White Noise: A tale of Horror (Xbox 360) review "You can never accuse White Noise of being original, but that’s okay; it’s sure as hell effective."

From the esteemed makers of Avatar Farm Online, and Shooting Gallery 2, comes a game so obviously ripped from Slender: the Eight Pages, it doesn’t even really bother to change the blurb. Imagine, if you will, being thrust into the midst of a dark woods, with only a flickering flashlight for company. There’s something out there that wants to do terrible, terrible things to you, and the only way to stop it is to collect eight items scattered out there in the dark unknown. Tape recorders in this case; your journalist friend planted them, but he’s probably dead now, so don’t worry about him.

Worry, instead, about the luminous white Res Evil licker that chases you around the strange plot of land in rural France. Stalky Licker guy is no Slenderman; catching a glimpse of the long, faceless chap in a fine suit during his game is often rife with uncertainly. Was that a glimpse of a supernatural mass murder you captured in the corner of your flashlight, or was is an errant tree branch or the briefest flash of an unfortunately shaped support post? There’s no time to double check; hang around any longer, you’ll probably be dead before you’re sure one way or the other. Stalky Licker guy glows in the bloody dark. You know here’s there by the image of himself he burns into your retinas. White Noise copies everything but Slender‘s terrifying subtlety. It’s much more direct in trying to scare you. And while, I expected to tear the game to shreds based around this discovery, I can’t. White Noise took no longer than a minute and a half to scare the crap out of me.



The premises and locations share so many similarities that the kindest comparison that can be made would be ‘homage’. Yeah, it’s not; it’s a shameless rip-off. But, it’s a very well executed rip-off that more or less captures everything that made Slender the surprise horror package it was. As such, White Noise taps into that primal fear that comes from running away from an evil you have no hopes of stopping, but completely takes away that sliver of delusion. In both games, the smart man runs like a girl at the slightest hint of doubt. In one game, you’re kinda maybe safe, it may not have been him. In the other, there’s no illusion guarding the depths of boned you’ve just become.

White Noise then goes and creates a fantastic environment that puts Slender‘s pokey woodland to shame. Sure, both mostly feature trees (mostly), but rather than having pointless locations like an out-of place public restroom, there are surreal lines of cheruby lion statutes, giant white stone faces and … a pointless out-of-place hut that may or may not be a public restroom. On my first play through, Licker guy cornered me in it, and made me scream at the TV. It knows what it did.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (February 15, 2013) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.