The Ritual on Weylyn Island (Video Game)
April Marie
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Developed by zemaGamez
Published by zemaGamez
Available for PC (reviewed) and Mac through Steam
Rated M for Mature
Great action/adventure games feature stories that stick with you for years to come. Fans remember fondly stories that made them laugh, cry, and sit eagerly at the edges of their seats. The Ritual on Weylyn Island gets this half right since you will certainly laugh and cry, but for all the wrong reasons.
The Ritual on Weylyn Island starts with main character Moira being invited to her grandfather’s privately owned island for a reading of his last will and testament with her family. When she arrives at his house, she realizes that her family (including her twin sister Rowena) is missing. Occult symbols riddle the walls in what we can only assume is blood. When searching the basement for a generator to restart the power to the house, Moira suddenly finds a zombified version of her uncle Brian! What else would you find in a basement, right?
Predictably, the rest of the story revolves around Moira trying to find Rowena while avoiding cult members and newly zombified kinsfolk. Along the way, Moira randomly discovers tapes left behind by her grandfather that help explain all this crazy druid shit. Long story short, grandpappy got himself involved in some serious shenanigans, and was using his island to lead a cult of druid demon worshippers.
The Ritual on Weylyn Island can be summarized in four words: run, listen, common sense. The vast majority of the game involves running from enemies. There’s running through your grandfather’s house, through the forest, through some more forest, yet more forest, some cliffs, a random building, some tunnels, and a graveyard. Ooh, that variety towards the end there, it’s crazy! There’s not much more to be said about the running part. Sure, the cloaked cult members that chant creepy things in the woods are eerie and startle you from time to time, but for the most part it’s monotonous.
So if running is the gameplay, listening describes the plot. When we’re not running from cultists, we listen to cutscenes, character interactions, and grandad Weylyn’s tapes to figure out what all is going on. The characters all serve their purposes to keep the story moving, but fall fairly flat. It’s a very short game even by action/adventure standards, so there isn’t much time to flesh these people out. Still, they could have tried a bit harder. Great voice acting can often help in these cases, but The Ritual on Weylyn Island featured mostly sub-par vocals.
It’s worth it to point out that the plot twist at the end of The Ritual on Weylyn Island is fairly entertaining, so we won’t spoil that for you entirely. Regrettably, the characters explain away damn near everything that happens in the game leading up to that point. Not everything needs to be tied up perfectly in a bow, that’s why we have these crazy things called imaginations and intelligence. If you can look past this four year old level mental hand holding, you’ll still enjoy the ending.
The Ritual on Weylyn Island does feature more than just running and listening, as there are a few quick time events and puzzles to solve. It’s difficult to even call them puzzles however since most of these moments are completely given away to the player. This is, unfortunately, the “common sense” part of the description. You’d have to stab a fork in your eye and subsequently mace yourself in the face to miss the solutions to the “puzzles” in The Ritual on Weylyn Island. Those moments of, “Moira! Quick, close the gate before the bad guys come and kill us!” are much less dramatic when the camera pans directly to the lever that is needed to solve that “puzzle.”
This might seem unnecessarily harsh, but come on, let us use our brains at least a little bit. You’d think the quick time events might make up for this, but you would be wrong. In most cases the “quick” got left out of these timed events. One in particular requires Moira to pull herself across a canyon using a pulley assisted wooden cart. It doesn’t seem to matter how quickly you tap the necessary buttons, Moira still chugs along at a torturous snail’s pace. And no, it’s not the, “Oh my god, I’m not going to make it in time!” drama-enhancing slow, it’s the, “Please kill me now, I’m watching paint dry” level slow.
There are many other smaller issues in The Ritual on Weylyn Island that really slice its proverbial throat, and gush its blood all over the sacrificial slab. There are tiny things like character animations going glitchy or not matching up with objects (Moira, the door handle is over here). Another noticeable issue is when indicators for potential actions don’t always come up, like suddenly realizing a door can be opened when you’d already looked at it to no avail minutes before.
Much of the voice acting similarly does not match the emotional tone of the moment at all. A great example of this is when Moira saves secondary character Megan from falling over a cliff. You’d think if you were thanking someone for just saving your life, you’d be out of breath and maybe even crying a little. Not Megan apparently! What a stone cold bitch. And of course, let’s not forget the fantastically written dialogue. Especially that moment when Megan’s now zombified dead brother chases after her and Moira saying, “Death won’t come quickly for you. It will come in inches!” Uhh… what?
The visuals, and the fantastically plot-twisted ending of The Ritual on Weylyn Island are really the only reasons worth playing the game. Best played at high graphics quality, the environments are reasonably detailed. The moon peaking through the clouds in particular is fantastically well done. However, you’re usually going to be too busy sloppily running from enemies you can’t fight to enjoy it. Character development is almost nonexistent. Gameplay is monotonous at best. The voice acting falls short, with characters hardly showing emotion. The game’s dialogue bounces around between taking itself too seriously, being boring as hell, and total what the fuck land. Put down your mouse and back away slowly before The Ritual on Weylyn Island inches its miserable way towards you.
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Video Game
Categorized:Reviews
