After a long period of announcing and teasing, Blair Witch is finally out for good! The eerie story of the investigator and his dog is now coming live on Steam with a discount and a lot of bundles.
However, it seems that the developer needs more time to fully complete the game. Blair Witch is performing poorly even on a high-end GPU!
Nevertheless, here's the launch trailer of the game. And even though this trailer has demonstrated that Blair Witch has a very detailed graphics, I don't think it's a true reason for this poor performance:
Story and gameplay overview
Blair Witch is the video game adaptation from the famous horror franchise with the same name. Furthermore, it's the work from the hands of the horror master - Bloober Team. If that name's not familiar enough, it's the developer behind some epic horror games, such as the Layers of Fear series and Observer.
That's why people have expected a lot from this title, and it's living up to those expectations. At least when it comes to story and gameplay. Blair Witch will put you in the shoes of a police officer - Ellis, investigating the Black Hills forest to find a lost child named Peter Shannon. Even though he has his best mate - Bullet the dog going with him, evils don't afraid at all.
The investigation soon turns into a nightmare. The Blair Witch has cursed the woods, forcing Ellis to face his troubled past and his inner fear again. Now, he'll have to find a way through this dark forest, and keeping his mind together while searching for clues on the boy.
In this game, you'll control Ellis and see the whole experience through your own eyes. Luckily, Bullet is extremely helpful, as he can follow your order and reach the places that you can't get to. Furthermore, he also barks every time he sees an item or a wicked creature, warning you about the case. Last but not least, he can be a source of relieve as you can pet him on the head, too.
However, you would still have to rely on yourself to get out of this haunted area. Together with a flashlight and a camera, you'll have to go find clues on the missing boy and stay away from dangers. But in case you have to face them, you can also fight back. The combats in Blair Witch are quite small and not too important, but it marks the first time Bloober team brings combats into their title.
With a twisted story, intriguing gameplay and gorgeous dark visuals, Blair Witch contains many special features to make it an epic horror title.
But Blair Witch still has some performance flaws
As I've mentioned earlier, the game can't perform smoothly even on a high-end graphics card. To be more specific, DSOGaming has played Blair Witch on an RTX 2080Ti, but still failed to reach stable 40fps on 4k resolutions and high settings.
You might blame the settings for making the game's FPS unstably low. However, even when they're tuning down the lens-flares, shadows, and SSS settings to Low, the game still struggle to run at 60fps.
The only method to make Blair Witch run at 60fps on 4k resolutions is by turning Resolution Scalability to "Half", but it will result in blurry images. Considering it's a narrative-driven horror game, this case is unacceptable. Therefore, Bloober needs to further optimize it if they want their latest title to be a great success.
Nevertheless, you don't have to worry if you're not planning to experience Blair Witch's horror story in 4k resolutions and high graphic settings. The game is currently under 10% discount now, allowing you to buy it with only $26.99. There are a lot of bundles there too, and you can opt for yourself a suitable package.
Enjoy!