A while back, I saw a video of the demo for Luto, which was amazing and extremely spooky, so when I found out it was coming to consoles, I was excited to see the game in its entirety, and quickly learned the meaning behind the saying of “Be careful what you wish for.”. I want to say first of all that I appreciate Broken Bird Games and Selecta Play for sending me a copy to review, and I’m sorry to say, I was not impressed.
Before I get into what I didn’t like about the game, let’s get the good out of the way first. When it comes to the atmosphere for Luto, it’s on point; the lighting, graphics, and art are good. The sound design is well done with helping the world come to life, and the minimal soundtrack helps add a bit of tension in the air.
And that’s where the good ends.
To put it bluntly…this game lacks scares. Like I said earlier, the art and sound are good, but the execution made the game boring. Again, to put it bluntly, Luto is a Layers of Fear and P.T. clone. Gameplay is alright, but the game quickly takes on the tone of being akin to an audition tape for getting the contract to work on the Silent Hill reboots, just like how Blooper Team’s last instalment of Layers of Fear was a massive disappointment, as it appeared to show how it could make a Silent Hill-like game.
Which leads to my next gripe with Luto, it’s unoriginal. I’ve been in the trenches of horror games for a long time and not much spooks me anymore, so when the demo gave me the heebie-jeebies, I was excited, but I have been let down as nothing really scary happens! The latter half of the game starts to become a horror game, but that’s when the “Audition tape” feeling comes in, as there are too many puzzles to figure out, so much backtracking that it’s more annoying than anything else, so when something “Spooky” does happen, you’re too pissed to notice.
Another thing that irked me was that it looked like there was AI used for some of the art in this game, when I say art, I mean the pictures and paintings that are hanging on the walls.
Overall, the first half of Luto starts as a clone of The Stanley Parable before turning into the aforementioned P.T. and Layers of Fear clone, where it’s all been done (to death) by other devs. The game had a story to tell, but it was lost in the overused trope that many horror game devs have fallen into, coming across as being scared to try something different and playing it safe. On my scale of 1-10, Luto is a 5.5/10 for all the reasons mentioned above.
Luto is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S
