4PM

4pm is something I first assumed would be along the lines of The Stanley Parable or Ether One, but I was very wrong. The game is advertised as a “short, narrative driven game” - that being quite literally all it is. I could say I wasn’t really impressed with 4pm, but that would be quite the understatement. Disappointment is all I really got from this title. Overall the game is incredibly poor. With no replay value and such a short experience on top of a fairly poor execution, it will leave you wondering what you really played it for in the first place, that is, if you haven’t thrown up within the first five minutes due to the fuzzy and wobbly, low FOV camera. Perhaps if it had a little more polish, such as fixing the camera and not messing the player around with false choices, I might have been able to recommend it a little more as one to watch out for in a sale, but at the end of the day, the flawed design decisions are just too off-putting to recommend at all. EDIT: And before anyone complains about the gameplay time (as that is normally critical in reviews) the game took 22 MINUTES to complete. The extra time was looking for different 'choices' but as shown in my review - there are none. More information can be found in the video review which allows me to explain some technical points much easier, as well as the basic summary below. Hope this helps justify my opinion on this game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_7a6Cv0L-A Summary: + Storyline has SOME engaging moments. - Blurry and fuzzy camera can cause nauseating effects. - Choices aren’t real “choices”. - Game is incredibly short with no replayability. - Poor design decisions throughout with no gameplay elements.

The game is almost exactly what it says it is, if you can call it a game. Its a short film animated and made to be interactive. The only part that I don't see as very true in the desciption is the "Change the Outcome of the Game" part. I mean there are 2 different endings from what I found but until the end I found that the wrong choices just result in a fail, in which they just put you right back at the point of the game where you made the decision, pretty much making you choose 1 path until the end where it actually matters what you choose. I played through it 3 times. It is a pretty good story though and the ending is quite a shocker. The graphics are very blurry at times but it is that way for a reason, and once you start playing, you figure out why. It is definitley something new, I've never played anything like this before and I am a fan of short films so I actually enjoyed this. There is a note at the bottom of the store page stating that this is not a game of intense action, free roaming, or leveling up, and you shouldn't expect to log very many hours on it. That statement is very true so please take this into consideration before purchasing and crying about how short it is. All in all i give it a 7/10 for being unique and the first of its kind that I have played.

Ok first things first this is painfully short,so short in fact that by the time i had gotten into it and was starting to enjoy it,it was all over. This sort of game falls into the same catagory as GONE HOME but is no where near as good graphically as that game or no where near as interesting,to anyone who has played GONE HOME you will understand when i say that the game dealt with issues in its story that we dont see (if at all) in this medium and 4 AM also has this same approach in telling an adult and interesting story. But and its a big "BUT" this is no where near as good as that story and has no where near the length to tell its interesting premise and comes up short,and like i say its all over before its begun. Now before we go any further i know it hasent come from a big publisher or a huge team of developers,but neither have a lot of other games and they really do put this indie game to shame. The graphics are ok,the sound is ok,the script is ok well lets just say this the game is "OK" but nothing special (not in this reveiwers eyes anyway) and that is a shame as it really wants to tell you a good story and really has a good story to tell but you can finish the whole experience in less than half an hour ("HALF AN HOUR" i hear you say) and thats another of its miss givings. I sadly dont reccomend this game to anyone,during a price drop or in a bundle. I can see what they wanted to do and where they wanted to take me,but it fell short of what i wanted it to be and that is a crying shame.

Well, this was a solid half hour of WTF. This was loosely a story about alcoholism and suicide, but not really, since the ending is so vague that who knows what the real message was, other than not lying to yourself. The gameplay, such as it was, wasn't terrible. Obviously it was lo-fi in every way, but it wasn't so relevant since all you do is walk from point A to point B, pick up a few objects along the way, and listen to some tired dialogue. All of that would have been forgiven if the story was better, but it wasn't. It was sparse, uninspired, and lackluster at best. Also, edit your damned text. Seriously, I get that people don't seem to know the difference between lose and loose, but don't let that sort of thing make the final cut. You know, I've played far worse, but these uninspired games that should be better really aggravate me a bit. This clearly meant something to the developer, and yet he/they couldn't be moved to write a better script? Anyway, I wouldn't spend money on this other than as part of a bundle, which is how I got it. Normally I would say to see for yourself, but this time, I would just take the reviews to heart. Not the best first foot forward for the developer. Hopefully, he/they learn from this and put something better out next time if there is a next time. p.s. 4 gb file! Seriously!

I will give the developer credit where it is due; 4PM’s store page bills itself as a mature and unique, albeit short narrative promising an emotional ride on the subjects of alcoholism and suicide. Along with the trailer and screenshots, (that admittedly look pretty good), and a low, low price point, it seems a promising option among the rest of the junk that regularly pops up on steam. And that is where I must give the developer his due; he’s made a really good sell. And that’s the best I can say, because the game itself is a laughable experience, and for literally every wrong reason there could be. First, the entire game is put through a ridiculously prominent fuzz filter, one that is evidently absent from the store’s trailer and screenshots, likely to better entice you into wasting your money. The filter itself is used to try and mask the horrid graphics underneath, but it doesn’t succeed. It loads slowly for no apparent reason, breaking up the many short mid-scene jumps with even longer loading freezes. Worse, the actual animations of the cast, particularly their faces, makes any attempt at creating an emotional resonance with the player fail miserably. Instead, the poor acting and bug eyed reactions will likely give [i]you[/i] the same reaction as I had: loudly laughing your head off at the sheer stupidity at every attempt at “drama”. And what little attempt at a story there is, happens almost entirely at the end. “The big reveal” that occurs near the end of every good drama is shoehorned in with only a couple minutes of piss poor dialogue, with virtually no real exposition or story prior. The absolute pretentiousness of it all is positively palpable throughout. Despite how utterly trash this game is, I recommend it to a specific brand of person. Anyone who enjoyed the previous King to the Pretentious Kingdom, [i]Dinner Date[/i], is in for a real treat. Where I found DD to be comparably boring, 4PM offers several moments of gut wrenching hilarity, particularly during mid-game, where gears shift from pretentious slop to [i]White Girl Simulator 2014[/i]. The entire thing lasts little more than around 25 minutes, and most of that time will be occupied wondering if something is ever going to happen. When something finally does, the credits come not 2 minutes later, and you’ll be left wondering how a single developer could create such an experience, let alone reach his keyboard, with his head so far up his own log cutter.

This game if you care to classify it as a game is very hard to recommend or even review. First off the game is very short, in fact I'll probably spend more time writing this review than I did actually playing the game. The game ultimately comes down to a five minute segment at the end which makes up the meat of the gameplay if you can call it that. You pick a few choices and the story finishes from there. For it's five dollar price tag I wouldn't recommend it, this is more or less something you would find as a tech demo to a much larger game. Heck I would expect to find something like this as a student thesis. The positives of this game are it deals with subject matter that is very rarely ever touched in video games, alcoholism, divorces, suicide, but it's done in such a short span that you really don't care one way or the other about the main character or any of the supporting characters.... If you want an interactive Sunday school special like we saw in the 80's, this may be the game for you. If you want gameplay, graphics, a comprehensive story, or generally a game, this probably won't be for you.

Drunken girl simulator that is mehhhhh.. The gameplay is bad and the story is so-so. The game is quite big 3GB in size and took you only 30 minutes to finish the game.

Один день алкоголика, если быть точнее молодой алкоголички. Это даже не игра, а скорее чья то дипломная работа. На один вечер, Вариативности мало - это минус, но и чего вы хотите за такие копейки. Палец вверх - за старание и точность передачи состояния вечного мутного серого дня, не зависимо от погоды.

What just happened? I'm an alcoholic, I dance around, skip work, and trying to convince a suicidal man (with whom I seem to have an affair with) not to jump from a building that says JMP. And I just don't have memory of anything that has happened at all. And everything just happens within 20 minutes of "gameplay". Man, this was disappointing, the store page led me to believe it was deeper, better. Where was the realism? Where was the feels? At least I got a headache because everything was blurry. So I have that going for me, which is nice.

[h1] Basically a very short story about drug addict. Not very immersive as the experience is way too short. Camera is very blurry and might feel kinda nausea but it somehow depicts the atmosphere. I wouldn't say it's worth playing but you can still watch it. [/h1]