Played "Lust From Beyond" yesterday and it is the only game so far, that caused me a literal headache. Nothing serious, nothing strong, but still.
Even with disabled head-bob (which I normally do not disable), camera was constantly swiveling even when I was just standing still (for example during "cutscenes"), when walking (and especially running) the camera seemed to change field of view or maybe it just changed zoom or something, but the point is the view was "stretching out". But even worse, it felt over-sharpened. Which was made extra worse in some scenes, which had lots of glares. And the "other" world had excessive glares, let me tell you.
Thankfully, the game was not that good in other aspects, too. Which surprised me, because I played both the "Prologue" and "Scarlet" chapters which were released long before the full game and I liked them. I do not think they had any of the issues already described, maybe except for some glares in the "other" world in "Prologue". And somehow they felt more polished, even though they were technically "demos".
The story in the main game does not feel... "real". It's too abrupt and edgy, quite a few little things do not make sense even. And not in a sense of "oh, I'm in a bizarre situation, and I am going insane", which was the case for the demos (maybe that's why it worked there). I can't relate to any parts of it. And to be honest, dialogues make it even worse, even though voice acting itself is ok.
Furthermore somehow it felt the atmosphere, I felt in the demos. Especially the 3rd chapter, which meant to present a spooky town, where all people are cultists, but there were [almost] no people and the town looked outright abandoned. Resident Evil series was able to do much-much better job in similar areas.
The "other" world also felt... Plastic? Visually, if you are a fan of H.R. Giger's art - you most likely will like it as well. It's similar combination of body-horror with some bio-tech sprinkled by Lovecraftian motives. But, again it had those annoying glares everywhere and did not feel as "alive" as I remember it from the demos. Still better than "Agony" (or "Succubus" from the same devs), though.
It was not an easy decision, but I did decide to drop it after all. Maybe I was expecting too much, maybe my memory of the demos was too good, or I ignored some things for the demos, because they were demos. But I just did not feel it, and it definitely was not good enough to ignore the headache.
Oh, and to those who wonder: yes, there is sex in the game. Even some QTEs during some scenes. But it's not like you see it every minute, the scenes are rather "strategically placed" and they do make total sense, considering the circumstances of the game. Don't think people would be watching those for pleasure, though. But either way, if you do not want to see those, there is a "censored" version of the game, too. They even dropped 1 steamy achievement from it. Not like I would recommend the game either way, unless you are a huge fan of Giger.
