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Hollowbody fills the void left by PS2 survival horror games

Hollowbody is an homage to the PlayStation 2-era survival horror classics, but with a tech-noir spin.

The initial attacks targeted cities “plagued by economic hardship and depravity,” and the affected areas were walled off to contain the spread of any contagions — but not before people deemed to be “high value” citizens were allowed to escape to an artificial island with a suspiciously utopic name (Aeonis). It’s in this early sequence that we really see the tech-noir part of Hollowbody ’s description come through: Mica staring out the huge glass window of an apartment overlooking a densely packed city à la Blade Runner 2049; zipping between skyscrapers in a flying passenger vehicle; having a cheeky conversation with an intelligent navigation system. From then on, the tech-noir bit slips mostly out of focus until it swings back around at the end of the game, and Hollowbody takes on the more traditional survival horror mold of ‘science experiment turned local extinction event.’ There are some touches of that distinct tech-infused vision — at one point, Mica passes a broken-down mech the size of an apartment building, and there’s a glowing children’s toy in one room that looks vaguely robotic — but it’s not exactly pervasive.

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