Welcome back to Switch Stars everyone, my name's Luke, and today on the channel I'm bringing you another review, this time for a first person horror game called Loco Parentis. A game in which you're essentially trapped inside a block of flats by a mentally unstable child and must work out why she's keeping you there and how you can escape. It's a paranormal horror filled with plenty of puzzles for you to tackle. But does it have anything new to offer from the genre, and is it worth your time and cash? Well drop a like, subscribe for more Nintendo Switch content, and let's find out. So before we start then, the publisher has kindly provided me with a bunch of keys to give away for the game, so if you wanted to be in with a chance of winning one, all you have to do is subscribe to the channel, and then let me know what your favourite Switch horror game is down in the comments section below. The winners will then be announced in a community post around the 1st of June. The story with this one then, and I'm going to be completely honest right here and say that even after playing my way through the game, I'm still struggling to make head in the tails of it, and I feel this is in part due to it being somewhat lost in translation, but also because the game is a little too cryptic for it's own good. From what I understood though, the story revolves around a troublesome young girl living in the same apartment block as you, and her relationship with various residents there. The game is split into 5 different chapters, each focusing on a specific personality, who may or may not have wronged her in some way, from a handyman who's painted over her graffiti to a new girl she fought over with toys. Essentially it's down to you to work out why you've been trapped by her, who this mother figure is and how you can put an end to the torment you're experiencing. The narrative itself is delivered through both spoken dialogue and snippets of documents you can find, but it's all very confusing, and I probably got the wrong end of the stick with it, but after 2 chapters I was done trying to make sense of it all. So let's just leave it there and move on to the gameplay. Much like the story, the gameplay in this one is a confusing affair, but it all starts when you exit your apartment and encounter the aforementioned young girl. This chapter is entitled Cron, and after witnessing the girl getting snatched by a creepy old bitch from one of the apartments, you're tasked with freeing her, and thus ensues a game of sadistic hide and seek which persists throughout the majority of the game. The basic premise of it though is this. Each and every chapter takes place within the same 3 story stairwell which loops indefinitely both upwards and downwards, and while the layouts of them remain the same, the positions of the items and containers is completely randomised each time you make a loop. While this does make for some variation to gameplay, the two mechanics also prove to be somewhat of an issue, as there's very little to distinguish one flaw from another. And throughout the game you're expected to collect ammo and batteries, not only to combat the darkness and enemies you face, but also when completing objectives. And it can be incredibly frustrating and time consuming I might add, to put aside what you're doing and go and hunt down some more consumables. Now before we get onto the objectives, let's first talk about the controls, because going by some of the steam reviews, it was originally conceived as a VR game, which makes sense given some of the mechanics, but these don't necessarily translate well to a controller setup. For a starter, the game features gyro controls, which many people adore, but the problem here is that there's no way to turn them off, and so if like me you've never been able to get to grips with them, you're forced to actually work with both gyro and thumbstick controls at the same time. Another issue is that throughout the majority of the game you're carrying a flashlight in one hand, giving you only a single hand with which to interact and pick up items, use your weapon and read your notebook. So you're forced to constantly throw items on the floor to open doors, shoot enemies and check your objectives, which is worth noting also requires you to tilt your camera downwards to see them. I mentioned before that the game features puzzle mechanics in addition to the horror elements, and indeed these puzzle mechanics make up a large portion of the game, with each level featuring a series of objectives for you to complete as the story unfolds, and throughout them you'll find snippets of paper and cassette tapes which attempt to decipher the riddle that is this ones narrative. But when it comes to the puzzles themselves, I'm going to be brutally honest again here, they're all much of a muchness. That is to say, they're all very similar when it comes to the core dynamics of them. Now essentially each of them has you running up and down between floors, attempting to find certain objects or interact with certain features. You could for instance be searching for tools, which you must then dispose of in a garbage chute, knocking on doors and singing lullabies or alternatively drilling holes in them, or chasing around puddles or rats to obtain specific key items. The crux of it is, the game is essentially one giant easter egg hunt which becomes very repetitive and the randomisation aspects don't help matters, and only succeeding adding to the tedium of it all. That's not to say it's an absolutely terrible concept, it's just that despite the variation in the objectives, the core concept remains the same. Now in an attempt to spice things up a bit, the developer throws a few curveballs your way in the form of enemies and hazards for you to watch out for, with the main enemies being these wraith like creatures who cry like a baby and chase you down, but are actually afraid of your flashlight and can be killed with a single bullet. There are also cursed items identifiable by the cockroaches surrounding them, which you need to then stand and shine your flashlight on for an extended period of time in order to dispel them, but the issue with these are is that the key items can also be cursed, meaning more hunting for flashlight batteries. Later on in the game you'll also encounter shadows which can only be dispelled by carrying bones to them, which actually spawn in the place of ammo and batteries, further limiting your supply of these items. Rather than enhancing the gameplay experience though, all of these things only add to the frustration of it, mainly due to them all relying on you having to hunt down those consumable items, and I would much rather have had just a couple of them to deal with and some more complex puzzles to solve, rather than constantly having to juggle back and forth between them. Now when it comes to the horror elements, again, the game is a little hit and miss shall we say. On the one hand, there's some good atmospheric horror elements going on, and the pursuing enemies, particularly the Watcher, add moments of tenseness to it. But the game falls foul as many psychological horrors do, by adding way too many cheap jumpscares into the mix, and the enemies themselves also lose the scare factor by appearing far too frequently. But overall, Loco Parentis is a psychological horror game that feels like it's trying way too hard to be a psychological horror, throwing feels like it's trying way too hard to be a psychological horror, throwing so many tropes into the mix, from it's surreal and obscure storyline and looping PT stirwell, to it's disturbing enemies, visual events and unsettling atmospherics, that it all just becomes a little too overwhelming, and loses the subtlety required to pull off the genre successfully. All in all, it's by no means the worst horror game I've played on the Switch, but it doesn't stand out as being a great one either, and rather than having some interesting and complex puzzles to solve, it's playtime is really just extended by the randomisation and the sheer amount of backtracking involved. In short, I found its storyline to be way too obscure to care about, and its repetitive gameplay loop really just started to wear thin after the first couple of chapters. Now when it comes to the visuals, LoCo actually looks pretty good on the Switch, and despite it being a port, the texture resolution is actually quite decent, and the performance holds up really well with very few frame rate issues. The character models do take a bit of a knock, with them having barely any facial features, but the atmospheric environments are definitely a high point with this one, with some decent visual effects and some good use of lighting to add some foreboding ambience to the game. The same can be said of the audio, we get some decent sound effects and voice overs, though some of the voice actors sound incredibly robotic, but the ambient sounds of the apartment block really help to add tension to the experience, with little to no music used throughout the game save for some low ambient horror music. Overall, decent stuff on the audio and visual front. So all in all then, so far as being a psychological horror game, Local Parenthesis is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand it gets some things right with its unsettling atmosphere and disturbing visuals, but its resource management, jump scares and copious amounts of enemies push it more towards feeling like a survival horror experience, and when it comes to the puzzle mechanics, the game is let down by its repetitiveness and the limited play area in which to implement them. Overall though, it's not a bad horror game, it's just not the most well thought out, and that storyline will likely have you scratching your head long after the credits roll. For a rain though, today I'm giving Local Parentheses... 2 out of 5 stars. A decent one if you can pick it up at a discount, but not one I'd be willing to pay full price for. With that said though, will you be picking this one up? Are you going to wait out for a sale on it? Or are you just going to be skipping it entirely? Let me know down in the comments section below, and remember, if you want to win a key for the game, be sure to subscribe to the channel and let me know what your favourite Switch horror game is before the 1st of June. For now though, drop a like if this one helped you out, thanks once again for watching, and until next time, take care of yourselves, and game on. Until next time, take care of yourselves, and game on.