"Complex" review: In addition to being a movie, it should be a game

This review contains a light plot, please read it accordingly.

Interactive movie games, popular with players in recent years, the first two years of the fire "Detroit: Become human", to the later domestic masterpiece "Invisible Guardian", and even now the major video sites launched "interactive video" gameplay, in essence, can be counted as interactive movie games. This kind of game has a solid story, wonderful performance and relatively simple operation. At the same time, it can also be said that the entry threshold is the lowest type of game - as long as you have a mobile phone, you can easily "cloud clearance".

One such Interactive cinematic game is Complex, produced by Wales Interactive, the same company that developed Night Shift, a well-known interactive cinematic game. As a result, the film also expanded on its usual production philosophy - real actors, real scenes, and the entire story in the form of a full film. Compared to the other titles mentioned above, Complex is significantly more cinematic, and if you just want to watch a science-fiction mystery movie that lasts about an hour, it's a good choice. But if you look at it from the perspective of making the game, it's a terrible experience to play.

The plot of The Complex is not complicated. The protagonist Amy is used by an illegal biopharmaceutical syndicate to use her years of research for inhumane human experimentation. She and her former partner were trapped in an underground laboratory by an accident. They have to make reasonable choices in time in the face of various crises, to ensure that they can survive, and gradually uncover the dark scenes, looking for opportunities to expose the truth.

There are not many characters in the game, but through the short story of about an hour, the image of several main characters has been shaped vividly and fully. In addition, between the character and the protagonist in the game, there is a "favorability" setting. Depending on the player's choice, it can affect the character's subsequent behavior. For example, if the protagonist has been ignoring the infected girl Claire, she will give the protagonist the cold eye when the story about her is triggered, which will affect the subsequent development of the story. Depending on the survival of the character, the game will lead to a different ending.

Judging by the quality of the production alone, "The Complex" is not bad. It has a qualified film team, the use of various shooting techniques, the effect of the later film, no less than a regular American TV series. It also has a cast of excellent actors, some of whom are familiar faces from the US TV series. Although the flow of the overall plot is not long, it is good that the rhythm is tight and the plot is also ups and downs.

Especially the game's ending design. As an interactive film with multiple endings. There are nine different endings to the story. Some of the endings are imaginative. For example, in the "promise" ending where the protagonist kills all the characters, she actually changes in the end and becomes an undercover investigation informant in the group, which is really surprising. But combined with some early details, you will find that such a setting is also reasonable.

However, compared with the previous work "Night Shift", the story of "Complex" is obviously convergence in the pattern. Whether it is the complexity of the relationship between the characters, or the richness of the story, the feeling of the Complex is far from the shock of the Night Shift. This has become one of the regrets of this work. This "bureau" of the Complex is not big enough. If it can, it should include more characters with complex relationships, more scenes and dramatic conflicts, and perhaps the overall look and feel will be much better.

In addition to the immersion of the first experience of the story, when you open the game two weeks, or even three weeks after the game, its shortcomings as a game will gradually be exposed to you.

The first is the uniformity of gameplay. Of course, this is an inevitable problem in many interactive cinematic games. After all, the game itself lacks the opportunity for the player to take action. But now looking back at the previous "Detroit: Become human", in addition to the simple choice, the addition of QTE play, so that players watch the broadcast at the same time, get more participation, so that the game attributes of the work have further performance opportunities. At least it makes the player realize that they are not just watching a movie, but playing a game. And like "Complex", relying solely on "giving a few options" as the core gameplay of the game is a little thin.

Of course, if you really don't pay much attention to the "playing" part, just enjoy it as a movie. Then of course the gameplay doesn't matter. The options are designed purely to lead the story to different branch endings. In theory, this is possible. After all, the previous work "Night Shift" also used the same gameplay, and it still received quite good reviews.

But "Complex" itself in the design of options, there are also some problems, resulting in you make a choice, often can not get the expected feedback. In some places, although the plot gives you the opportunity to choose, but after you choose, you find that no matter which choice you make, the plot will only have one direction, so what is the meaning of this choice?

For example, there is a play in the plot to answer the phone, the game gives the player a choice, pick up the phone and hang up the phone, two choices. It seems like a simple multiple-choice question, and before you make your choice, you might wonder if answering the phone would lead the story to a completely different direction than hanging up the phone. However, the fact is that whether you choose to answer or not, the man will make the decision directly for you after you make the choice - he beat you to hang up the phone, you don't even have the chance to stop him.

Such meaningless choices, there are a few other places in the game, that is, no matter what choice the player makes, the wheel of fate often does not change its direction, it will rush forward, and then crush all your good expectations. In this way, choice becomes a burden.

Second, although the game has nine completely different endings and nearly 200 video clips, it still takes a lot of time to experience all of them. This does not mean that the game has a complex branching story to explore, but rather that the player may not be able to tell whether the decisions he makes will lead the story in a new direction.

As mentioned earlier, many times the choices the player makes don't really affect the direction of the story. After several attempts, you will find that in order to trigger some special endings, you only need to make corresponding choices at some key nodes. From another perspective, that is to say, even if the player tries to change many choices in many weeks, but because the correct decision is not made at the key point, the final triggered ending is often the kind that he has already seen, and the game does not support instant saving function, nor does it provide plot flow branching diagram for reference, so you can only trigger the same ending over and over again. Start over.

Therefore, many players may give a good evaluation after completing the game for the first time, because it is really good to evaluate this game from the standpoint of "watching an interactive movie". But if, in order to fully understand all the endings of the story, you start two weeks, three weeks, or even more weeks, then your evaluation of the work is bound to be reduced.

Because the experience of the game is not really good for many weeks, you need to watch the same clips over and over again, make changes that may not be important, and you don't know if this change will bring you a new clip that is different from the previous one. You will no longer have the patience to see those repeated images. Most of the time, you'll just skip with one click, and when you're just choosing for the sake of choosing, you lose the fun of the game.

Overall, as an interactive movie game, "Complex" has done the part of the movie, but not the part of the game at the same time. It would be a good movie, but after a few weeks, it's clear that as a game, it's not a great experience.

It should not only have the appreciation of the movie, but also retain enough game, not the simple addition of the two, but on the basis of the integration of their respective advantages, a new form of expression.