Late Shift

Very immersive interactive fiction. Quality of your favourite Netflix original. Great acting. Many games that provide 'choice' show the immediate impact of that choice however I felt that you never knew what the 'right choice' was until the game's conclusion i.e. you had to let it play out. Game is very short but I think it is intended for multiple playthroughs - I was certainly interested enough to go back and make other decisions. The narrative is tense and fast paced. Choose your own adventure at its' finest. More for the book or movie lover than hardcore gamer.

Late Shift is a throwback to the "interactive films" of the early CD-ROM era in the mid-nineties. Like those early titles, this one too isn't exactly a game, as the interactivity is on the level of a DVD menu (only with a timer). But if you look at Late Shift for what it is, rather than what it isn't, it certainly has its value. Firstly, the cinematography is pretty, the story quite gripping and the acting rather good. You are faced with a number of choices, many of which may alter the progression of the story in big and often unexpected ways. The total running time of all the videos is just over 4 hours, so there should be plenty of permutations available - I completed the 'game' three times and always saw something new. The story lasts a little over an hour, which seems just about right. On the flip side, there's no chapter selection after you complete the story once, forcing you to always start over, and the videos are unskippable (including the 6 minutes of end credits) - that could get quite annoying on replays. The audio sometimes cuts off at the seams between two videos, which is odd, but not too bad. Oh, and I found it strange that a 'game' consisting mostly of MP4 files has no native Linux version. Overall, an interesting experiment that is worth checking out, but certainly not something that's going to catch on with mass audiences.

It's the "we're going to make movies interactive" that you remember from the era of CD-ROM drives, now brought to 2017! I wish I could say that meant it didn't have some of the same problems. I have a kind of nostalgic affection for what were once termed "FMV" (Full Motion Video) games, back when the idea of a computer displaying video was novel. As such, you might want to remove a star if you don't have any such affection, and another if you think "FMV games are a crummy idea and this one needs to prove something." What I will say is that this feels like a movie. The video quality is excellent, the acting is all at par, soundtrack is decent (I do get a little tired of the "rolling kettle drum" when they're trying to generate tension), and while I doubt it received a *huge* budget, it at least was working with enough that the props and costumes look appropriate and you don't feel they're having to pretend Aunt Esther's garage is a terrorist hideout. The game regularly asks for your input, and doesn't jog horribly after you answer (a problem endemic during those CD-ROM games.) Most of your answers make little or no difference as you head towards one of the seven endings, but at least you feel like a participant rather than just a spectator most of the time. For me, the biggest problem is that there's no obvious "save" or "go back". I did accidentally go back to beginning of chapter once by hitting escape and returning to menu, but I don't know if that's consistent. Under time pressure, you can easily make what you know is a mistake even as you do it... But there's no clear way to undo it, and while it's an okay yarn, that doesn't mean you want to re-watch an hour of video several times to see how a single choice changes things. Maybe they'll patch that in...? I also agree with an earlier reviewer that, story-wise, unpredictable things->sudden insight->"successful" conclusion. You may enjoy it more as an interactive movie than as a "win/lose" game.

This is literally a pioneer in FMV-movies (not cartoons like Telltale). Therefore, it is not surprising that somewhere there are some sharp corners, somewhere small inconsistencies. But in general, everything is done pretty decent. I want to believe that this project will not be an isolated one, and in the future such FMV-approach will become the standard in general for most of the films, because its potential is huge. Due to the impossibility of fast scrolling, all 7 endings are unlikely to open, because it will be too boring to revise the same thing. But for 3-4 times to review its quite enough.

A beautiful new FMV title that combines both the best and the worst of the genre in quite an addictive package. It really is a gorgeous game to play with plenty of London scenery porn; they must have spent a decent amount to get it to look so slick. Honestly it's goos that they did because the major downside is that to see all the scene variations & access all the chapters (so you can get all the endings) you're gonna be seeing a whole lot of the same scenes over and over and over. I loved this game and even I was getting bored as I chased those last few remaining endings. I hope the team brings us another FMV title as interesting as this one but with perhaps just a little more refinement on the gameplay interface front.