Amber Alert Director’s Cut Review

Amber Alert puts players in the proverbial shoes of a cop called onto a crime scene where a young woman was kidnapped and a whole neighborhood butchered. You’ll be hunted by cult members looking for their next victim. Can you survive this call?

Amber Alert is a first person survival horror shooter where you’ll need to explore a handful of houses in order to find the missing pieces to progress forward and hopefully save the victim. In each house, as you explore, you’ll have to stay on your toes as a cult member or two might be lurking in the darkness to give you a hard time.

And what’s that hard time? Death. That’s right. One hit death. And when you’re dead, you have to start everything all over. All your progress is void. Some circumstances, you’ll be prompted to mash the B button to escape the grip of a cult member, but more often than not if you’re not quick enough, you’re dead. You have a gun with limited ammo, so count your shots.

Every time you die and restart the game, enemy placement is different so you can’t really memorize their patterns. The game does have cheats that can be unlocked by finding clues throughout the houses (or just Googling them), but they don’t help much; they are more visually aesthetics. The murder scenes are censored, so there’s a cheat to uncensor them; bigger light (the game is dark as all hell), noir filter; so nothing really to help in terms of gameplay.

The game looks great; it offers a 80s VHS visual filter, giving it a movie slasher vibe. This type of presentation is quite underrated and gives off a nostalgic vibe for older gamers who grew up on watching horror/slasher movies on VHS tapes. Character model is a bit generic and lazy; obviously the cult members all look a like. Where the game really shines is in the audio side of things. They went the minimalistic way where you require a headset if you want to hear the cult member approaching; incredibly terrifying sound work.

The main nuisance here is having to start over every time you die. While I understand the premise due to the length of the game, it can become frustrating at times. The random appearances of enemies won’t allow players to make mental notes or learn patterns. Also having limited bullets is a pain because times will occur where everything will work out smoothly and then you die because you ran out of bullets. Of all my tries, not a single time was it possible to runaway and escape the cult member.

Amber Alert Director’s Cut is definitely one of the most unnerving and terrifying gaming experiences I’ve had the chance to review in recent months; especially with headphones. Investigating various crime scenes to find a key to progress forward, but I feel like there’s so much potential wasted. Instead of having the crew bombarding at you, this could’ve been spread out over a few levels and with more complexity and cases to solve. However, if you’re looking for an unnerving experience, Amber Alert Director’s Cut is a must play. Just to prepared to start again over and over and over and over…