Doorways Chapter 3: The Underworld Review

So it's no secret I like Horror games, and long-time readers of the site may remember my review of the first-person horror game, Doorways, that I did just under a year ago. At the time, the game only had the first two chapters to it and the game got a score of 9, with good scares and a long life. Now, Chapter 3: The Underworld has been released as a separate entity. But does it live up to the first two chapters?

In Doorways, not a lot was revealed about the characters.  All we knew was the protagonist, Thomas Foster, was hunting some psychopaths and has a voice so deep that his balls probably scrape across the floor when he walks. In Chapter 3: The Underworld, we learn a bit more about the scenario.

‘Doorways’ is actually a organisation, and Thomas Foster is an agent of said organisation that can enter the minds of his victims (Eat your heart out Psychonauts!) and this is how he finds his victims (and perhaps explains why he has no idea what he’s doing and why he has no weapons, etc.) In Chapter 3, Thomas is hunting Katherina Stein, a German nanosurgeon. Doorways already sent two agents in to go after her in the past; neither of which returned.

Unlike the first installment of Doorways, The Underworld is only one chapter long . However, being sold for the same price as the first, I imagined it was a lengthy chapter, right? Nope. I had finished Doorways: The Underworld within two hours, and most of that was spent on one single puzzle which I was too stupid to figure out (it involved science, okay).

In Doorways: Chapter 1 & 2, scares were scarce, but good and effective because of this. Instead, it always gave off a generally eerie vibe, and rarely tapped into actual scares. Chapter 3 goes for the more direct approach. Much like Amnesia, creatures roam across most of the areas (these creatures also seem to possess the magical ability of teleportation) and must be avoided.

However, when you do encounter these creatures, escaping them is particularly easy. Due to the size of the areas they appear, it’s next to impossible to get snuck up by one. It’s only the last area (where you have to trigger the enemy itself to progress through the level) that the creatures become a direct nuisance.

Within these areas are puzzles that get progressively harder as you progress through the game, but each area has a set theme. The first, for example is set in a sewer and you need to raise the water level to swim across, where the next is a hospital where you need to order Katherina’s X-rays of her ‘patients’ (victims) in order to unlock a door. There’s other little things you have to do to get to these; it’s not just as easy as pulling a lever or picking up an X-ray.

With the lack of actual scares, instead being replaced by creatures that rarely tend to bother you anyway, Chapter 3 seems to have taken a step backwards. Instead of being the phantom in the shadows above the theater; looming over you at every moment, not knowing when it will jump out at you (Chapter 1 & 2), instead the phantom has jumped onto the stage wearing a kitten mask and is doing the Can-can.

The music is decent, and whilst it keeps you on edge every now and then, the use of creatures that don’t merit much mention instead turn Doorways Chapter 3: The Underworld into more of a puzzle game with several complications in the form of things that want to kill you. A lack of good scares and its insanely short length really cause a huge disappointment from Doorways Chapter 3: The Underworld. Hardcore fans of horror games may enjoy this, but it won’t appeal to many others.