Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC
Unknown 9: Awakening is perplexing. Set in the early years of the 20th century, it's a game centred on secret societies, ancient mysteries, and long-lost artifacts of fallen civilisations. It serves up a globe-trotting adventure that, in its best moments, feels like a hybrid of Indiana Jones and 1999's The Mummy, with a dash of Tomb Raider thrown in for good measure. Yet in mechanical, structural, and gameplay terms, it's every bit as much of a relic as the lost treasures scattered through its extremely linear levels.
Awakening is the story of Haroona (voiced and mo'capped by The Witcher's Anya Chalotra), a young woman out for revenge after her adoptive mother figure, Reika, is taken from her. Trained as a "Quaestor" – one able to access the Fold, a sort of shadow dimension just out of view of ours, allowing her a variety of supernatural abilities – she's on the hunt for the nefarious but dapper Vincent Lichter and his army of Ascendants, who aim to use the Fold for nefarious purposes. Joined by members of the Leap Year Society – an assortment of oddballs and specialists from around the world - Haroona's journey takes her from the slums of India to palatial European estates, by way of jungle encampments and subterranean ruins, all the while haunted by rumours of the eponymous Unknown 9, immortals from a bygone age.
As Haroona's powers grow, allowing her to chain-step between multiple bodies, sowing maximum chaos becomes a real delight.
Lore, characters, and a Jules Verne-esque setting are the greatest strengths here – likely helped by Unknown 9 being a wider "narrative universe", with a series of novels, comics, and narrative podcasts fleshing out its continuity – but as a game, it's like something from the PS3 era has been unearthed. Each level is essentially a matter of running down a series of straight corridors – beautifully decorated as lush rainforests, caverns, or city streets, but corridors nonetheless – and alternating between sections of dated stealth, basic combat, or clambering up vine walls and around crumbling ruins where safe paths were helpfully marked out in white paint by their long-gone inhabitants.
The only slight diversions off the beaten path are to find the plethora of collectibles developer Reflector Entertainment has crammed in. Memos, letters, dossiers, blueprints, all detailing some bit of tech or operational plans from the Ascendants – plus various anomalies and totems to power up Haroona's abilities - are scattered through each level. Unfortunately, Awakening is not only linear but rigidly segmented – progress past certain points (usually oddly heavy gates that are identical wherever in the world Haroona is, or dropping down cliff walls slightly too high to climb back up) and you're cut off from going back to hunt down missed artefacts. And, while each chapter can be replayed without overwriting the main story progress, saving any collectibles you overlooked the first time, it's a real chore to have to play through the entire level if a missed item is right at the end of it.
One of the brighter spots, though, is combat, with Haroona channelling the "Umbric" energy from the Fold for a variety of uses. While she boasts a few familiar uses such as telekinetically pushing or pulling enemies about, or creating force fields to deflect bullets, her signature ability is to "Step" into enemies, possessing them for a moment to attack other foes or destroy Ascendant tech. As there's only a small window of control to reposition Stepped enemies, there's a fun touch of real-time tactics in how to best use their abilities against them. As Haroona's powers grow, allowing her to chain-step between multiple bodies, sowing maximum chaos becomes a real delight.
Later abilities allow Haroona to literally punch the soul out of her opponents too, leaving them in a "Faze" state and opening them up for devastating final strikes. Unfortunately, whether using non-powered melee strikes or Umbric skills, targeting enemies is iffy throughout, even when using a lock-on feature. Stealth, meanwhile, feels archaic – hide in tall grass, lure enemies where you want with distractions, sneak behind them for silent takedowns… it's all been done. The only thing players might not have seen here is Haroona's ability to briefly turn fully invisible – but that rather undermines stealth gameplay entirely, doesn't it?
Yet despite all its objective shortcomings, Unknown 9: Awakening still somehow proves oddly absorbing. It's hard not to get swept up in set pieces like stealing a giant zeppelin that's also an aerial museum filled with arcane esoterica, or poring over background material that links Nikola Tesla to the Ascendants' strange energy experiments – plus, Chalotra is on top form as Haroona throughout, crafting a captivating, layered lead character. Although almost every aspect of the game has been done elsewhere, and often better, it's an enjoyable outing, and especially so for fans of classic pulp adventure.