An extremely engaging story. I would not call it a game. The "puzzles" are too basic for a challenge. Instead, the interaction is a way to keep the viewer engaged. It's like a movie where you can walk around the set and experience the story from multiple angles. The graphics are incredible, and their is a lot of effort put into the details. This is about the experience not the challenge, and it succeeds in creating a unique experience.
The plot revolves around a sadistic psychopath who from the young age cruelly manipulated and killed people. The story feels convoluted at the beginning, but becomes clear later in the game without any cliffhangers or mysteries left at the end. The storytelling is mostly compelling, but some parts are too contrived and far-fetched. One moment the main protagonist acts correctly - goes to the police and they find evidence to clear him from being framed by the psychopath. I was surprised how proper that was. But in a later scene, the protagonist is forced to enter first a dangerous crime scene, while two armed policemen are covering behind him. What?
Throughout the game you play as multiple characters and experience the story through flashbacks, slowly revealing parts of the puzzle.
Regarding the gameplay, walking around in circles looking for a few active spots was annoying, making already slow-paced game glacial. At least the play areas were tiny.
The character style felt weird, but I think it can mostly be attributed to stiff and awkward animations and poor lipsync. Though I ended up emphasizing with the protagonist and his hirsute chest. Poor guy.
Still, worth a playthrough.
This game has a lot of challenges, twists, and truns in it. Being the doctor in helping your patient to get back his memories is a great undertaking. As well as keeping him alive to make a case; as to what really happened to him. I will play more to find that out!! :) :) Thank You Gamemakers This Beautiful Game, And it's a Wonderful Comliment to That Old Movie " Vertigo "!!!
The story of the game is quite interesting and graphics are good enough to enjoy it. But at the end it's more like an interactive movie than a video game. You take some decisions during the story but it seems none of them affects the events. Also, pace of the story is quite slow, there are some chapters that you would like to play them at x2.
I was excited for this because I love the movie - this has nothing to do with the movie. Apart from the appearance of stairs and someone being afraid of height.
The story takes 4 hours to find a direction and then you swim for another 2 in a feverdream soap opera. The characters never get developed, none of the crimes really make sense and the cherry on top is you get gross misrepresentation of medical conditions.
But that's not all that is bad. All of the gameplay is boring and not adding value to the game. I enjoy a good walking simulator - but they couldn't even get this right. None of your actions have consequences, none of your choices are choices.
Graphics are nice, Animation is medium, Sound is off in a lot of places.
The game edges you and never really gets around to tell you the story - but when it does it is so unsatisfactory and insane that you will probably feel betrayed for your time.
Please DO NOT READ the following, I will spoil the story to show you how insane and nonsensical the writing is. I wonder how anyone thought this story is worth being told interactive - but then there is Pendulo and they have no judgement at all.
A girl that went psychopath because of childhood abuse is adopted by a publisher. That publisher spends too much time with a writer that he is publishing. So the girl forms the plan to get rid of the writer to have daddy for herself. But the first plan to frame him with sexy pictures of herself fails and she lands herself in a mental institution. In which she kills her inmate and take on her identity. She then lives 8 years under that false identity, also has to kill the grandmother of her inmate friend. For some reason the inmate parents never discover who she is. But she manages to get a Yale degree in psychology in that time and applies for a position in the only mental institution close to the writer. Because her plan of revenge is to become his doctor and torture him further. But for that she has to get him committed. Which is easily done. She turns up at his house, wounded and drugs and seduces him. Then they do the deed and she spends 9 months being pregnant being offscreen some place else. Yes, actually... Then she returns to the writer with the baby and lures him into a relationship so that he develops a bond with the child. Then she fakes an accident to make the writer believe he killed her and the baby so that he tries to kill himself. But she already hired a third person to save him from that. And then she gets killed by the writers cat, who had it in for her from the start because the writer gave her a blanket that the cat wanted to sit on. So the moment you realize she is the killer is the moment you already know the crime has been punished because she is dead. All the bad deeds of hers get blamed on offscreen childhood abuse that turned her psycho. Which is a bold claim. Real life psychopathy works very different from whatever this story tells.
Please take care of your mental health and don't indulge in bad representation like this.
