Interrogation Files: Port Landsend

It's a slow burn of disappointment. Like Her Story this is a crime FMV database keyword detection game, however in Interrogation Files the one and only mechanic is broken. The search bar doesn't consistently detect key words spoken in the videos, making it hard to even re-find exact videos you've found previously. They must know this and gave the players a button they can click on at anytime to produce a single random never before seen video, there's nothing rewarding clicking a single button 100s of times. I'd only recommend this if you enjoy FMV visual novels, or enjoy live action films while using the mouse as a fidget clicker.

The game involves using keywords to uncover videos to progress the story. Unfortunately, keyword searching is frustratingly flawed--often, inputting the plural form of the word or the incorrect tense results in zero hits. Multiple words mentioned in a video do not work as keywords for that video. Even if you are on the right track, if you don't guess the exact keyword the devs had in mind, you're out of luck. This becomes more noticeable as you progress and there are fewer new videos left. The acting was fine, EXCEPT for Natalie. Her so-called acting ruined the game and every one of her videos was painful to watch. The evidence photos collected throughout the game are of such low resolution that they are basically useless. And the "extra content" unlocked at the end of the game is irrelevant. Overall, a cool idea and an interesting story, but flawed execution.

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.

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

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 ;)

First of all, please ignore the curators who say you can get 100% of achievements in 23 or 30 minutes (according to two curators for this game). That's a joke. To suggest that anyone could complete this game with 100% achievements in under an hour is completely misleading. No, no, no. If you're after all the achievements in this game, you're going to be spending HOURS. First off, there are four hours of videos (plus a bunch of evidence to look at). You should actually watch a bunch of the videos, if not most of them, at least once, on your first run, to even know what's going on, especially if you want to input the correct search terms that will reveal more videos, evidence, and clues. Of course, it's not completely necessary to use search terms to unlock videos; you could just click on the “Messages” option (then the videotape icon). Using this method, your boss will unlock ONE video at a time, but even that’s a bit time-consuming, opening and closing each screen and so forth. You also don't have to watch the videos; you only need to start them (and then you can close them). The videos still count toward your progression when you do that, but what's the point? You're not actually playing the game for the experience or figuring anything out if you do that. I mean, that's fine for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th runs (it's what I did after the first run and went for the other 3 ending achievements), but I wouldn't suggest doing that on your first playthrough. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the characters and what's going on in the first playthrough. It helps with knowing what to do to get through later runs a bit quicker. Trying for the other endings is no walk in the park either, as for trying to get through it quickly. I’ll elaborate more on that in a little bit. As for guides, I saw that one curator mentioned that the game was “fully guided.” The one who said the game could be completed 100% in 30 minutes (LOL). Fully guided usually means there’s a walkthrough or achievement guide on Steam (or YouTube). I also take issue with that. There is a total of ONE guide on Steam, and “fully guided” is a bit of a stretch. It’s helpful for a few of the achievements (not all), and almost no help at all as far as useful search terms to get through the game a little easier. Mostly, you’re on your own. I just had to figure out most of it for myself. Not that it’s not doable. The game is fairly user-friendly and can be figured out on one's own, but there is no complete guide. You will need to think a bit for yourself. For achievement hunters, there is one caveat, which I’ll explain further on. There are 4 endings, and each has its own achievement. For each ending, you must select the suspects you believe were involved in the crime when the Accused option finally pops up (requiring a bunch of unlocked videos); however, after selecting your suspects and going through the ending videos, you must COMPLETELY DELETE that session before you can replay the game and before you can choose other suspects and endings. Yes, you will have to go through unlocking all the videos all over again, until you are given the Accuse option and a chance to choose different suspects and a different ending, and there are a buttload of videos to unlock before you get the chance to do that. Even if you go to Messages to unlock one video at a time, it still takes time. Since I watched all the videos (100% for each character) on the first run, I had a good idea of the search terms I needed to unlock multiple videos at once, which made checking them off a little faster than having the Messages guy unlock one video at a time, but it was still time-consuming, however you will still have to use the Messages system to unlock some of the videos. It's all time-consuming, so going for multiple endings will take a few hours. Another note to achievement hunters and completionists, like myself... you may not get the “Not Quite Done Yet” achievement. I didn’t, and I believe that achievement is broken. I played 4 complete runs and chose the “no suspects” ending first, on all 4 runs. The "no suspects" ending is supposed to unlock that achievement when the Accuse option comes up. I actually chose that option on every playthrough. I did that first, closed the Accuse screen before I decided on which suspects I was going to choose, and the achievement never popped, so I chose some suspects. I got three of the four endings, and tried one more time, going through the whole rigamarole of starting a new session with a blank slate, patiently unlocking enough videos until I got the Accuse option. Closed the Accuse screen without choosing anyone (which is supposed to unlock the achievement), and nothing. I also made sure I had unlocked 100% of all videos for all suspects. I tried it multiple times. Nothing. The achievement never popped, and I know I did everything right, so it seems to be broken. It ticked me off a bit, having gone through this game so many times, only to not get that one achievement. So, that screwed up my Steam Completionist rating, after spending hours on this game. I would suggest to the Devs, either fix that achievement or remove it, because it’s quite frustrating for completionists like myself. I feel cheated. Another suggestion would be to allow the player to have ready access to the videos they’ve already unlocked in previous run(s) when they start a new session, then allow the player to choose different suspects without having to go through the hassle of searching for and unlocking each video 3 or 4 times for the different endings. For all developers: repeating tasks over and over again is tedious and tiresome, especially for experienced players aiming for alternate endings or achievements. It’s not fun, and it feels like a waste of time. I think most players would agree. All that said, it was a good FMV game. I enjoyed the game, but I was left quite frustrated with having to keep unlocking videos I’d already unlocked, trying for all the endings. And I was really annoyed that one achievement was broken. If you just want to play a decent FMV detective game and don’t care about achievements or upping your completionist rating, and you’re good with just one or two endings, I’d say go for it. As far as good FMV detective games go, Interrogation Files: Port Landsend is up there with some of the best. So, aside from my stated frustrations, I can still recommend this game.