Tender Loving Care

Tender Loving Care is one of those 90s experiments, a mix of a movie and a game. And I think it is this duality that is the problem; whoever made TLC was way better at making movies than games. This one feels badly thought out or even unfinished in places and I lost my enthusiasm for the game pretty quickly, ploughing on to the end (twice) more out of stubborness than any real enjoyment. At the beginning you are tasked with figuring out events that went on in a certain house (so something that happened in the past). However, once you start the game you actually interract with the house and its inhabitants (some of whom address you directly) in the present, although time travel is definitely not a possibility in this setting. This is already an indication that the game was badly thought out and it does not get better from there. Essentially the game has three modes: you are watching movie clips about what is happening or listening to the characters expressing their inner thoughts, you are looking around the house for clues and once you are done with that you can move the game on to the next phase by taking a psychological assessment and a quiz. No problem with the first activity, the movie part is pretty good. Searching around the house however, becomes very dull very quickly, there is far too little to find, some items remain where they are throughout the game and do not change (although you have to check them just in case). The psychology part gives you some short evaluation at the end, which seems to have no impact on the game and of no interest, although the quiz does influence the ending you will get. The cycle repeats for each phase which can only hold your attention for so long. Not long enough to make it an enjoyable game. Overall, I would struggle to recommend it to anyone. If you are into branching stories and making choices affecting the eventual ending you may be better off picking up a visual novel. There are tonnes out there that are way better.

This is a clever approach to an interactive movie -- the content doesn't change at all based on your choices, until the very end, but by leaving it up to you what you choose to see and asking you leading questions between chapters, the game subtly twists your perception into seeing events in different lights. To be completely honest, I'm not actually sure what a good job the game does of this, but it's a good-faith effort, and a clever approach to interactivity I'd not seen before. When I say I'm not sure, I mean exactly that -- I am not criticizing. I would have to play the game through again to get a sense of how the questions and order of events change things, and at the end of the day I don't enjoy psychological thrillers enough to slog through another 5+ hours of grainy '90s video and prerendered CG. If someone were trying to make a game like this today (and I know some folks are; Tim Follin's Baggy Cat Entertainment has made some excellent additions to this genre since 2015), I think I would recommend introducing events on a conflicting timeline so that you had to make choices about what to watch that would lock you out of other choices. That would go a long way toward replayability. The most important criticism to make of this game is that the original game apparently included a dollar-store psych eval of the player at its conclusion, and that is missing in this version. This is a huge gap, as some kind of reward for the time you've spent answering dozens if not hundreds of questions is sorely missing. The multiple endings of the story are all pretty unsatisfying (as psychological thriller endings often are), and you can be left feeling like you've wasted five hours of your life watching a two-hour movie very, very slowly. The story is more mundane than 7th Guest's or 11th Hour's, and I'd say it falls between them in terms of quality (I did not like 11th Hour). It's worth noting that what nudity is present is not the feel-good kind.

This "game" certainly deserves more recognition and exposure than what it currently has. I may be a bit biased as I enjoy interactive FMV experiences such as this, but even looking at it from a neutral point of view, the amount of thought and design that went into creating this is VERY impressive considering the technical limitations of 1996. The choices you make affect the story so seamlessly and I noticed on my second playthrough that scenes have subtle changes (each scene was shot multiple times for different choices you make as the viewer) which is brilliant and way ahead of its time. The TATs or questionnaires you take are different for each playthrough, and if you pay close attention during your exploration of the Overton house, the character's journal entries and reactions are determined by your choices. It's quite amazing how this makes the story feel alive and under your influence; it made the replayability high with a fresh perspective. As for the story itself, it's has a very well written script with plenty of mysteries which can be uncovered at your discretion. The actors involved gave a good performance, and I found myself believing that John Hurt was an actual therapist -- a clear sign that I was immersed in the world. It doesn't shy away from exploring deep and sometimes dark places of the human psyche, and reveals that people in the 90's really weren't very different from people today -- we are still struggling with emotional and mental health crises that deserve the attention of our society rather than disdain. As for the technical aspects, I had to change the compatibility of the exe to "Windows Vista" and turn off "full screen optimizations" which allowed me to play with no problems. The exploration animations can get old, but you can turn them off in the map menu which is good. The one thing I disliked was the resolution of the video -- quite low even for DVD -- but it is bearable. Overall, if you like a good story, this was made for you!

Tender Loving Care isn't really a game as such, more of a short FMV movie with interactive moments in between where you can learn more about the background of the story and characters, mainly by going through their stuff. There are also questions to be answered about the story thus far and your feelings and opnions mainly on sex. These answers are used to build up a psychological profile of your self. Because it was for sale and thus very cheap, I thought I could take the risk and try it. I appreciate something different and I really wanted to like this, but I just didn't. The acting wasn't that bad and the general story was OK at best. As a stand alone short movie it would be a pretty mediocre little thriller. I was going to say "erotic" thriller, since the emphasis of the game clearly lies on erotics within psychology, but to be honoust, except for maybe one or two scenes there's hardly any erotic content and I found the focus more on how sex can be used to influence people than it being a sexy movie. That's not a bad thing by the way and I thought it was an interesting topic to begin with and during the first half I was curious how things would evolve, but in the second half I just lost interest because it's just much repetition of the same. Also the interactive interludes became a bit annoying and overly long. I just skipped certain things to get back to the main story. I read that the plot changes by some choices you make, which I can't confirm nor deny after one play through and I probably won't play the game again to find out. If I could I would give the game 2,5 stars, but having to choose between 2 and 3, I chose the former.

ok old FMV game with a pretty linear story where choices almost don't matter. Don't even try it out a second time it's the same, not worth it, but one play trough I guess can be ok if it's on sale. Psychological thriller that is more of a cheap soft porn for no real reason rather than a thriller, the exploring the house after every single level is just a pure waste of time it has no impact on the storyline whatsoever and just adds more wicked sex stuff and wickedly bad and malpracticing psychology / psychiatric bullsh!t I paid like 1.2$ so I can't be too frustrated other than the time I lost I guess it wasn't all that bad...