Late Shift

[regemond]

So this is a weird one. It's a 'cinematic FMV thriller' developed by Wales Interactive. It's basically a modern re-read of the FMV games that seemed to be really popular in the days of Sega CD, except the compression isn't godawful. The tagline is Your Decisions Are You, which I think is an awesome line and gives great scope to the 'game' as a whole.

 

The story follows Matt, a student who is working the titular late shift in a secure car park. Basically, shit happens and he gets roped into a heist with a bunch of supposed organised criminals (they can't be that fucking organised if they're forcing a stranger to tag along, but whatever).

 

As with all thrillers, twists and turns happen along the way and before you know it you're trying to keep yourself from being murdered.

 

I'm keeping it intentionally vague because I don't want to put major plot points down, even in the spoilers.

 

Anyway, it plays out like a streamlined version of a Telltale game. All the decisions, none of the bloat. No wandering off, investigating the environment etc, just watch the show and make your choices.

 

And it's filmed like a half way decent BBC drama too. The camera cuts in the right places, the music suits each scene, and for the most part it's acted pretty well. Except the lead weirdly. He didn't quite hit the mark on a couple of sections. That's how I felt anyway.

 

What I really like though, is that the choices you make do seem to affect the story. So I watched the trailer as I was making the Mrs a cuppa, and there's at least two scenes I haven't seen. That's on top of the different direction one of the scenes I did see can go.

 

Looking at the main menu option Your Decisions, it seems I've found 1/7 endings, 11/14 chapters and I've made a total of 62 decisions.

 

It's only about an hour long, so I've already played it start to finish, but I really want to jump straight back in and try to find some more of the chapters as well as getting a couple more endings. 

 

I got this for £5-6 on PSN, if you can get it cheap I'd definitely recommend.

[Hendo]

I watched some of it on Giant Bomb and it looked pretty funny in the usual FMV way. Might pick it up on the cheap.

[regemond]

Forgot to post on this one - I did go back into it on Friday night, this time taking completely different options to see how it played out. Not only did it change the script in some scenes, but I completely missed others out and even saw one or two scenes I hadn't the first time around.

 

I then went back in a third and final time and did some trophy hunting. I've now got my fourth Platinum ever, and all are from story games (the other three are Telltale ones). I'm still high on the concept, and I think Wales have done a great job with making the playthroughs play out slightly differently. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out to see what else they do in the future.