Also available on Xbox One, Switch, and Windows I've been on record before about my love of FMV games. It was one of the best parts of the 90s, but after the turn of the century, we kind of abandoned them. Fortunately, they're seeing a bit of a renaissance, and The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is an excellent example of the kind of experiences that modern FMV games have to offer. You play as a psychiatrist who's come in to fill Doctor Dekker's position. He was murdered on Valentine's Day night, but who killed him? That's part of what you have to figure out. Suspicion is that it was someone close to him meaning that it was likely a patient or office staff. So you're investigating who could have killed Dekker, but you're also a psychiatrist who was hired to replace him, so you have to meet with his patients, as well, and help them with their problems. Those problems are...unique...to say the least. I won't spoil anything because the characters are absolutely fantastic to delve into, but it's a story with some heavy Lovecraft influences. As you meet with each patient, you're given a list of questions you can ask them. As they answer your question, new questions you can ask pop up, and sometimes they ask you questions that you can answer. Asking the questions that pop up in the question menu only tell you part of the story, though, and you'll have to think of the right questions to ask on your own and type them with the on-screen keyboard. On the one hand, this gets really obnoxious with a game controller and on-screen keyboard, so that's a definitely check in the PC column. On the other hand, it takes this from the realm to interactive movie and turns it into something that even the most staunch FMV critics can't claim isn't a video game because you have to come up with the questions yourself. It does throw you a bit of a bone, though, and let you just type in keywords that will register for the question, but some of them require the right format - "Why" something something, or "when" rather than just a single keyword. It can be frustrating, but it's also really rewarding when you get the green light that indicates that you've gotten every bit of information that character has to give. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker may not be *the* best FMV game I've ever played, but it's definitely up there. Top 5 for sure. It just does so much right. The premise of the story is fascinating, and the mystery gets unraveled and revealed with such great pacing. The acting, while not Hollywood A list, is solid and doesn't break your immersion at all. The way you do your questioning is fantastic, and it really makes you work for the information. All in all, this is an exceptional FMV game, and I really can't recommend it highly enough. It'd be nice to have a notepad to make a little easier to reference what you've learned when you're making your accusation, and I'd love to have a little more information about some of the characters' eccentricities, but who the killer is changes from playthrough to playthrough, so what specific information you get changes to some extent from game to game, and that gives it a ton of replay value. My Rating - B |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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