Despite the dense amount of horror games released every year, there’s a strange shortage in spooky games centered around aliens. There are lots of alien shooters like Aliens: Fireteam Elite, but the last truly noteworthy game where aliens are a truly terrifying threat, as opposed to a force to mow down with LMGs, was probably Alien: Isolation in 2014. With that said, a game like Greyhill Incident seemed like the perfect title to fill a pretty notable hole in the horror genre. Unfortunately, it fails to seize the moment it has created for itself and misses the mark in almost every way.
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You play as a man named Ryan Baker, a father of one little boy and a member of the neighborhood watch in a rural neighborhood that is filled with people convinced there’s something sinister going on. While some of the residents believe it would be best to contact the government about the things going bump in the night, they believe there’s a big conspiracy trying to cover things up. Naturally, as you may expect, the neighbors are right, and small, grey aliens make themselves known by landing their saucer in a nearby cornfield. It’s up to you to get to the bottom of what’s going on and survive the night.
Despite having a promising premise that is reminiscent of old school alien movies from the ’60s and ’70s, Greyhill Incident fumbles its potential. The writing is jarring and inconsistent with one of the very first things you do in the game being randomly yelling at your son who you as the player have only just met seconds ago and have little to no context about. From there, the game does try to inject some failed humor by having you meet characters like a cliched tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, except he literally uses tinfoil to protect himself from the aliens… which he then recommends to you and you oblige. It would be one thing if this was all an attempt to emulate a campy, classic alien movie, but it feels more like someone took that idea and gave it to ChatGPT as a writing prompt. The writing isn’t strong enough to land any of its jokes and it’s certainly not compelling enough to craft any scary moments.
Greyhill Incident is a first-person game, sort of like Outlast if it had some light combat, but with the ability to still use weapons like a revolver. First-person horror games are arguably the most optimal experience for truly scaring someone as you can really immerse yourself in the shoes of the character and get up close and personal with whatever monster is hunting the player. However, Greyhill Incident fails to muster up any kind of tension whatsoever.
Outside of one moment where you see the aliens coming out of their saucer for the first time, I felt very little while playing this game. I don’t need a horror game to make me jump out of my socks – I can still appreciate well-made spooks even if they don’t rattle me. However, there’s really nothing to commend here. Even when the aliens are pursuing you, it feels more comical than it does terrifying.
They walk very slowly as if you just moved into the neighborhood and they’re coming to welcome you as opposed to walking with urgency to abduct you. It lacks the same eeriness of someone like Michael Myers because you realize how fragile they are when you put two bullets between they’re big, bulging eyes and they drop to the floor like a sack of bricks. If they do catch up to you, they grapple on to you while the camera shakes and forces you to stare straight ahead while only being able to see the top of their head, making it feel like an awkward resolution to an encounter.
The combat and stealth lacks a lot of depth itself. The aliens feel like they have a pretty extended line of sight and if they see you for just a second, they will pursue. You can hide under beds, in closets and cars, and so on to break the line of sight, but it feels like you’re not given the chance to really sneak around if they can see you from a great distance. You can shoot them if you wish, but you don’t have much ammo, so you’ll likely be running more often than not.
Unfortunately, even after an update that increases the stamina, it doesn’t feel like it lasts long enough, and you move slower than molasses. The baseball bat also appears to use stamina or at the very least, it takes several seconds to recharge between swings. I am not even sure if you can actually kill the aliens with it because of how slow it is. It seems to really only slow them down for a moment so you can sprint away.
It doesn’t help that this otherwise fairly linear game also gives you very little direction and has you wandering around in the dark, sometimes pushing yourself up against corners of cornfields just so you can find the exit. Of course, a cornfield at night with aliens lurking about could be a scary concept, but they do nothing with it to create unease, anxiety, or fear. It could’ve beenfited from adding a creepy noise, have you see a little alien creeping around in the darkness, or something to spice it up. It’s also annoying because the game never gives you any waypoints, just vague objectives that unlock parts of the map that were previously blocked off by invisible walls. One objective early on tells players to go visit a neighbor’s house “over there”, but again, there are no waypoints, so telling someone “over there” on a static pause screen lacks any kind of clarity.
To make matters worse, Greyhill Incident is a frustratingly janky experience. When using a controller on PC, I wasn’t able to navigate the menus without using a mouse and keyboard. The control scheme itself is also a total mess. You have to hold LB to draw your gun and continue holding that button while shooting with RT. You can map buttons on keyboard and mouse, but seemingly can’t on a controller in the PC version. Instead of having an inventory menu or a way to draw the gun, you have to constantly hold a button down. It’s not a comfortable experience and is one of many examples of how you will fight the controls to experience this game.
The game also has a number of other small issues that all add up to make a big mess. Audio overlaps, aliens clip through the doors, and there’s just general inconsistencies. At one point, a tree falls down in your path and you can’t get over it. This tree is very thin. You tower over it when it’s lying on its side. An infant could walk over this tree. Yet, you can’t move forward because the game says so. It’s needlessly frustrating and seems like there are much better solutions to a problem like this.
Ultimately, Greyhill Incident is a big disappointment. This had real potential to be a short, but cool horror game that leverages tension and aliens in a way we haven’t really seen in gaming. What we got instead is a flavorless game that feels like a concept for something much better. The only real positive thing I can give it is that it ensures what you’ll endure is short and swift.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Greyhill Incident is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and PC. A PC review code was provided by the publisher.
