The distance at which they could spot me seemed inconsistent at best and unfair at worst, and after a short while with the game, I switched to the investigations mode, which I enjoyed more. This mode quickly turned me off from the game because the Zodiac's vision cone is faulty and frustrating to navigate. The former is more akin to a hide-and-seek horror game, where Zodiac will often be at the crime scenes, and it's your job to avoid their gaze or else wind up their next victim.
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This Is The Zodiac Speaking smartly offers two ways to play: Serial Killer Mode and an investigation mode. The game's greatest attribute is its understanding of the Zodiac murders. The main items you'll need to find can sometimes be frustratingly difficult to discover, and this process is made worse depending on which game mode you chose at the outset. This loop ends up meaning players will scan high and low over every object and surface to find interactable items, many of which are just there for show or to spur a voice line on the side. Once more, it's interesting in theory, but it doesn't hold up in practice. Players must retrace the steps of the Zodiac and their victims one murder plot at a time by exploring an area and finding clues that eventually create a timeline. Gameplay mainly consists of investigative sections, both in the safety of your own home, as well as at several crime scenes. I like the tone of the protagonist's voice, but his delivery often leaves immersion out of the equation. It's regularly jarring to hear these characters talk, and even those who do sound American don't deliver any standout performances. I can almost forgive it entirely because other parts of Zodiac show a detail-oriented interest in the subject matter, so you figure it must've been a dream project for the developers.īut then such a project deserves a more fitting cast. This is the sort of compromise one often sees in an indie game. Virtually everyone you meet, besides a handful of characters, has a European accent. Largely, this game made overseas uses actors foreign to the roles they're playing. The voice acting misses more than it hits. It's a great premise, but in practice, things never quite live up to their potential. The masked murderer takes a strange liking to you early on, and when you barely escape his grasp, it leaves you traumatized but unable to step away from the investigation.
Seemingly inspired by Fincher's Zodiac, which chronicles the efforts of a real-life local newspaper grappling with the Zodiac murders, This Is The Zodiac Speaking casts players as an investigative journalist. Whoever the Zodiac killer was may still be alive today, taunting the police and journalists who sought to unravel their cryptic letters and establish the modus operandi and criminal profile for the slippery assailant. The voice acting misses more than it hits.ĭecades ago, The Zodiac Killer terrorized California's Bay Area for years and ultimately went uncaught. This Is The Zodiac Speaking Review: Deciphering What Works In neither case does it feel like it does enough, but there are still parts of the game true-crime obsessives will appreciate. This Is The Zodiac Speaking seeks to be a largely faithful historical fiction game using both elements of horror and crime scene investigation. While other scary games in October 2020 will let you fend off twisted caretakers, maddening monsters, or ancestral witches, only one game pits players against a real-life monster like The Zodiac Killer.