Weeping Doll (PS VR)

Anyone who looks at the screenshot above might think that 'Weeping Doll' is a third-person game, but that isn't the case. No, the game just does a terrible job of tracking the player's movement and whenever I moved my head back it would take me outside of my character's body. This happened occasionally by accident, and even more times on purpose, but I'm pretty confused as to why the developer modeled a head in the first place. Despite the house having a mirror, I couldn't see my character in it, and the only real way to see the character is to break the game.

Other than graphical oddities, there's nothing really interesting to talk about 'Weeping Doll's visuals. The house is a rather dull affair, although there are a few interesting items (such as this cool Oni mask I found), but most of them can't be interacted with. It doesn't help that the game's visuals are displayed at a low fidelity and don't look good when examined up close. Early PlayStation VR tiles have shown that style works on the headset, not realism, and TianShe Media chose the wrong direction.

Audio is another area where 'Weeping Doll' comes up short, but it's not all bad. Doors creak when opened, and there are some generally unsettling noises to be heard in the house. The first time I heard crying coming from seemingly nowhere I was a tiny bit startled, but that's really the game's only trick and it starts to fall flat rather quickly. There's also some pretty poor voice acting and the game's only memorable scene features a nursery rhyme being sung rather poorly.

Disappointingly, this is yet another game that is marred by not having any subtitles. Yes, unacceptably any players with a hearing disability will not be able to enjoy any of the story. It might be a blessing in disguise, though, as they'll at least avoid playing a terrible game.

There have been some bad PlayStation VR launch titles, but most of them just felt broken or like an extended tech demo. That isn't the case with 'Weeping Doll,' as it works as intended most of the time (although it's very easy to end up staring at the back of the protagonist's head). The faults here are far deeper, as there just isn't anything interesting to experience. It's a bland horror game that doesn't offer anything mechanically satisfying, and ends on an absolute whimper.