3.5/5 ★ – bokonon764's review of A Plague Tale: Innocence.

Fucking rats. A cinematic, Last of Us style, stealth and puzzler game. I took my time playing through this, went weeks without playing it. That wasn’t a great way to go about it, I kept forgetting how to play. So not a great game for jumping back in, but the story was compelling enough to keep me coming back. A Plague Tale follows the story of a newly orphaned teenaged girl named Amicia and her little brother, Hugo. There’s nothing too wild going on with these characters, but they’re designed well and the voice acting is great. The sibling relationship feels very real, and as annoying as young children characters like Hugo can be in video games, I found myself becoming quite fond of him. It’s basically a long journey through France, the goal being to find safety and uncover the mystery of the plague. It’s essentially a version of the Black Plague in a realistic fantasy vein, and this version of the disease causes rats to attack and devour anything that moves. They’re also sort of magic rats? I don’t know, it’s really not important, the rats just can’t get you or you die a horrible death. What is important, is that Amicia and Hugo’s lineage seems to be tied to the rats, and part of the journey is figuring out why. The rats are afraid of all kinds of light; that’s where the games Ico-like puzzles come in. Essentially, you just move fire where the swarming rats are, and paths open. You do this with kindling, mechanical devices, and torches, that kind of shit, but you also use a sling. The sling is pretty slick: you can craft using alchemy to create a variety of ammunition types, causing sleep, igniting braziers, killing your enemies, all you can handle, bro. There are times when I got confused with the button mapping, specifically R1/R2 L1/L2, the back buttons. I’m not sure if that’s just my aging brain or if it’s a somewhat unintuitive. Occasionally, the game asks you to fire off several shots in quick succession, and it feels very clunky. These sections are few and far between, so not really a problem. Theres a heavy stealth element, and that, plus the crafting, gives it that Last of Us feel. But as the game progresses, it’s less about stealth only and more about handling each group of enemies in a particular way. You have to be ready with a plan of attack before acting, because if you’re seen and the guards come running, Amicia can’t move or react fast enough. Or I can’t, at least. This isn’t a problem I have with the game; on the contrary, I love planning my traps and then springing it, it’s a thing I loved about The Last of Us. Although, Plague Tale just doesn’t go quite as hard with its variety of methods, which does water down the experience. Combine this with some truly boring and drawn out sneaking sections, and it drags the game quite a bit. I love a good Catholic villain story, whether it’s the pseudo-Catholicism of games like Bloodborne or Blasphemous, or a game like A Plague Tale, where they seem to be actual Catholics. The wicked Grand Inquisitor Vitalis Benevent, played by Stephane Cornicard, is brilliant. A sneering bag of pious, hypocritical bones, seeking to capture Hugo to something something something. Great villain. The score is high grade horror film quality, if not a little derivative. Oliver Deriviere, the composer, does a great job of applying some of the horror film score tropes and making it work in a video game setting. Charlotte McBurney and Logan Hannan, the voice actors for Amicia and Hugo respectively, are phenomenal, and are a huge part of what makes the story so endearing. I will say one thing though: Tabitha Rubens, the voice actor for Melie (also a great performance) sounds a little too similar to McBurney and made shit confusing sometimes, although you can turn subtitles with names on if needed. A Plague Tale: Innocence delivers a brilliant and wonderfully told story, but it isn’t that fun of a game. It plays well, and any fan of this style of game would surely enjoy it. Don’t sleep on this compelling tale if you’re a story gamer; I’ll definitely be playing the sequel.