Not only are these moments the most exciting to play, but they also truly enforce exactly how dark and dangerous this world is for the children.

A Plague Tale: Innocence dailystar Share Comments By Rosh Kelly 08:00, 14 MAY 2019 Updated 14:35, 5 OCT 2019 Tech Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel Play now Sign up to FREE email alerts from Daily Star - Gaming Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later.

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Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Despite its rather grim menu and general aesthetic, Plague Tale begins in a beautiful, tranquil forest.

Youre made to feel safe beside your powerful father and faithful hound, but this sense of calm is fleeting.

Your jolly romp through the forest ends alone in a dank bog, where the serene colours of nature are drained away leaving only putrid greys and blacks.

This is where you first glimpse the titular rats, if only in passing.

In Plague Tale you play as Amicia, a young girl forced to escort her even younger brother across an even bleaker medieval France than you can imagine.

Your brother is being hunted by the inquisition, but while the towering men in armour might appear scary, its the vermin that stalk the shadows you should be worried about.

The rats are easily the most unsettling - and interesting - part of Plague Tale, and the game knows it.

Although they are hinted at from the very beginning, it isnt until the third chapter that you really get a sense of them.

While these vermin might have accidentally spread the black death throughout Europe in real life, these rats are much more hands-on when it comes to thinning out the human population.

When you first encounter a horde of rats, complete with demonic red eyes and accompanied by deeply unsettling music, you quickly learn that what you have to be most scared about with these monsters is their hunger.

Bursting out from every feasible crack, you can see hordes of rats that can seemingly devour a human in just a few agonising seconds.

Thankfully they can be warded off with light, which gives Amicia just enough leeway to carve out paths through the swarms and making up most of the games puzzles.

With her trusty and upgradable slingshot, Amicia can normally create a light source by knocking down chandeliers or finding something else flammable to push back the tsunami of vermin.

None of the puzzles are particularly difficult, but the unpleasant sight of failure and the screeching swarm constantly rushing you means you never feel complacent around the rats.

Plague Tale is at its most basic a third-person adventure game, but it adds so many layers of experience, is stylised so well and is so heavy with its theme that even from the first scene it stands out as something special.

These sections task Amicia with stealth as you try to creep past the hulking troopers without running on their sword.

These moments require a little more thought than those built around their fleshy-tailed counterparts, but youll never find yourself stuck for what to do, nor will you feel like Sekiro or Sam Fisher as you duck your way into the long grass.

The game goes out of its way to tell you how powerless you are against the threats that block your path, and its that tension that makes the game so exciting.

Where the game gets really interesting though, is when there are both rats and soldiers before you.

Neither plays well together and youll soon find yourself pitting one enemy against another to get by.

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