Phasmophobia Review-In-Progress: Frighten Your Senses

Phasmophobia activates your fight-or-flight response by hunting ghosts with friends on Steam and PlayStation VR2. Here’s our review-in-progress.

Kinetic's viral hit took the world by storm in 2020, and it's finally debuting on PS5 in early access to deliver one of the platform's most engaging horror experiences, albeit one that's lacking in the technical department. Working as a paranormal investigator, your goal is to explore haunted houses, gather evidence of the type of entity you are dealing with, and escape with your life if you can. Phasmophobia delivers hours of thrills for such a straightforward concept, especially when enjoyed with others.

That said, it was a rough start for me. I couldn't accept the EULA Agreement, which is standard practice for all games, because the tab to scroll down would not register my pointing and clicking of the Sense controller. As a workaround, I had to close the game fully, start it up in flat mode, accept it there, then go back to putting on the headset and finally join my teammates who had been waiting for about ten minutes because of that issue.

Being in Early Access means I'm more forgiving of this and I'm hoping this will be ironed out in the coming days - Kinetic confirmed there will be a day one patch with bug fixes and visual improvements. Presently though, that sentiment applies to other aspects of Phasmophobia too. Controls are sometimes unresponsive, the movement feels stifled and the graphics are all but noteworthy. That last part might work in favor of those who are easily scared, though.

Phasmophobia is essentially an investigative horror game where you visit haunted houses, find out what triggers a ghost event, note it down in your trusty journal, and move on to the next case. Easy enough. The only problem is here the ghosts are real, and they can kill you. If you defy those odds and explore each map without dying, you gain both experience and money to unlock new levels and equipment in the process.

Starting from a cursed main hub with satanic writings on the walls, your investigative detective can arm themselves with an array of items to make ghost hunting easier. From a UV Light and EMF Reader to more advanced devices such as a crucifix, incense, and salt, each of these useful artifacts is mainly used to describe a phantom type, but also help out in a pinch.

To up the ante, outside of the stereotypical equipment you might see in supernatural movies, "cursed possessions" are brought into the mix as a wildcard. Every time you begin a new hunt a random item shows up in your truck's inventory, unless you are playing in the highest difficulty. Ouija boards, tarot cards, and voodoo dolls all have their pros and cons that add flavor to each new incursion. For example, using a haunted mirror to find the ghost's favorite room is feasible, but it can quickly drain your sanity and possibly initiate a cursed hunt that will endanger your life.

Carefully choosing your equipment before each hunt is important. Before embarking, some tips on what kind of evil to expect are written on the corkboard, like “This ghost responds to people who are alone.” The evidence found helps determine what sort of spirit you are dealing with. Some items are more useful than others, as a flashlight's spot in the tool belt could be better occupied by a thermometer to identify a spirit's affinity for freezing temperatures. When enough information is collected to complete the case, it's marked as successful.

Finally, a clever mechanic called the sanity bar dictates how a wraith will behave towards you. Standing in bright areas keeps you sane, but spikes in paranormal activity make your sanity drop faster. Yelling or talking too much because the creepy atmosphere is getting to you negatively impacts it. After dropping below a certain threshold, the ghost is likely to initiate an attack, so having nerves of steel is advisable. Sanity medication is available to buy in the game's store to restore the bar for those who cannot handle stress too well.

Playing solo or in co-op is what turns Phasmophobia into either a serious sleuthing game with horror undertones or a scary but comedic adventure. Working for "Ghost Huntin' Distribution", this self-explanatory company gives you a non-mandatory training course that sets you up before letting you loose to have fun with friends. Chaos can easily ensue if not everyone in your team is properly briefed on the mission.

Unexpected behaviors can lead to hilarious situations with your teammates. Maybe someone is braver than the rest of the group and wants to confront the apparition on their own, only for their resolve to be crumbled while you listen to their wailing at a far distance due to the proximity-based voice chat. Or to see one of your companions be brutally sent to the afterlife with their corpse left bent unnaturally.

At times, one of the friends I played with began making strange noises to mess with us, making me feel unsure if it was the paranormal being whispering in my ear or my fellow investigative reporter. To then be actually assaulted by the specter up close and personal was a wake-up call that I will not soon forget. Phasmophobia might have given me one of the biggest scares ever, but also one of the heartiest laughs soon after.

The depth of Phasmophobia goes beyond a jumpscare simulation. An event board with regularly changing community goals will reset every certain period, giving it more longevity. Daily and weekly tasks are refreshed periodically to helpfully reward you with plenty of cash for equipment to aid your investigations.

The solid offerings on release provide a robust selection of 13 maps, a level cap of 100, and a bevy of ghosts, wraiths, and entities to classify, providing dozens of hours of gameplay. Each haunting takes about 20 minutes, perhaps less if you know exactly what to do and don't mess around. It's clear that replayability is derived from the people you play with.

As a review-in-progress, I will return to update this review if there's any significant overhauls in the coming months, specifically as the game is being released in Early Access. Beyond major graphical updates, any important potential tweaks to the core systems like increased interactivity with the environment, new maps, equipment, and game modes, will be added to this review.

Phasmophobia Review-In-Progress – Current Final Verdict

One of Steam's biggest horror hits feels right at home on PS VR2 and while it currently has some technical issues, Phasmophobia delivers effective scares when you're completely immersed. That eerie feeling chilling down your spine when something is whispering in your ear is unnerving. Using your tool belt to grab your items makes it easier to know exactly what to do in the heat of the moment.

A good horror VR game needs that special formula to keep players coming back and while Phasmophobia is a highly enjoyable experience with friends, it's a tough sell as a single player game. There's still fun to be had and if you can overlook the janky mechanics, which are heightened by the make-believe recreation of a haunted house, then welcome to the life of a paranormal investigator.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines. As a review-in-progress, this is currently unscored to reflect our approach on covering post-launch updates. We'll revisit this review once Phasmophobia enters full release.