Absolute Fear -AOONI- / 最恐 -青鬼-

aooni

Undeniably the biggest piece of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I've ever played

not for childs

its not much better than the escape the backrooms type games except it doesn't even have liminal spaces and theres only 1 weird guy

Welp, it looks like our favorite blue demon finally made his debut onto Steam... and, spoiler alert, it's not a very good one. Let's dive right into why Absolute Fear flops as both a game and an attempt to rehash Ao Oni into the spotlight it was in back in 2011. But first of all, let's get the only redeeming factor out the way here - the story. The story is alright. While the game doesn't really try to take advantage of environmental storytelling and will often just spoonfeed little bits of lore through pieces of paper in the finale, for what it goes for, it's not a bad story. Fairly generic, yes, but not entirely uninteresting, which is more than what can be said about the rest of the game. Honestly, I'm surprised it took 16 years for an Ao Oni game to actually get a backstory for its titular monster. I'm even more surprised that the developers took the time to write up and implement a backstory when they can't even get the number of years Ao Oni's even been around right. Ao Oni 1.1 saw the light of day way back in 2008. Doesn't exactly scream 20 years, does it? All passive aggressive praise out of the way, let's put our focus back on why Absolute Fear was Absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Wh…

Though the idea of a 3D Ao Oni game isn't an inherently bad one, and there are brief snippets during which the game can be quite creepy, "Absolute Fear" ends up falling flat due to its repetitive and barren environments, poor sound design and puzzles so laughably easy that they feel like a chore more than anything else. Easily the most annoying part of the game however is getting chased by the Oni, as once you manage to hide from it, you are practically forced to sit there and wait for it to get back to a position on the map where it won't see you again, which only further highlight how unengaging the gameplay is once you are allowed to get back to it. (3/10).