Dollhouse

Welcome to the twisted world of Dollhouse. Enter the mind of Marie, a detective suffering from amnesia. Lose yourself in an intense game of cat-and-mouse as you attempt to interpret the charred remains of your memories. You know only one thing for certain, your daughter Emily died that night. Will you unravel the truth?

REVIEW
I was really looking forward to this game, based on the one trailer there is for the game. I thought we would get a scary, film noir kind of game…
Unfortunately we are completely bamboozled by that one trailer. Because there is no gameplay in the trailer. Not one bit, absolute zero! And there is a reason for that…
If you’re watching the video, you’ll see that not much is explained. And I have to be honest with you, for the most part I’ve no idea what I’m doing or what my goal is.

I’d like to show you a part of the review from “The Horror Network”, because I completely agree with them:

…Developer, Creazn Studio, as well as the publisher, SOEDESCO Publishing, had both been extremely quiet about the release in general; no launch dates, and not much information on the gameplay or story. A bit more than a month before its release date, there was an open beta on both PC and PlayStation 4, which seemed to come and go without many critics or fans saying much. So, with all of the surrounding enigma, what exactly is Dollhouse?

If you’re reading this review before looking at any of the trailers for Dollhouse, I implore you to stop here and go do that now. Notice how NONE of them feature anything about the gameplay? That’s because the gameplay is so atrociously boring and embarrassingly broken that the developer doesn’t even want to show it off. Hardly anything of relevance in any of the trailers is actually featured in the game. This is one of the most misleading titles that I’ve ever had to write a review about. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, go into this game expecting anything more than item hunting in a labyrinthe while being stalked. There are no spooky little girls. There are no bodies that raise up out of bathtubs. There is no fog effect. There are no creatures that crawl up the wall/curtains. None of it.

To sum the gameplay up, you walk around maze after maze, looking for memory canisters to put into Memory Machines so that you can go and solve a puzzle in order to get a master key to proceed to the next level; all while being stalked by an unrelenting giant doll, being attacked by mannequins, and avoiding deadly traps. There are a bunch of convoluted mechanics as well, such as abilities that are unlocked as you level up, using charges to destroy mannequins and traps, being able to analyze certain things, and marking walls with chalk to know where important locations are. There are even several things in the HUD that are never explained, and missing elements like how many Memory Canisters that you have.
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The clincher here is that you’re being chased the entire time you’re playing Dollhouse by, well, a giant doll. I could not find any way at all to make this thing stop following me once it found me. I tried running around corners, hiding in rooms with the door shut, sprinting until I couldn’t sprint anymore, you name it. When you die, you lose everything (including all the memories you’ve collected) and you have to go find your body, just like in Dark Souls. I eventually got sick of it and turned on Voyeur Mode, which gets rid of all of the threats in the game (doll, mannequins, traps) and just lets you wander around. This proved to be excruciatingly boring, so you’ll get to choose boredom versus frustration if you do decide to play this convoluted, broken, unfinished mess.

So there you have it. After Rage 2 another disappointing release…

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