Switch Review: The Coma-Recut

The Coma: Recut (Devespresso Games, $19.99) has resurfaced. And this time, it’s on the Nintendo Switch. This game is a fully remastered version of a game that was a cult classic, The Coma: Cutting Class. Does this game deserve to be rehashed or should it have been left in the past? Maybe the remaster leaves this game better than before, helping it climb out of cult status and into the main light! Let’s dissect this game!

Here’s a list of the features in this title:

• ‘A remastered version of indie cult classic The Coma: Cutting Class, the game has been rebalanced and ‘recut’ with new and updated animations, mechanics, cutscenes and art
• Hide: Crouch in the darkness or cower in a closet to stay out of sight and evade the killer
• Survive: Use your flashlight to search for useful items, but be warned – it can attract unwanted attention
• Mystery: Discover notes and clues to uncover the twisted history of Sehwa High’s students and teachers
• Death: Beware the horrors lurking in the dark, lest you bleed out in some forgotten classroom…
• The cast of characters and creepy corridors of Sehwa High are brought to life in a hand-illustrated manhwa art style
• Inspired by the real-world plight of Korea’s overworked high school students
• Localized in the following languages: English, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Thai, Turkish’

I’ve got a creepy trailer for you…

Audio & Soundtrack:

This game is probably the most cluttered game I’ve heard in terms of audio. When the game first starts, there are birds chirping everywhere and you’re forced to sit there and listen to them screech as you’re trying to read. Further down the road, you’re forced to listen to the wail of an ambulance as you’re trying to read the on screen text as well. This is obnoxious as ambulances sirens do not blare as they’re simply sitting still at the scene. I was already agitated by this and hardly wanted to continue the game in fear that the overabundance of noise would continue. Luckily it did not, or at least not as bad. In fact, it was like night and day. Once you’re inside of the school the sound is eerily quiet, but everyone is going about their normal business, so it should not be quiet at all. Maybe they chose to do this intentionally, but whatever the reason, neglect or suspense, it just seemed too quiet.

There is a whole heck of a lot of talking in this game, but there is no voice over acting. There is also a strange lack of music in this game, which sucks because suspenseful moments are only helped by suspenseful music. So aside from the loud screeching noises outside and the lack of noises inside, I would say that this game’s audio is tremendously unbalanced. I can’t even imagine why they chose to do things in such a way, I’m just going to assume it’s negligence overall and move on. 3/10

Visuals:

The visuals, on the other hand, are very fun. The two-dimensional manhwa art style in South Korea, this game looks really great. I have to give the team kudos here for going with a style and sticking with it. The fact that the whole game looks as if I’m playing a South Korean comic book is simply sublime. There was nothing that I could ask for more in this department. And quite frankly, I didn’t know that it was even anything that I wanted until I played it. These graphics lend themselves so well to the Switch as well. The battery is of limited supply and the less the game demands of the hardware, the more portable playtime you get. The Coma: Recut is definitely going to make your Switch last a lot longer, my friend.

There are more suspenseful scenes and this game still plays really well even during those times. There is always darkness surrounding you after a certain point in the game and your flashlight is your only friend. Whether you use the flashlight or not, this game still looks really good shrouded in darkness. It’s definitely hard to explain what I mean without you playing it. But it is much scarier when everything is flat and 2D and you have to find places to hide and it’s dark on top of that. You can’t tell how deep some hiding places are or if you can hide in it until you try. There is an icon system in place that will pop up if you can hide in a respective locker. However, I found that it responds a split second too late and it’s easier just squatting and hiding.

The HUD in this game is also very subtle, but still useful. You have the health in the uppermost corner of the screen. You have the flashlight’s battery life below that. And the last piece of information is the amount of in-game money that you have. All of these things are necessary to the game, but take up little to no screen real estate. The menus, on the other hand, are a pain in the butt to sift through. Let me give you a shortcut, the D-Pad does everything in terms of menus. The + and – buttons on your Switch do nothing. This sucks very badly overall and I wish that they would change it. But more on that in the ‘Gameplay’ section, of course. My main hope for this game is just that the menus for notes and items and such get patched. Because right now, I find myself fumbling through the menu to get to what I need. 6/10

Gameplay:

Without spoiling any of the story for you, I can tell you the following. You’ll be playing a student trying to figure out what’s going on in his school on final days. Everything goes dark, most people are now missing, and your teacher is a knife wielding murder? Okay, so here is the long and short of the gameplay. Obviously, as the protagonist, you’re really confused and instead of dealing with this, you want to go home. But there is only a certain way out of course and this leads you on a path to try to find keys and maybe notes to read what’s going on.

To do this, you have a map and a flashlight and absolutely no weapon whatsoever. Your teacher is roaming the halls and most likely looking for you, so that is sort of scary. If you come across her, you can dowse the light and hide and try to stay quiet. You cannot, in any capacity, fight her though. This is all supposed to create scary and intense moments for you as the player, just trying to escape. All in all, this could be scary, if only it didn’t happen time and time again. It really, truly just becomes more of a repetitive chore (like washing dishes) than a scary moment in a video game. You either hide and she ends up leaving the area, leaving you to continue. Or you can get injured and/or die. If you get injured there are several vending machines with which you can use your money to buy food/drink to improve your health.

The amount of reading done in this game just is not for me. I love reading, don’t get me wrong, but the on screen texts should go away whenever I press the A button. They seem to linger on screen longer than that and I felt myself probably pressing A three times on the last text window of any conversation to make it go away. The same would hold true when there would be a message on screen about something that I found or thought about. I think that stopping to read further kills any kind of suspense that this game was trying to lean into. I couldn’t believe the amount of reading in such a short game. The short game gets stretched out by the reading, but I feel that quick voice overs would’ve helped in every way. Voice actors setting the mood with their actual acting is bound to make me feel more involved than hearing the characters’ voices in my head as my own voice. 5/10

Replay-ability & Longevity:

This may be the shortest section that I’ll ever write in a game review. This game doesn’t seem to want to have you play again. Even though you can play the game again and again and again, you probably won’t. The stagnant gameplay and lack of true scares makes this game pretty repetitive. You’re constantly left wondering what more you could really have to do. It seems like they just kept giving you something to do to extend the gameplay when really this game shouldn’t be longer than an hour. If you want to play it again, you can. But you gain nothing more out of the experience. 1/10

Here is the game if you dare play it.

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