interpretation of the horrors of war while it still keeps it close to realism by offering the correct tools, weapons, and dog tags of that era. When you’re walking in the trenches, you’ll feel the isolation and constant sense of danger that is so close to how the real Great War must have been for the soldiers. Ad Infinitum isn’t using this historic setting just to cash in on the misery of others. It uses the setting to create a truly horrific experience which, of course, is based on fantasy creatures but is able to transfer the fear of the soldiers to the player who is in control of the young German soldier. You are constantly trying to run away from the monsters in the trenches but will you ever truly escape? Are you stuck in limbo? Did you die in your family mansion? Are you still at war? Those are the questions you’ll have while playing and slowly you’ll learn the truth. If you want to compare it with movies, it comes closer to The Witch and Hereditary than it comes to Insidious or The Nun. It’s more the slow-burn type of horror experience but the story has you in a chokehold from start to finish.
Escape room
Since the emphasis is on story and not action, you’ll explore a lot in Ad Infinitum, especially the segments in the mansion feel like escape rooms where you need to look for clues in order to advance. I love how intuitive it all is since the game offers you little to no help. There’s no map but the structures of the trenches and the layout of the house are so realistic you easily start to find your way. If you look carefully, there are some clever design choices that help you in where you need to go. Light plays a crucial role in showing you the way while certain sounds might set you on the right path as well. Thanks to this clever design, you also get the same euphoric feeling you get in real escape rooms when you manage to solve a puzzle. From finding a certain object to trying to figure out the correct numbers of the safe, it’s all here and the puzzles are definitely challenging and rewarding at the same time. If you’re completely stuck, you can jump into the menus to see your objective, which will give you a general direction of where you need to search. In all honesty, I rarely used it and recommend you do the same. It’s a lot more fun when you figure things out on your own. Ad Infinitum is filled with notes and items that will help you out and pull you deeper into the story. Most of them aren’t needed to solve the main puzzles but in my opinion, you’ll miss a lot of the story if you skip those collectibles in the world. It’s one of those games that truly rewards exploration so keep that in the back of your mind while playing.
The monsters
Besides exploration, you’ll face several monsters in Ad Infinitum and you won’t have access to guns most of the time. The monsters are incredibly fascinating since they clearly serve an important role in the story and are more than what they appear to be. The design of the monsters is of the highest quality, with little details telling more about the creature than the information you can find in the virtual world. Take a monster with ears on its hands so it can locate you if you make a sound for example. Those clever details add to the ‘realism’ of the monsters and make you feel very uncomfortable when you’re facing them. Since you’re not strong enough to take them one, running away from them is your go-to option. The more you advance, the more tools you’ll unlock. Ranging from pick-axes to smash brick walls to gas masks that will protect you against gas but will also limit your vision a bit. The gameplay reaches its highest pacing when you’re running away from the monsters while you’re using several tools to clear your path. These more fast-paced segments really got my heart racing thanks to the incredible sound design. You really hear the monster closing in on you and only by remaining calm, you’ll be able to escape it in time. I won’t spoil the monsters for you but they are some of the most horrifying creatures I ever faced in a horror game and yet… They might not be as evil as they seem…
Some hiccups
When it comes to graphics, sound, and atmosphere, Ad Infinitum knocks it out of the park but there are some hiccups that can take you out of the immersion now and then. It happened a couple of times that the game glitched and dropped me outside of the map, forcing me to restart from my last checkpoint. Luckily, a minor inconvenience since the game saves your progress during the most crucial parts of the story so you’re never forced to replay huge parts of the game. Besides that, the controls could have been a bit more responsive. When I wanted to smash a wall with my pick-ax, I had to push my shoulder buttons multiple times before I performed the needed action. A small bug that might easily be fixed with a patch. While those hiccups did bother me and took me out of the immersion, I kept trying until I got past those segments where I got stuck due to the controls or a small bug, proving how deeply invested I was in the story. Ad Infinitum really delivers something special so I truly hope these small hiccups will get fixed in an upcoming patch because this is a horror experience you can’t miss.
Conclusion:
Ad Infinitum finally brings something different to the genre and manages to combine psychological horror and slow burn into a captivating experience that will have you in its tight grip from start to finish. If you’re a horror fan, this is a must-play, it’s as simple as that.
