I love a good mix of mystery in with my horror, so “Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting” seemed like it would be right up my alley. The medical imagery shown in the game’s Steam screen shots seemed promising, too. Everything about the way that the game presented itself seemed like something I would love. What could possibly go wrong? A whole lot, as it turns out.

The story of “Corrosion” could potentially have been good. Sure, you can see the twist coming from a mile away, but a cult of drugged up demon hunters definitely has a lot of promise. It’s a shame that this promise is broken pretty quickly. There’s a whole lot of text to read in this game, and a whole lot of it is very bad. The authors of all the various diaries and whatnot found throughout seem to have all the sentence-construction abilities of your average YouTube comment, complete with several typos throughout and multiple sentences ending with three exclamation points. To try to talk about the quality of the writing in this game is an insult to the word “quality.” It seems almost like someone let a twelve year-old describe his idea for a bad-ass demon hunter and then just put all of that down without even running it through a spell-check.

The dated-but-serviceable graphics are the closest thing that “Corrosion” has to a redeeming factor. It’s a series of very flat, still images of passable quality. You can easily tell what things are supposed to be. That is the nicest thing that I can think of to say about this game. The color palette here feels very flat and lifeless. Then there are parts when all the color washes out and everything gets covered with rust and scratches. You know, like “Silent Hill 2.” Except that “Silent Hill 2” was good.

“Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting” features full voice-acting. I wasn’t expecting that. However, the voice-acting is terrible. I was expecting that. I can’t help but feel that the game’s two actors (who did voices for about six different characters) have either never read out loud before, or failed out of their middle school drama classes. As for the music, get ready to hear the same poorly-composed ambient track on a loop for three hours. I would frankly have rather had no sound at all than the sound that is actually in this game.

The gameplay of “Corrosion” is a mix of the worst aspects of “Myst” and 90s-era adventure games. You’ll click through needlessly long walks down empty corridors, and then solve puzzles that make no sense. Maybe I’m just spoiled by the multiple, common-sense solutions to puzzles in “A Wolf In Autumn” but the way that this game frequently became a matter of guessing which solution the game’s creator had in mind rather than figuring out what would actually work. Much like in “Myst” you have to click through screens to walk through them, but unlike in “Myst” this includes a chase scene where you have to struggle with those controls. “Myst” however came out in 1993. Its clunky interface can be forgiven. “Corrosion” came out over twenty years later and does not have the luxury of that excuse.

“Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting” had potential. However, it squanders that potential at every possible turn. I firmly believe that this is one of the worst video games that I have ever played, and I am amazed by the gall of the developers who are asking for $8 in exchange for this train wreck. I bought it on sale for two dollars and I still feel like I spent at least ten bucks too much on this game. Save your time and money for something better.