Atmosphere is everything in a horror game. It doesn’t matter whether it’s first or third-person, set in an abandoned spaceship or a mansion in the woods. If you don’t feel on edge for the majority of the time, the developers aren’t doing their job right. End of Abyss fore the most part nails that sense of dread as you explore the gargantuan facility, unsure of what might be lurking around the corner. The biggest problem, however, is that it can sometimes feel too large and retracing your steps as well as minimal guidance builds frustration and takes the sting off the tension.
You play as Cel, someone who’s been tasked with investigating an abandoned facility with a group of hulking soldiers. Lighting is something End of Abyss gets right. Static camera angles with an isometric viewpoint often present your environment with flickering lights and a blue hue. Computer terminals fizz and hallways are covered with shadows, and limited sounds other than your footsteps and the occasional thud off-screen keeps you on your toes. When you do encounter the creatures that now inhabit the facility, it becomes a nightmare you struggle to survive.
End of Abyss is a sci-fi Metroidvania that feels like an amalgam of movies like The Thing and Event Horizon. It takes its cues from Resident Evil as far as its camera angles go, and while it isn’t similar in how it presents its horror, there’re shades of Little Nightmares and Inside. Despite the inspirations, it’s its own game. There’s plenty of mystery as to what the hell happened, and apart from a few notes here and there, you only really find out more as the game draws to its conclusion. Still, that ambiguity helps with that uncomfortable feeling of the unknown.
Different enemy types come at you gradually. Boss fights feel tough when you’re running low on ammo and trying to figure out their movement and timing windows. Thankfully, End of Abyss offers a range of weaponry, both guns and explosives, to deal with whatever threats you face along the way. Sometimes it can be hard when you’re overwhelmed with multiple enemies, but a well-placed grenade can take them out. Rifles and shotguns help with damage from long and short range, and crafting tables allow you to resupply ammo so you don’t run short in important moments.
The twin stick shooting mechanic felt good, especially when you’re facing fast-moving creatures. Parasitic slugs come at you fast, but a strong sense of accuracy helped to dispatch them quickly. After a few hours, you begin to telegraph creatures and it takes the tension away. Seeing a body on the floor in the distance often meant once you got closer it would spring to life, so your gun would be ready before a showdown happened. Still, I never felt like I was winning every battle due to the varying types of these creatures.
While it doesn’t feel to overwhelming at first, the facility opens up as you sink more hours into it. Areas are locked off until you acquire the right tools, such as a grappling hook that gives you access to previously unreachable ladders. Sometimes it can get confusing, and with a map that doesn’t always trigger scanned doors and unclear routes to unreachable areas, the frustration keeps growing. I scanned everything I could so it would appear on the map, but the sheer size of different levels sometimes made it hard to work out where I was supposed to go with little direction.
End of Abyss does a lot of things right. The unnerving atmosphere is built with some fantastic sound design and lighting that means you never quite know what’s around the next corner. The Metroidvania elements are good, but too much backtracking and having a sense of feeling lost can sometimes make traversing the facility a slog. Still, gun control and the range of weaponry and mods keeps combat feeling exciting. You might not have that constant feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach, but there’s still enough to like about it.