Here at The Elite Institute, we are keen on highlighting a variety of great games to our audience. Whether it be indies, AAA titles, or anything in between, we want to show off as much as possible in order to help guide your purchasing decisions.

That’s why we’re not entirely restricting ourselves to the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to Nintendo Labo VR Kit (check out our review), we’ve fallen in love with virtual reality and as a result have invested in a PlayStation 4 along with PSVR. There are some truly great experiences on the system, and we’d love to share our thoughts with you.

WHO ARE YOU GONNA CALL?
I’ll admit that I’ve never seen a single Paranormal Activity film. Even though I’m something of a horror buff, I’ve just never really been interested in them. Perhaps the trailers make it seem far more mainstream and jump-scare laden than it actually is, but I’ve still never bothered to check out any of the seven films.

However, when I saw that there was a VR game in the Paranormal Activity franchise, and it actually looked good, I was up to seeing whether or not it had any good scares in store.

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Story-wise, the game doesn’t really give you a whole lot to go on. After an effective tutorial in the loft prior to the start of the game, going over how the controls work, you’re thrown outside a creepy house as you venture inside and try and work out what’s going on. The game is very light on it’s storytelling, which left me wondering who I was actually playing as, but clearly the game is more focused on the family within rather than your involvement.

Even though the story doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny, it’s easy to forget about it simply because the game exudes atmosphere out of every pore. As soon as you enter the house, you get a real sense of dread due to the fantastic sound design and effective environments. You have access to a surprising amount of the house almost straight away (at least, after solving a couple of rudimentary puzzles) and the randomly generated jump scares leave you genuinely wondering what is waiting around each corner. Some may scoff at the idea of such randomisation, but it’s honestly so well implemented that you’d think they were scripted if you only played through the game a single time.

Your main goal in the house is to find a bunch of objects needed to perform a certain ritual. To do this you’ll be wandering around the house looking for keys to open up new pathways, or triggering events that will lead to new areas. Given the supernatural element, this does occasionally mean you end up having to walk into a seemingly empty room just to trigger the opening of a previously locked door, but the theming means that it doesn’t really detract from the experience. I will admit that the ritual collection was a bit of a pain since some of the objects needed aren’t particularly clear, but this only really becomes an annoyance towards the end as you desperately search the house for the final remaining trinkets.

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Unfortunately, even though the game has near perfect atmosphere, it’s spoiled by some pretty shoddy detection issues. It’s fine for things in front of you when standing or crouched, but anything really low or high can prove troublesome. The one exception to this rule, and the most annoying element of the controls, is with the game’s true enemy. No, not the crazy psychopathic lady nor the malevolent spirit, I mean the damn door handles. The idea is great, requiring that you grab the handle and turn it like you would do in real life; however, it just simply doesn’t work properly a lot of the time and leaves you waggling about like a madman.

Thankfully, the door issue can be resolved somewhat thanks to the game’s dreadful clipping issues. Simply by taking a step forward in real life, you can just walk through about half of the doors in the game. It tends to only really work with doors you’re supposed to be going through, as a lot of the others will push you back, so I found myself exploiting this a lot just to save myself the hassle of trying to use the damn doors the way the game actually wanted me to.

VERDICT
Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul could have been an essential horror purchase, but the imperfect controls add a degree of frustration that is hard to ignore. Sure, these are rectified slightly when playing with the Dualshock controller – but you also lose that sense of immersion too. If you’re really desperate for a VR horror game, this could at least be worth grabbing on a sale at the very least.