2. Blair Witch General hints and tips

If you've played any other Bloober Team game, Blair Witch will feel very similar in terms of how it plays, but if you haven't, there are a couple of quirks to the controls that can take a bit of getting used to. For veterans of these kinds of games, Blair Witch has a couple of new mechanics that you'll be using quite regularly, but nothing too crazy or out there for the genre.

The controls are as follows:

- Movement
- Camera Controls
- Item Controls (Phone and Radio)
- Interact
- Zoom / Raise camcorder
- Confirm / Nightvision on/off (With camcorder equipped)
- Crouch / Cancel / Back
- Watch Tapes (With camcorder equipped)
- Not used
- (Hold)Inventory / (Tap)Equip/Unequip item (Will equip certain items contextually at points)
- (Tap) Call Bullet / (Hold) Command Bullet (Must be near Bullet and facing him to command)
- Pause Menu
- Not used

In comparison to, say, Observer, there's a lot more going on here and this applies to the actual levels of the game as well. Throughout your time in Burkitsville Forest, you'll be doing a lot of wandering and searching, but fortunately, Bullet is here to guide you.

Along with being just the goodest boy, Bullet is very integral to your survival and navigation within the game. Hence, he has a whole button dedicated to him and his actions. Tapping will make Ellis call out to Bullet, whereupon Bullet will bark and you'll be given an indicator telling you what direction he's in, provided he hears you. When Bullet runs up to you, holding will bring up a wheel with 5 commands that you can select with the : Seek, Pet, Reprimand, Wait and Stay Close. You're more than likely never going to use Reprimand or Wait at all during the game, but you'll be very familiar with the other 3 by the time the first playthrough starts to wrap up.

Bullet also ties into the game's combat and exploration portions of the game. While exploring, he'll occasionally bring you items all on his own, while others you'll need to tell him to search for. The way he's reacting to the world will also give you an indication of whether or not something is nearby, mainly displayed by two behaviours: growling and whimpering. If it's the latter, it means that there's a totem nearby that you can destroy, which can contain collectibles. If it's the former, it means there are enemies around...

Which brings us to combat. While a pacifist playthrough is necessary, attempting it on your first run will make things way harder than they need to be, plus there are achievements tied to killing enemies. Don't worry, Resident Evil this is not and killing enemies simply requires you to shine your flashlight on them for a few seconds. However, the enemies you'll come across are difficult to see at times and are much more easily found using Bullet (who'll face enemies and growl at them when combat starts) and by using audio. Plus they also happen to be quite fast, which can be rather terrifying when you see one or two dart by the corner of your eye. Fortunately, like any horror game worth it's salt, you can more or less pinpoint enemies with sound if you have headphones or a surround sound setup.

A word on the collectibles and the endings: There are a total of 5 different collectible types, which I will mark out in the walkthrough and count up with you. These collectibles are:

• Victim Photos (43)
• Psychiatrist Notes (9)
• Wooden Dolls (13)
• Dog Tags (6)
• Trash (15)

You don't need to find them all in one playthrough, but there is no chapter select, so missing one somewhere will require another playthrough (if you're lucky and have a save, make use of it in that case). However, the victim photos can cause you to miss out on the good ending if you're trying to get that achievement. Remember the totems I mentioned earlier? They affect the ending you get, so by breaking them, you can void the good ending, despite playing the pacifist route perfectly.

The only other noteworthy thing I can think of is the game's saving system. Fortunately, collectibles seem to be tied to your account, so once you pick one up, the progress tracker on the Xbox dashboard will tick up. Unfortunately, the game doesn't do any other tracking in-game, so if you miss something, you're just gonna need to make an educated guess on your 2nd run through the game. As for the general story progression and whatnot, the game only auto-saves at specific checkpoints throughout the game and these can sometimes be fairly far apart. When you make a manual save, it merely gives you a copy of the last auto-save you triggered, so if it's been a bit since your last auto-save, a manual one isn't going to help you out. You just need to push on to the next auto-save before you quit.

That about wraps up the general stuff, so without further ado, let's load up a new game and start our search.