I had a strong deja vu feeling after just ten minutes of playing Unknown 9: Awakening. Squeezing between numerous tight wall gaps, eliminating adversaries in tiny arenas, and witnessing an emotional tale of personal development—this formula feels all too familiar and adheres to the long-standing customs of the “Crevice Crawler” genre. It does experiment with one or two novel concepts to differentiate itself, such as mind-control abilities that let you manipulate your adversaries, but the main issue is that it does the basics noticeably poorer than its peers. There are undoubtedly some encouraging aspects of the new stuff, but the novelty wears off fast, leaving behind a bland and unimpressive trudge that is rife with performance problems and other jankiness.
In this alternate-reality game set in the early 20th century, you take on the role of Haroona, a mistrustful woman who enjoys saying clichés and can access an invisible dimension known as the Fold. Her abilities allow you to perform standard magic tasks, such as temporarily turning invisible, using Force to push and pull enemies like an off-brand Jedi, and transforming into a ghost to move around and solve the simplest riddles ever imagined.
You will use them to navigate through several tiny arenas that are broken up by cutscenes that are vying to be the next HBO adaptation. If you have played God of War or The Last of Us, you already understand the concept, but Awakening offers bare-bones crouch-fests and sloppy fisticuffs in place of expertly crafted combat encounters and suspenseful stealth scenes.
Even though the plot is incredibly generic, the worldbuilding is pretty good, and it is obvious that a lot of time and work went into creating the timeline, narrative, and supernatural laws of this universe. This alternate Earth is reminiscent of Indiana Jones, with secret societies fighting for knowledge of the paranormal, a race of beings who cheated death by making themselves immortal, and a mysterious cycle of extinction, among other mystical secrets and hidden histories that are kept just out of reach in parts unknown.
Unfortunately, that promising beginning does not do the story itself much justice, as Haroona’s formulaic story is full of clichés and unimpressive characters before becoming utterly lost in a sea of magical jargon and complicated allusions that utterly failed to pique my interest in what was happening.
Although there will be plenty of opportunity to sneak around and covertly eliminate adversaries during that shaky ride, stealth is standard and offers few innovations. You can use a ghostly rock to divert attention, and you will undoubtedly spend a lot of time in the tall grass where no guardsman has ever bothered to look. Unfortunately, even when you are causing things to explode and leaving bodies in plain sight, the stupid AI still finds it difficult to identify you.
Even so, there is some tiny pleasure in the poor stealth because it is still satisfying to feel like a master of the shadows who can traverse a whole space without being noticed. Additionally, it is a wonderful touch when your friends remark on how cunning you are if you manage to pass a portion undetected.
Unfortunately, you will not have as many chances to use stealth as you may assume because Awakening will often and happily push you into direct battle. If it were not for the false choices it creates in its skill trees, this strangely seems to occur more frequently as you progress through the roughly eight-hour plot. As you gather barely concealed “Gnosis Points,” this straightforward three-pronged upgrade system improves your combat, stealth, or mind control skills. It also performs simple tasks like extending your duration of invisibility or increasing the damage of your melee attacks. I started hedging my bets by investing in other playstyles after realizing that I had invested most of my skill points on the stealth abilities tree to have those encounters disappear.
Without a doubt, one of Awakening’s worst aspects is combat.
As you go, you will also encounter more straightforward fighting, which is a shame because it is undoubtedly one of Awakening’s weakest features. These weak confrontations, which primarily consist of the same evading, light strikes, and heavy attacks formula you have seen in dozens of other games, pit you against the same small number of opposing soldiers brandishing guns and melee weapons. I played my entire run in the toughest setting, and because the AI is so dumb, I was able to fudge my way through encounters most of the time by repeatedly using the same set of attacks and avoiding highly telegraphed maneuvers with ease.
At least you can take advantage of mind-control abilities, which are Awakening’s strongest feature, whether you are punching stupid minions or squatting behind crates. You can utilize those dull meat puppets to carry out your sadistic plans, including using that unit’s unique power to wreak havoc on the surroundings or their fellow villains, after you have jumped out of your body and into others with a single button push. For instance, you can take control of one of the sniper foes and have him shoot at a piece of surveillance equipment to facilitate your covert mission, or you can have one of the large bruisers utilize his ground pound ability close to a group of his pals to cause a ton of damage.
As you advance, you will eventually be able to chain-possess several foes at once, giving them different commands and seeing the action unfold in slow motion. This can be a lot of fun. Although it is not very groundbreaking and becomes a little monotonous by the end of the credits, it is unquestionably the most enjoyable aspect of an otherwise unsatisfying journey. Quite crazily, if you start forcing your enemies to kill one another while hiding close by, they just seem dimly aware that you are playing tricks on them and immediately return to their previous activities since, once more, they are incredibly foolish. That is undoubtedly a bad thing, but at least it made me laugh frequently.
If shoddy interactions and a mediocre plot were not depressing enough, Awakening also has several bugs, performance problems, and general jankiness. While I was playing on a Ryzen 9/RTX 4090 PC, the framerate frequently dropped, even during battle situations where you could lose your life. Cutscenes do this pretty strange thing where they jump abruptly between many shots that only last a couple of seconds each as if they storyboarded the action but never bothered to finish it. Haroona also enjoys getting stuck on objects and oddly bouncing in place. That final one is mainly amusing, but it also contributes to an overall lack of refinement that weakens an already poor game.
Verdict
Unknown 9: Awakening is the type of standard action-adventure game that, even with excellent execution, probably would not wow me; the fact that it does not just make the entire thing fall flat. Awakening suffers from several issues, including a clichéd plot, clumsy and uninteresting combat, and stealth, all of which fall far short of the standards set by genre rivals. Though these bright spots pass rapidly, leaving us with a completely unimpressive journey, there is at least some enjoyment to be had from its intriguing reality-bending talents, particularly the mind-controlling abilities that allow you to temporarily act as your enemies and cleverly ruin the opponent.
