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| Amy Tenant tries to convince her clients the value of her work on Nanocells |
| Quick Info | |
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| Reviewed by: | Mark Goninon |
| Developer: | Wales Interactive |
| Publisher: | Wales Interactive |
| Release Date: | 31 Mar 2020 |
| Time played: | 1.4 hours |
When the Welsh Do FMV
Wales Interactive, as the name implies, is a Welsh developer and publisher that have been active since 2011. In the early days, they developed a random assortment of games such as the 2013 mobile port Gravity Badgeeeeeeers! (sorry, I still remember the catchy theme song) but it wasn't until 2017 with the release of the game Late Shift did they start to dabble in the FMV genre. There have been many FMV games since then (mostly horror games) and I bought a bundle with five of their FMV games back in 2022 that included Late Shift, Bloodshore, Five Dates, The Shapeshifting Detective and, of course, The Complex. Logically, I probably should've started playing Late Shift first as it is the earliest title, but at one point, I was comparing the worst rated PC games according to Metacritic and what I had in my Pile of Shame, wondering if I could find games that were truly as bad as the critics made it out to be. The Complex wasn't one of the worst, but it received a rather mediocre Metascore of 62. And there were huge discrepancies in scores: Adventure Gamers gave the game a commendable score of 90 while PC Gamer gave it a 52 and the Guardian went even as low as a 40 commenting on how poor the acting was, with the exception of Kate Dickie.
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| The game is set five years after events in the fictional country of Kindar in South East Asia |
So I was curious to see how good or bad The Complex actually was. I've dabbled a bit with FMV games back in the good ol' days (the early 90s) with the likes of The 7th Guest and Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective as well as more modern ones such as Her Story. Consequently, I have a bit of experience with FMV games and I've used these as reference points when I played The Complex.
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| As it is many FMV games, choices are often binary ones like this where you choose how to talk to a patient |
Bit More than Your Traditional FMV Game
In The Complex you play the role of Doctor Amy Tenant, an expert in the use of Nanocell technology, a breakthrough in medical science that offers a bright future for humanity. However, things go horribly wrong and you end up trapped inside the highly secure complex where it is stored, doing your best to save a patient's life.
The game is all in hi-res FMV and despite some occasional glitching, it generally ran fine. Professional actors such as Michelle Mylett (Letterkenny, Bad Blood) play the role of the protagonist and Kate Dickie (Game of Thrones, Loki) portrays the CEO of the company.
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| This screen tracks your personality traits and your relationships with other characters |
In terms of gameplay, the game is like a visual novel where after watching some FMV cutscenes you're offered choices on what to say or how to react. Choosing different options provides you a different story and ultimately you're able to experience 9 different endings. The decisions you make will also have an impact on your relationship with the other characters in the game and there is a screen where you are able to monitor this. Finally, your choices will affect bars that are used to monitor various aspects of your personality, like how brave or honest you are.
While I'm not usually a fan of replaying visual novels, the multiple endings in this game, the relationship and personality information screens, and the fact the game isn't terribly long (it only took me 85 minutes to play) does encourage replays. It still wasn't quite enough to entice me, but it might for you.
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7
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A surprisingly well thought-out, FMV adventure brought to you by renowned actors with multiple reasons to replay it. The game is a bit short though at just under 1.5 hours long. |
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