Game Review: CAPTURED (Xbox Series X)

It’s hard not to roll your eyes when yet another ‘anomaly’ game appears on the marketplace, but in a really nice surprise, CAPTURED isn’t just a great version of a familiar game, it’s got some unique twists on the formula that help it stand out.

Coming from developer Puck Redflix and publisher Puck Games, CAPTURED’s introduction tells you that there is a bit more meat to its bones with an opening cutscene that sets up a story involving mysterious phenomenon that a person is trying to capture with their video camera inside their home. Then the lights go out, and when they come back on, things aren’t quite right. The house looks the same, except there are no windows, nothing is working, the family photos are wrong, and the hallways keep on looping.

You are trapped and the only way to escape is to spot the differences in each loop. Sometimes blindly obvious, sometimes so subtle that you’re going to have to really pay attention to your surroundings, and with layers of horror driven by a demonic presence and otherworldly scares.

CAPTURED is a horror game at its core but delivers much of its frights in subtle fashion thanks to the mundane location. The house is dark, and you only have a flashlight to check out your surroundings, yet it’s in the shadows that true dread resides. Was that tricycle there before? Why are the bathroom taps running? Was that chair in that position in the last loop? It’s filled with haunting atmosphere, allowing your imagination to run wild and make it scarier than it is.

Except when it wants to scare, and a lot of those moments are effective. Moments like the rooms that transform completely (revealing more detail about the story). Moments like the answering machine playing a message that is truly disturbing, and moments like one of four different enemies making themselves known. Each can be dealt with in a specific way, but each add a degree of survival horror to the game and on increased difficulty, become more frequent and challenging.

So, how do you beat the game? Find a required number of anomalies over multiple loops, using your video camera to ‘tag’ them and ‘define’ them. Find all the anomalies in a loop, and the counter will increase, but should you complete a loop having missed or defined one incorrectly, then your total count will reset to zero. It’s simple enough, and like all ‘anomaly’ style games, gets easier the more you play it, but rarely does it turn out to be as addictive and satisfying as this. CAPTURED is the best of these I’ve played since The Exit 8, which when you consider how many I have played, is high praise.

One of the biggest issues with these types of games is replay value, and once again, CAPTURED does try harder then most. Having various difficulty levels with different challenges in each. The harder the difficulty, the more anomalies you will need to find to escape the loop. However, you will also need to play attention to your sanity meter, which forces you to move with urgency and deal with the diminishing battery life for the video camera, hunting for spare batteries while slowing losing your mind and trying to avoid the monsters that chitter evilly in the shadows. It can be quite challenging, but it is fun, and while there is frustration that comes with missing an anomaly when you were sure you checked everything, the game has a ‘one more try’ mentality that is difficult to ignore.

It’s a great game, with only minor niggling issues that are easy to overlook in favour of a fun and frightening experience. Just what is that red glow emanating from under the door of the main bedroom? Why is the fridge wide open? Why are a group of toilets conducting a séance (some aren’t as serious as others)? How did the dining room get flooded, and what purpose do the demonic dolls serve? CAPTURED’s mysteries are there to be solved, if you’re willing.