[h1] Review - Past Cure [/h1]
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[h1] RATING: 3.5 / 10 - Way Past any Cure[/h1]
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[h1] Overview [/h1]
Past Cure is an action/stealth game focusing heavily on psychological themes and a bit of paranormal too. In this game you will be playing as Ian, a veteran retired soldier living with his brother. during his military career, secret experiments were performed on him, granting him supernatural abilities such as extracorporeal projection and superhuman time perception, but also destabilized his mind severely, so much that he has to rely on Blue, an experimental, illegal drug found on the black market, to be at least partially at peace from his continuous allucinations and nightmares. His objective is now to find out what happened to himself during three missing years of his life, when suppsoedly those experiments were performed on him: with the help of his contacts and his brother, Ian embarks on a dangerous quest against powerul organizations to find the truth.
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[h1] Gameplay Analysis [/h1]
[b] General Gameplay [/b]
Past Cure's gameplay is level based, with predetermined checkpoints, a finite number of enemies in each level, and very linear progression with little in terms of secondary paths or areas to explore. Being an action/stealth game, there are therefore two approaches you may follow: first is Stealth, using your supernatural abilities to spot enemies through walls, disable cameras, slow time to pass undetected in strict timeframes or take down enemies very quickly. The second approach is the Loud one, aka shooting everything in your way without any regard for being quiet: this leads to an increased number of enemy reinforcements coming down on you, but incurs in no other particular penalty. Some areas of the game will mandatorily require a Stealth approach, and just being seen while in these areas means failure and restart from the latest checkpoint. You can pick up weapons and ammo from killed enemies, as well as eventual keycards to open doors. There also are some medical cabinets around with consumables in them, Adrenaline, which completely refills Health when used, and Blue, which completely refills Mental Sanity, which acts as "mana" for our supernatural powers.
Interaction with any element of the environment is practically zero, you will not be able to use anything you have around you to your advantage in Stealth sections, you just will have to follow the enemy's predetermined walk paths and strike at the right moment to disable them one by one. There are also no additional items you may use to distract or impair enemies in any way. This makes Stealth sections very dull and repetitive, and also a bit frustrating since enemy visual detection is quite bugged and more than once i have been seen through corners and walls without reason, resulting in failure. checkpoints also can be far from each other in some cases, meaning repeating a section could very well mean to repeat a big chunk of boring, dull stealth operations all over again in the EXACT same way as before. Yeah it sounds very fun doesn't it?
So far i have not seen any secondary objective in any situation, the game just tells you to go from spot A to spot B, with or without mandatory stealth, do something, then proceed. There also is no form of character progression, abilities to upgrade, maybe weapons to enhanche with modifications, statistics to improve, nothing of this is present even in a minimal form. No collectibles, no secrets, no secondary paths. Absolutely nothing.
[b] Combat System [/b]
Combat in Past Cure can be Melee or Ranged, even if the first option is not recommended and useful onyl against other melee enemies in few situations. The ranged combat is very basic and has not a good feel to it: the gunplay is quite stale, enemies will just stay behind covers and shoot you at regular intervals, Melee enemies will charge you head on. Gunfights in this title have no dynamic elements like for example, destructible / explosive objects to use and kill enemies strategically with, they are instead very basic fights where you just have to time your headshots (no point shooting anywhere else) and wait for your Sanity to recharge just enough to use Time Slow to kill all enemies with ease. Overall i found the combat to be unsatisfactory, simplistic, lacking, boring.
When in Stealth you can use Takedowns to silently kill enemies. Problem is, enimation of takedowns is random, some knife-based ones will kill enemies quickly, while some others like choking them will require a lot more time and with it a lot bigger risk of being discovered, but these animations are completely random at each takedown so if you are in bad luck a too long lasting animation can mean your end.
[b] Content [/b]
Without any secondary mission, challenge, collectible, anyway nothing esle apart from the mains tory and only that, because that is the ONLY thing there is in this game, i guess the longevity could be 8-10 hours, if you can endure this pain that long, which i do not think you will be able to.
[b] Balancing [/b]
Combat is quite unbalanced player-side, with the use of your powers and just staying in cover, plus passive health regen, you can very well defeat any amount of enemies with enough patience and ammo. The combat and Loud approach are not a real challenge at all, they are just boring as Stealth is.
[b] Challenge [/b]
Stealth sections can be challenging, but only because enemies can see you through corners and walls at random. Combat is not challenging at all it's just a matter if staying in cover and using Time Slow at the right times. Way too many consumables around anyway, pockets overfilling with Adrenaline / Blue all the time.
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[h1] Technical Analysis [/h1]
[b] Graphics [/b]
Graphics are decent thanks to Unreal Engine 4's power. Models are of sufficent quality, character models are sufficent aswell. The faces / expressions have left me perplexed more than once, and ranged from being obscure to downright comical in certain cutscenes that were not at all meant to be so. The design of environments is anonymous and not very isnpired, even the travels among Ian's nightmares look like an half-ripoff from The Evil Within 2 and some other generic horror game... disappointing design overall.
Also, the game does not run in full fullscreen, has black bands and renders in weird resolutions.
[b] Sound [/b]
The voice acting. Good Gods the voice acting is one of the most awful, comically bad tier voice actings i have ever seen in a game with this kind of budget. It completely utterly kills any form of seriousness, dialogues are either a monotonous, unexpressive slog or comically bad, i mean you need to hear Ian exclaming "oh sh--" with the same tone Google Translate would say it, with the same artificial, inexpressive voice tone. It is just terrbile. Other sounds are sufficent i guess but thet doesn't even matter anymore, believe me.
[b] Performance [/b]
Decent enough optimization, nothing serious to report here.
[b] Stability [/b]
No problems to report.
[b] AI [/b]
Enemy Ai follows predetermined routes, and is generally very basic and dumb. Expect nothing more than basic "cover and shoot" and "walk this path" AI types.
[b] Quality of Life [/b]
if you play with a gamepad the game will still display Keyboard tooltips and controls, this left me genuinely puzzled, it works nonetheless. Menus and Ui are acceptable.
[b] Bugs / Issues [/b]
As i said before, enemies just see you through corners / walls randomly in Stealth. Other than this, no other particular bugs detected.
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[h1] Conclusion [/h1]
Past cure is a very bad action/stealth game that tries to be inspired and interesting but fails miserably with its horrible voice acting, uninteresting story, technical problems, barebone mechanics. This is not a game you should spend your money on at all.
