Sitter Review – The Longest Taxi Ride of My Life

Silence doesn’t really work when writing, but let it be known that I was staring at the screen for some time, thinking about how I would begin this Sitter review. Should I start by saying, This is what it’s like to face death? By boredom. Or perhaps it would be better to be crass and ask if Sitter could be any more shitter?

The second one doesn’t work for me, as I don’t want to be flinging poo at Setone Games spitefully, but equally, I want to make sure that I give an honest assessment of this psychological horror that is, without question, a walking simulator that is more terrifying to endure its storytelling than anything else.

You play Ethan Sanders, a detective who spends more time playing a cat mini-game (the best part of Sitter) than actual detective work. The voice acting was so bad that I muted it in the first chapter and missed out on some of the sound effects as a result. After taking a break and coming back to it, I switched it to English and read the subtitles.

Spoiled in the First Ten Minutes

I don’t believe it’s AI, as the intonation is way off and highly unnatural. It was so distracting that I wondered whether the writing was poor, too. Actually, the dialogue isn’t that bad once switching languages, but the story (and gameplay) is just a big mismatch of ideas that don’t seem to work.

I knew where the story was going in the first ten minutes, and the rest of the game was a dodgy taxi driver taking you the long route to get as much out of you as possible. I am narrative-driven, so I understand story and character, but this isn’t me boasting – it’s clear what’s happening early on.

Ethan’s grandma is murdered, and he’s taken off the case immediately and told not to go. He ignores this and heads straight there, to a property that has zero windows at the front and back. From a first-person perspective, Ethan looks around the home for clues until being shot. In chapter two, he wakes in a prison.

Trials, Tribulations, Gonorrhoea

Quite the jump cut, and the discarded notes and conversations with a doll fill in the blanks (if you haven’t already), and the first note you find in the cell – from ‘another prisoner’ – is very obvious about what’s going on and skewed thoughts about what’s real and what isn’t. Sitter isn’t particularly clever with it, but before you can write a review, you have to find some fuses and keys to find your way out.

The next chapter is worse. You’re walking through a series of trials that talk about illnesses and disease and are one of the most depressing, monotonous experiences I’ve had in a long time. Shifting to a lecture on gonorrhoea, I actually thought that the developers were taking the piss. No, that was for the last ‘trial’, where you have to ascend a stairway whilst being lectured.

Sitter’s penultimate chapter is actually just a cutscene. By that point, I’d clocked out but was being tenacious in seeing it through, unlocking all three of the endings, and not caring one bit after each. I really am not the negative critic, but Sitter annoyed me with how it took up my time with its fragmented story, insulting lectures, and disregard for immersion. The graphics are good, though.