Review: Phasmophobia

Developer – Kinetic Games

Publisher – Kinetic Games

Platforms – PC, Xbox Series, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)

Review copy given by publisher

Phasmophobia is a name that needs no introduction, as it has over half a million reviews on Steam and still holds an overwhelmingly positive status. This four person cooperative horror game has been on Steam Early Access since 2020, and has now finally made its way onto PlayStation! Though this port arrived just in time for Halloween, the quality of it might be too spooky for some to handle…

At its core, Phasmophobia is a game of deduction and nerve. You and your group of buddies take on the role of ghost hunters, armed with an array of equipment designed to detect and identify spectral entities. The gameplay loop is deceptively simple: enter a haunted location, gather evidence, and determine the type of ghost before making a hasty retreat. Rinse and repeat, all the while keeping your sanity from becoming too low. Completing investigations earns you cash, which you can use to purchase improved tools and upgrades.

For a game of this nature, there’s not really a narrative per se. Each investigation feels like a unique episode of a ghost-hunting TV show. You do learn more about the in-game lore through environmental interactions and investigations, but there isn’t an overarching plot.

Okay let’s address how the actual PS5 port is. In short, it’s not very good. First off, the UI navigation is cumbersome and unintuitive, as the game uses a cursor that moves at a snail’s pace to navigate across the menus. Text sizes are also extremely minuscule, with no option to re-adjust the size. The Circle button is clearly the default option to go “back” on any PlayStation game, but not here. Often times you have to click on another tab to then drag the cursor over to the “Resume” button to then get out of the menu. Who designed this user experience?

What frustrates me even more is that the game has an “Interact” and a “Use” button. Why are they not the same thing? R2 is Interact and X is use… Then you have Square for grab, L2 to place and Circle to drop. Again I ask, who designed this? Often times I would need to guess and check if I needed to interact with an object, use the object, or grab the object… This could have all been just one button.

The game also just doesn’t do a good job at explaining its mechanics and concepts to you. There’s a painstakingly long tutorial section that does an okay job at introducing you to the tools you’ll use in the game, such as the EMF Reader, the camera, the thermometer, and the UV flashlight to name a few. And learning what each tool does is critical to the success of an investigation because you can only bring three items at a time, meaning you can’t use all the tools available to you. Good luck if you’re playing solo, but at least you can bring some extra tools if you are playing multiplayer.

Phasmophobia takes up a respectable 12.23 GB on the PS5 and getting this version grants you the PSVR2 version as well, which is a nice added bonus. Unfortunately I do not own a VR device so I won’t be able to comment on the quality of that version. Load times are quick and fast and the game plays at a smooth 60 frames per second. There is crossplay with PC players as well, but I wasn’t able to test out that feature.

Sadly this PS5 port doesn’t offer the voice recognition that the PC version contains. On PC, you can speak into the microphone to ask the ghost questions, which can grant you more evidence and make the game a tad bit more immersive, but this is missing from the console version.

While not a graphical powerhouse, the game’s visual style serves its purpose admirably, creating an atmosphere of unease through clever use of lighting and environmental effects. The flickering lights, briefly visible apparitions, and other ghostly phenomena are particularly effective in building tension. The audio design is another standout feature, with heart-pounding sound effects and eerie ambient noises contributing significantly to the game’s scare factor. However, there are some graphical errors and bugs. The lighting seems to be off in random areas, tools don’t work sometimes, and weather effects are weird.

If it isn’t clear already, Phasmophobia shines brightest as a cooperative experience. While a single-player mode is available, the true magic happens when investigating with friends. I probably wouldn’t recommend this title if you didn’t already have a few buddies who were down to go ghost hunting with you. The game is also much harder solo.

At the end of the day, Phasmophobia is an experience that requires you to do your homework. You need to study the game’s tools and rules, memorize them, and then utilize what you learned on the field, because there is virtually no handholding. If this isn’t the type of gameplay that you enjoy, then you probably won’t like this.

I’m a bit disappointed with the PlayStation 5 port of a beloved, overwhelmingly positive title on Steam. Phasmophobia not only contains some of the worst user navigation interfaces I’ve seen in a long time, but also a gameplay loop that isn’t well explained for newcomers to enjoy. Deep down inside, I know there’s fun to be had, but you have to be really patient with this one to find it.