Rise of Insanity

I feel that there's a perception out there that because it's a Nintendo console, the Switch doesn't have any horror games. That's not true. Between Resident Evil, Amnesia, Outlast, Alien, Layers of Fear and Observer, the Switch is swimming in jump scares. In fact, the system has so many horror games that I have no problem telling you to completely avoid Rise of Insanity, which has finally come to a Nintendo console three years after debuting on the Oculus Go. This is a short, bland and ultimately predictable roller coaster ride through all of the first-person horror cliches. And while this is hardly the worst scary game I've played, don't take that to mean that this is going to be a glowing review.

It's the 1970s and famed-psychologist Dr. Stephen Dowell is hard at work on his toughest case yet. He's looking into a patient who is showing distinct yet contradictory symptoms of varying mental disorders, some of which may or may not be connected to an experimental new treatment method the doctor has pioneered. At the same time, Stephen's personal life is shrouded in mystery, especially when it comes to what happened to his wife and kids. Could all this somehow be connected? And if so, wouldn't that make the big reveal at the end a little too predictable?

Rise of Insanity jumps between a couple of different locations. On one track, we explore the strange happenings at a mental hospital, while the other half takes place inside and out of Dr. Stephen's cozy home. The story plays out like a series of short vignettes that jump between years and perspectives, giving us tiny bites of a twisted story about murder, monsters and madness.

The gameplay mostly consists of hunting around the environment for something that will trigger the next jump scare. Sometimes it's a doctor's note, while other times it's something random like turning off the television. Once you've found the right trigger, a rotary phone will ring and we'll be whisked away to the next vignette, where we do the whole thing all over again. From time-to-time, you may need to solve a puzzle by finding a lock combination or using Morse code, but most of the stages are straight-forward to a fault.

I've never been a big fan of this type of scavenger hunt horror game, because too often they devolve into little more than poking through empty drawers and cupboards. The levels are surprisingly linear, usually with only one path to walk or room to explore. It quickly becomes an exercise in remembering what's different and what you can interact with, all while waiting for the horror thing to happen so you can move on with the story. But because the formula is so repetitive, you start to get a sense of when the scares are coming, completely blunting any impact they may have had and leaving us with a slow-moving adventure where you mostly pick up rubber duckies.

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It could be that this is a game that worked better in VR, where you're fully immersed in this world and the scares are genuinely frightening. I don't know. What I can tell you is that something has been lost in translation. The locations are bland and boring, to the point where I would groan every time I had to go back to the mental institution. The few stabs at style and atmosphere ultimately fall flat because the game fails to lay down the groundwork. We're never given a reason to care about these characters or their situation, they are just horror cliches that do predictable horror things. You've seen all this before.

It doesn't help that the graphics aren't very good and performance chugs on the Switch. We slowly walk around the house like we just stepped on a nail; a pained limp that is somehow even worse when you try to walk diagonally. And to make matters worse, you can't just invert the horizontal look controls, because the option will confusingly invert both. Even though it says it's only changing the Y axis. This is hardly the worst part of Rise of Insanity, but it's indicative of the lack of care that went into optimizing this long-overdue port.

Even if the Switch actually was hurting for horror games, Rise of Insanity would be tough to recommend. It's little more than a first-person scavenger hunt through a haunted house, which is never as fun as it sounds. The scares are cheap and it's impossible to care about any of the characters in this game. Worse yet, the performance chugs on the Switch and the options are broken. The fact that you'll probably guess the twist ending in the first few minutes is the final insult to what ends up being a miserably generic horror game. You're better off just turning on the news, because that's a whole lot scarier than anything you'll find in Rise of Insanity.