Interrogation Files: Port Landsend

Really enjoying this game so far but just wanted to say: LORD the actress for Natalie is weak. You can literally see her staring at the script the whole time. This lead to me realising as I went back through the others that they ALL do it, but Natalie was the most egregious. Fun idea for a game. I enjoyed it. But uhhh, in the future, maybe either move the cue cards or just idk hire some actual actors who can learn their lines lol

Five suspects, one crazy story. Story: You play as an unnamed detective. You're assigned a cold case from Port Landsend. When four college students are brutally murdered, five suspects emerge that could have done something with it, but the more you delve into the case, the more you realize that there's something much bigger in play here. I'll begin by saying that I absolutely adored the story at first. It's a very captivating storyline and the more you advance they give you just enough details to really hook you to figure out what happened, but very quickly the plot becomes a bit too predictable. I don't really want to spoil it, but the angle they chose for the motive is a bit mediocre. It has a nice set up, but the execution itself feels a bit too rough for my liking. Some of the writing is also really rough. There's tons of slang terms thrown around that weren't in use at the time the game supposedly takes place. Also just some of the dialogue is just very rough. It's not to say all of it, there' genuinely some great writing here, but when it gets rough, boy it gets rough. Graphics: Interrogation Files: Port Landsend is a throwback FMV game and of course the biggest comparison is Her Story ( a bit more on that later) and I think they nail the style in their own unique way, however I do take issue with some of it. First I'll begin with the positives. It mostly really nails the grimy nature of VHS tapes with plenty of glitching and tearing. The cinematography is alright, although it's simply people sitting on chairs and talking. The UI for the computer you use is decent and nicely compact, although it feels a bit too simplistic for my liking. Her Story genuinely felt like you were placed behind a PC and asked to use the OS, here it just gives that vibe that you're in a game with plenty of things not resembling what they are, like a group chat etc. Audio: I'll begin by saying I loved the music. There's not much music, but there's ambient tracks that plays when you're watching the videos and it really plays into the uneasy atmosphere and really creeps you out. The atmosphere is great and sitting in the dark and playing this game would be a blast. The audio recording quality ranges in quality, but it's mostly good. There's gimmicks of audio quality dropping because of in story reasons so they were done on purpose, so it's kind of cool in a way. However the acting itself ranges from decent to downright horrible. Mostly the acting is passable. Each actor has their rough spots, but they feel like they're trying their best and then there's the actress for Natalie. She does seem to be even trying. Her actress performs each line like she's reading straight from the script and that's because she is. She's constantly looking over to the side and reading the lines straight from the script and her performance sucks because of it. Gameplay: The gameplay of Interrogation Files Port Landsend is very simplistic and is heavily inspired by Her Story. Here's the basic rundown. You're placed behind a search engine and have to type in terms to unlock recorded footage from the interrogations which also helps you unlock evidence to solve the case. It works very well at first and actually in some places works much better than Her Story. When typing in a term, it can actually pull of a chain of videos and they're categorized in sequence so you have the full context of the clips you're looking at, which was something Her Story didn't have and you can go out of order, which made that story more convoluted. That's not to say the story here doesn't get convoluted, you can easily jump much further into the interview and miss out on important information and this is where the biggest problem with the game lies and that's the search engine. Finding videos is just absolutely baffling. The game asks you to use incredibly specific terms to find certain videos, otherwise they won't come up. To give you an example, when I was close to the end of the game I found a clip where the police talked about investigating a certain building, so I decided to type in the term "Warrant" which made no videos appear. I decided to use the help tool which unlocks a single video, which unlocked a video where the police talk about getting a search warrant. I decided to type in Search Warrant and the same video appeared, but warrant alone was not enough. It's not that big of an issue considering a good amount of the videos you can unlock just using your brain and there is a tool to help you out incase you get stuck and you'll definitely use it by the closing hours, but I wish the search tool did not need incredibly specific phrases to get videos. Verdict: For a first attempt Interrogation Files: Port Landsend is a great detective story and although it has it's shortcomings, I had a blast with it's mystery. If the developers iron out it's issues and get better actors, I could see their next game being downright amazing. Final Rating: 7/10 Pros: + Great central mystery + Investigating is really fun + Nails the aesthetic + Some great ambience Cons: - Story derails by the end with a pretty weak resolution - Acting is hit or miss, especially Natalie - Search engine requires incredibly specific terms for certain videos If you liked this review please consider joining https://steamcommunity.com/groups/completingthebacklog and https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews

Unfortunately the bad acting is too distracting for the serious tone, and I couldn't get into it as a result. I feel bad, I wanted to like it.

This is one of the best detective games for background story, characters and how detailed the town is. You can tell alot of the work went into those parts of the game. It was also creepy and cozy at the same time. I loved combing through the videos and getting little hints here and there. I also enjoyed having emails and messages from co-workers. And it was great that you could keep notes and review the history of searches and videos. There were definitely some negatives though. While the evidence was a cool touch and some of them provided additional searches, it seemed that a few were just throw away images. Why keep those in? in addition, one in particular seemed to make one of the suspects guilty. Without spoiling anything, if you look closely at the "Type", you'll notice a smudge and ghost letter (that was erased). But there was no way to interact with this clue for the game to acknowledge my keen eye. There were other clues and hints in other images that the game should acknowledge. This felt like a disconnect! The other things are there is definitely a sound balancing issue. I understand filming different actors in different settings can do that, but why not use a simple sound compressor? The video controls cover the subtitles for a few seconds. Not a big deal, so just move the subtitles up to the top maybe. And I'm sorry but the band girl was the worst actor ever! She broke the game for me! It was like she is an actual robot with no timing, inflection or personality. Just terrible!! The balancing was a bit off in that, I started out super excited because I unlocked dozens of videos and stores dozens of search word clues until I had 3 suspects. Then then game just came to a sudden halt. Even though I had unlocked dozens and dozens of videos, I had no choice but to go for some hints. Even then there was ONE SINGLE KEYWORD I needed to trigger the last suspect. But it didn't appear in ANY of the hundred videos!!!! This is a serious disconnect. The other horrible thing is how once I accused the suspect and finished the game, it never explanied ANYTHING!!! ***SPOILER ALERT*** [spoiler] What about the tunnels?" Why was the girl in the cop car? What made the thud upstairs? Why did one survive? Why was the hippie in a trance? Why was the guy electric? Why did he have amnesia? [/spoiler] But still because I have a soft spot for FMV, I love mysteries, I love a good story and I really LOVE Detective games - plus I can imagine all of the endless tireless work that went into this true labor of love, I absolutely loved this game from the beginning until about 3/4 of the way through it. So I would still very highly recommend it! Who knows, you will probably have a different experience, unlock different clues and keywords and videos and have a different ending. I hope this game improves, maybe through DLC and I really hope they make more of these with the collective communities recommended updates!

This is such a frustrating game to play. Not hard, but frustrating. The acting isn't great for most of the cast... but Natalie's actress is so bad it's actually painful to listen to. On top of that, when you click "search" you then have to click inside the search box... every single time; why not make this occur automatically and save the player hundreds of clicks? The truly annoying thing, though, is that you can search for keyword x, and return 3-4 videos for it... but then later on, you'll come across another video that is ONLY talking about x, yet it didn't appear in the prior list. Like... why??? And this will happen repeatedly throughout playing.

I want to be friends with Ruth. She held the whole thing together, what a gem. For god's sake maybe think of moving whatever the actors were reading their lines from, just to mix it up a bit. Distracting when they're all just staring off to the right for 50% of the game. With some of the actors it seemed like they were literally seeing their lines for the very first time. There are lots of sentences that don't flow naturally; they're stilted and awkward (especially Natalie: so painful). For a game based on watching actors tell a story, it leaves a bit to be desired. No excuse really for having actors who can't remember lines or who weren't provided time to memorise them. I got really into it through maybe the first half of the game, sitting with a notepad and pen to jot down keywords. At one point I kept searching words but wasn't getting any hits, so I lost my momentum and pretty much resorted to the button that generates a new video because I really wanted to discover the whole story. If you like a good mystery, I would definitely recommend this game overall. The above negatives annoyed me but it didn't prevent me from wanting to complete this; I found the story very engaging. Again, Ruth is amazing. 10 points for Ruth.

Menuda historia! Imita el sistema de juego de HER STORY, pero es muchísimo más original y tiene mas personajes. Por ponerle alguna pega, las palabras asociadas a cada vídeo son quizá demasiado específicas y puede llegar a desesperar un poco. Por suerte siempre puedes pedir una pista a tu jefe ;)

The core mechanic of 'input a word' and see what pops up is frustrating and doesn't function well at all. I'll give the game credit where it's due though, and point out that most of the acting is pretty interesting. Overall though, I just have no reason to start this one back up. 5/10