E3 Hands On — The Inpatient

While at E3 I was able to see The Inpatient in a more intimate setting than just a trailer. Here’s my take on The Inpatient.

Here we go with another interesting title that was shown off during the big PlayStation media showcase and it is The Inpatient. Not much was known for this title before or even after the event outside of the trailer and that it is is another title coming from Supermassive Games for the PS VR set up. Also, as of this time it is only a PS VR title so keep that in mind as I break down my experience with The Inpatient in one of the hidden floors of the E3 show floor booths. Well, not so hidden but hard to get to as it was a rather long demo for the show here, but I am digressing from the actual hands on.

Before continuing on with The Inpatient, as it was explained to me, this title all takes place in the Until Dawn universe as some suspected after seeing the developer and the name of the asylum. We are headed back to about 50 or 60 years before the events of Until Dawn in that area and in the The Inpatient, or at least in this demo, we play as one of the patients there who also has amnesia. Now we are not only trying to reclaim our lost memories but also trying to figure out all of the weirdness in the games’ world or understand that maybe there is a bit more to our own insanity than we thought.

For the demo fro The Inpatient, we started out strapped to a chair in the middle of a not so clean observation room with a doctor asking us questions. More or less this was to highlight the gameplay feature of “freedom of choice” in the game. Nothing really changed outside of the mood of the doctor, but it was supposed to have the same butterfly effect that we all know from their other title. More or less The Inpatient felt like a sitting simulator more than a game at this point as there wasn’t much more than to sit back and press X to continue on the narrative.

After a long period of sitting though, The Inpatient finally opened up into what fel tl ike a movement tutorial that allowed us to actually walk around in the game even though still seated in the real world. I will say that Supermassive Games did a great job on the world and environment here for The Inpatient as it was nice to look around and experience a few things, but the movement controls felt a little off. The left stick to move forward and backwards with the right stick forcing a turn of about 15 degrees each time. The Inpatient doesn’t have the best movement at all and it took a bit to get aligned to do some of the interactive things.

After being a little straight-forward and more of a psycological-horror, The Inpatient opened up into the horror that would be expected from a title in the same universe as Until Dawn. Some great jump-scares were mixed in there, but so few and far between to feel predicable. I have a feeling that the true horror will all comes from the full game and the story, but for the demo here it all still boiled down to the jumps and not much more. Although I think I went down a very specific branch in The Inpatient and missed out on a few things due to my choices. Just as it would seem.

Even thought the movement in The Inpatient was a bit clunky, it does look like Supermassive Games is at a good place for this title. I’d like to see it also have a standard PS4 release like Resident Evil 7 did when tying in VR, but as of now that doesn’t seem on the plate. I am interested to see more as it is pretty basic and more of an experience than a game at this point, but we just had The Inpatient announced so only time will tell. Hopefully things will change for the better just like the butterflies.