Hide The Corpse Review

Who knew a game about hiding a recently murdered, moustachioed man could be so lighthearted and funny? Hide the Corpse’s brief gameplay loop, blended with a funky, 70’s aesthetic and a slew of ragdoll shenanigans, makes for a frantic and creative mess. 

Hide the Corpse has a straightforward premise. You’re dumped in an unfamiliar locale next to a dead guy and are given moments to hide his lifeless vessel. Thankfully, each stage holds several convenient adult-male-sized holes you can cram your fresh cadaver in. All you have at your disposal are your two bare hands, your quick wit, and a 4-minute timer ticking down to the coppers knocking down your door. 

Along with dead guy Gus, there is also the matter of all his belongings you need to stow away, and your pesky fingerprints you leave behind on anything you touch. The game’s short stage time makes getting busted mildly easy but also rarely punishing. Room puzzles are all mostly straightforward, and you’re never frustratingly far from a cupboard or cryogenic chamber to drop Gus into. Your performance is ranked on how fast you hid the body and evidence, along with any fingerprints you may have left unscrubbed by the time the pigs come sniffin’. Along with the six stages you can unlock, there are multiple variants of Gus that you can obtain by hitting S Ranks on enough hiding spots. There are also modifiers that you can use to boost your score and add more variety to your playthroughs, my favourite being the modifier that halves the timer for even more tension and chaos.

The game is a romp to play, putting me into a hurried frenzy, throwing couch cushions across the room and trying to stuff limbs into a wall safe. There’s a nice balance of physicality that the game asks of you, only really asking you to crouch down or reach up high at times. Character movement is controlled with the left thumbstick, whilst a selection of camera angles are set to the right, reducing the need to pivot your body and minimising motion sickness. With a smaller space at home, I was over the moon that I never actually had to take any steps around my living room, lest I accidentally plough head-first through my TV.

The game exudes this unashamedly campy ’70s vibe, with a mix of period-suitable wallpaper, furnishings, and pinups. Gus, with his bushy moustache and garish clothing, is the perfect mascot for such a game. This design is cohesive, adding to the clarity that is needed for a VR game like this. I appreciated being able to recognise everything I could and should interact with almost immediately, given the time constraints. The plucky ’70s music put me in a great vibe, only combated by the intermittent police chatter coming through over my walkie-talkie. The game consistently strikes a nice balance between tension and looseness.

Dressing its dark humour in a visage of 70’s slapstick, Hide the Corpse is one of the better VR games I’ve played since owning my PSVR2 about 6 months ago. The game’s over-the-top camp and ragdoll physics, mixed with a slew of opportunities for improvisation, create an environment that’s exciting and chaotic. I hope more content is brought out for the game, as I’d love to discover how many more places I can stuff a dead body, purely for research purposes.