No Bono in sight, but is this Hitchcock inspired story worth a look?
Ed Miller, a writer, came out unscathed from his car crash down into Brody Canyon, California. Even though no one was found inside the car wreckage, Ed insists that he was traveling with his wife and daughter. Traumatized by the event, he begins to suffer from severe vertigo. As he starts therapy, he will try to uncover what really happened on that tragic day. Prepare yourself for a most disturbing investigation inside the human mind: truth is sometimes worse than madness. An original story about obsession, manipulation and madness, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo.
This game is based on the 1958 film of the same name. I personally haven’t seen it myself, but I was surprised to see a game of this era getting a game adaptation of sorts. It does give you choices to make that push the story forward and there are a lot of QTE moments to make the game have these tense cinematic moments that Hitchcock would certainly approve of.
The story itself is told well and actually well written, I personally enjoyed it from start to finish…but the choices you make offer very little to the actual impact of the story itself, plus the voice-acting is perhaps the funniest I’ve come across in years. I don’t know if its intentional or not, I really have no idea at this point…I wouldn’t put it past them to try and make a game with very intentionally bad acting as some weird homage to old movies, but I guess we’ll never know…
The visuals are a mixed bag of weird character models and the odd animation, but it does well in terms of performance and load times. Like I said, the voice-acting is definitely memorable…. while the soundtrack itself does feel classic Hitchcock, which isn’t bad in the great scheme of things.
The Verdict
Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo is a strange game. While it has a decent story and the QTEs are fun, the choices you make offer next to no impact on the end result and the voice-acting itself is hilarious, intentionally or not. I don’t know if Mr Hitchcock would approve of the final product, but it does have elements in it that are a nice tribute to the late filmmaker.