Heaven Dust Collection Review (PS4)
Summary: Heaven Dust Collection includes the two Heaven Dust games, asymmetrical adventure shooters that follow in the footsteps of the classic Resident Evil. Complete puzzles and mow down soulless fiends to figure out mysterious conspiracies and recover your memories of the past.
3.6
Sinful Neighbors
Eradicate the living dead in this collection of games where you defeat zombies and solve puzzles to make it out alive! Heaven Dust Collection includes Heaven Dust and Heaven Dust 2, asymmetrical puzzle shooters developed by One Gruel Studio and published by indienova. Heaven Dust initially released on Xbox, Switch, and PC, in 2020 and Heaven Dust 2 initially released on Xbox, Switch, and PC, in 2022. Now with the Heaven Dust Collection, the Heaven Dust games are releasing on the PlayStation for the first time on September 19th of 2024. Heavily inspired by classic horror games like Resident Evil, Heaven Dust explores creepy environments, lays out perplexing puzzles, and tells an intricate tale of one person who is ultimately trying to save humanity from an apathetic corporation.
The story of both games is mostly told through the many documents you can find spread throughout your environment. In Heaven Dust, your character wakes up in a mansion that has been overrun by zombies. Only by completing puzzles and finding notes around the mansion does the truth slowly reveal itself. A mysterious virus, greedy companies, and incompetent scientists fill the gaps of your memories while you try to escape this nightmare. Heaven Dust 2 picks up right after the first game and sees your character waking up from their cryogenic slumber only to be thrust in the same type of terror once again. Now located in the First Research Facility, you must break out from Ground Zero and destroy everything within it in a desperate attempt to rid the world of its cruel fate for hopefully the last time.
The story in both of these games is pretty standard for games like these and the storytelling is pretty mediocre, but very acceptable for what the games bring overall. The first Heaven Dust starts out pretty compelling, but the story mostly lays out the foundation of what gets built upon in the sequel. The games also do a pretty decent job at environmental storytelling between notes, puzzles, and locations on the map. Everything blends nicely together to create a well balanced and organized gameplay experience.
The gameplay is straightforward and easy to understand, but the way the game paces and executes all of its elements makes both of these games addicting and hard to put down. These games play out like a bite-sized Resident Evil where you are thrown into a room and from there can freely explore your surroundings with the occasional key item needed to progress. Turning statues, pushing boxes, and revealing secret passageways are typical happenings within Heaven Dust. There is a box where you can store your items and you can combine herbs to produce a more potent healing item or equip attachments on your weapons to create a better way forward.
The puzzles in both games range from simple to surprisingly clever. There was never a time that I stressed over a puzzle since I knew I always had all of the answers before me whether it was a code scrawled on the wall that I missed or a particular line in a note that I had glanced over that revealed the whereabouts of a key item. The feeling of excitement of coming to a new area is unparalleled and running into a newly animated corpse that used to be slumped on the side of a wall can be thrilling if you are just running about. The combat is simple, but effective. You have different weapons and ammo types that you can use to take down the dead freaks in a variety of fashions. The controls and how you play feel a bit arcadey, but that’s more of a strength to the game than a weakness.
Heaven Dust 2 improves a lot of what was in Heaven Dust and makes a great sequel. There is a dedicated sprint button instead of just running and waiting for your character to sprint in the first game. There is a lot more customization with weapons like their fire rate or stopping power. Graphically, Heaven Dust has a muddy effect on everything which gives it sort of a painterly vibe that blankets the scenery and characters. Heaven Dust 2 revamps the style into a more comic book cel shaded form that really grips the attitude the game is striving for and makes everything look more crisp. Heaven Dust 2 is also a lot longer than its predecessor by being over double its length.
The games don’t really have a memorable soundtrack or anything music wise besides the safe room music. A tense track does queue up when you encounter zombies, but by the time you notice, the zombies are already defeated and the music fades away. Although they are only filled with ambient sounds of empty hollowed out hallways and crickets chirping on fog covered cobblestones, the squelching of zombie skulls, clacking of reloading your weapons, and pitter patter of your footsteps always sound satisfying.
I do have a few issues that I came across. The games in this PlayStation collection don’t have as many achievements like its counterparts on other platforms. At the end of Heaven Dust, you are supposed to unlock a few items to add some replayability for speedrunning and other playthroughs, but these items never showed up in my inventory or item box on new games like they are supposed to. Heaven Dust 2 has some softlock moments that can be pretty annoying. It’s frustrating to go through this puzzling adventure to only be locked out of continuing because an expendable item doesn’t respawn, making you have to start the entire game over again or revert back to a previous save.
Final Thoughts?
Heaven Dust Collection is a great value of a couple of cool and short horror games that take inspiration from the classics. The art styles are imaginative, the puzzles can be intense, and the gunplay is satisfying. Even though the story is familiar and there is nothing entrancing about the soundtrack, the pacing of how the actual game plays out makes these games hard to put down. As perplexing as some of the puzzles are, it never deters you from continuing because it’s so entertaining to explore these creepy environments. It’s easy to get infected by the gratifying time you’ll have here playing Heaven Dust Collection.
About the Author
Nay Clark Gaming holds a special place in my heart and I never stop talking about video games. I really love all types of games and have an interest in games that have complicated stories and lore because I enjoy untangling the mystery of it all. When I'm not gaming, I unsuccessfully try to control three amazing and incredibly bright kids.
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