Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo

I have never been hooked on a game while playing. This one had my mouth dropping after every turn. If you are into story driven games i highly recommend you play this game.

I haven’t watched the movie but the game, as such, is great. It offers a suspenseful narrative until the end; once you start playing you find it hard to quit. I also liked the graphics, the music and the voice acting, all of which supported the virtual experience. However, I would provide the player a couple of more opportunities for more active engagement in problem-solving.

Megaspiel für Spielerinnen, Spieler und alle Spielende dazwischen und außerhalb (wat war dat früher mit der Anrede so einfach, aber da müsst Ihr "Progressivenden*Innen" des 21. Jahrhunderts jetzt eben durch.), die eine spannende Story dem üblichen Actiongedöns vorziehen, aber auch nix für harte Puzzle-Freaks. Im Prinzip eher linearer Spielablauf im Großen und Ganzen, also ein interaktiver Film, trotzdem Suspense in bester Hitchcock-Tradition. Die Charaktere im leichten Comicstil hätte ich mir etwas realistischer gewünscht. Was am Ende zählt: ich hatte viele Abende wirklich, wirklich tolle, spannende (what comes next?) Unterhaltung! Ich werde es sicher noch einmal durchspielen.

I know nothing about the Alfred Hitchcock story that this game seems to have drawn inspiration from, so any positive or negative feelings towards this game, do not apply to the original story. Vertigo is a story about a man, named Ed, who wakes up at the edge of a cliff with his destroyed car laying at the bottom. Ed believes his wife and child were in the car, and have now perished. He blames himself due to being the one driving and is overcome with guilt. He then sees a man on a bridge ready to throw himself to his death. He runs up to him, and realises that the man on the bridge is actually his father, his dad jumps off the cliff and that's where the story starts. We flash to Ed being in his house and learn that he has been bed-ridden since the accident and cannot move and is in therapy. At first, Ed is rude, standoffish and egotistical. Gradually however we realise that there's a lot more to Ed than what is shown on the surface. This is how most of the story is portrayed, through therapy sessions and working inside of his mind. After the first session we come to realise that he has a shield up, and that years of mental torture has made him become stuck as a child in a man's body. Suddenly we flash and take control of a police Sheriff that is taking on a missing persons case. This quickly escalates to a murder mystery with Ed as the main suspect. Through the course of the game you play as multiple characters. Ed, a therapist and a cop. Each person has their own unique experience and focus of the case. The cop is focused on trying to solve the murder case, but the more you play as them you realise that they may be trying too hard in finding evidence that links Ed to the scene of the crime. The therapist studies Ed's mind, very much working one-on-one with him, trying to uncover hidden truths lurking inside. Finally Ed, who is trying to piece together what happened and how he managed to crash the car, since he cannot remember anything about the accident. there's also a fourth, the villain. You see the case through their eyes, showing you why this all happened. Something I disliked about the game at first, but grew to love was the style. At first, these play dough people felt uncanny, and I struggled to empathise with them. Then you realise where the art style shines, the more horrifying parts of the game. In one part you play as the main villain who is practising their smiles, doing so because they're a diagnosed psychopath who cannot easily replicate human emotions. You go through and pick a smile for them to use when greeting one of the main characters, and it just left me with an air of unease. The face contorts into shapes that resemble a smile, minus all of the emotions that come with one. The more we look back on the murderer's past the more uncanny their face becomes. Sharper, more visible edges and more fake emotions. The art style really leans into these uncanny moments of the game to the point where, once you flashback to any other character their faces seem so normal in comparison. For the most part this is a story that feels like it could've happened, the moment to moment gameplay feels very grounded and real. This game isn't about ghosts or alien invasions, it is about the mental decline of the human mind. Both Ed and the villain share this mental decline, showing two ends of the spectrum. One who has trying to heal from their trauma with the support of their family and therapist. The other who instead choses to be engulfed by theirs. They are someone who doesn't allow people to come close, only having one goal, revenge. The story focuses on this idea, and how without the correct support mental decline can turn people into monsters. This next section is going to be what I didn't like about the story, it is going to be heavily filled with spoilers about the main villains actions. Towards the end you see more from the villains perspective. Slowly uncovering why they hold this grudge towards Ed and honestly... it falls very flat. The general gist is that they don't like Ed because the main villain did something to Ed, because of that they were sent to a mental institution. I ♥♥♥♥ you not, this is the big reason as to why this person stalks, sexually assaults and mentally tortures him. When the villain was a teen, they didn't like that Ed spent time with their father so they decided to plant fake evidence onto Ed's phone so that he'd be taken by the police and locked up; giving her father more time to be with her. Obviously the plan backfires, the police investigate and finds that all of the evidence suggests Ed was being setup. The teen was then sentenced to a mental institution, making them have to leave their father. Because of this they come up with a plan is to graduate from college as a psychiatrist, get a job in a specific hospital near Ed, mentally torment him so he's sentenced to that specific hospital and then torture him as his psychiatrist. This plot is stupid. Like yes, I understand that they're a psychopath. But... that's not how psychopaths act. They [i]can be[i] self destructive, they [i]can[/i] hold grudges but [i]nobody[/i] would act like this mental or not. It's such lazy writing to be like "Oh this person created this multi-year long plan to abuse and torture this guy" and you ask "but why?" and the entire answer is that "well... they're insane, duh". Also what is the end goal? Seriously, was their plan to just mentally torture Ed as forever? Trade in one mental hospital for another? How does that give her more time with her father? Another thing that is bizarre is [spoiler] the villain dies basically mid game. [/spoiler] It becomes a new mystery of [spoiler]"how did the killer die?". The reveal being is that their death was caused by... a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ common house cat. It is shown at the very end, and it's so stupid that my eyeballs rolled into the back of my skull.[/spoiler] The developers created this mystery, purely for the illusion of having a multi-layered story, only for them to be like [spoiler] "LOL, wouldn't it be funny if the cat killed her?" The cat literally just jumps onto her and she falls to her death. ITS A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CAT, NOT A KANGAROO. A full grown adult cat jumping onto your chest doesn't create enough power to knock you off balance to your death. [/spoiler] If this was a more wacky story, I could probably let most of this go. But the fact that it treats itself as a realistic gritty tale, that is grounded in reality only for the last 25% of the game to be a story [i]so bizarre[/i] that not even the Scooby-gang would believe, it just messes with the satisfaction of a good ending. Overall, I really enjoyed the game. I spent a lot of time ranting about the last part of the game, however the 9 hours before that was genuinely amazing. The gameplay is fun, unravelling the story and the mysteries are enjoyable. However the ending, and the wackiness towards the end knock it down a few points for me. 7/10. Still fun, but to enjoy the last bits you have to suspend disbelief even against the world the developers have created.