Wales Interactive has been trying to incorporate film into its video games recently, as evident by last year's full motion video (FMV) title The Bunker, developed by Splendy Games, an experience that we enjoyed, but one that also made us question whether it was even a video game in the first place. After all, the player had no way of directly influencing the actions taken by the on-screen protagonist, and everything revolves around making moral choices when facing various crossroads
Wales Interactive's latest project, Late Shift, is a noir thriller that follows a maths student called Matt, as he becomes embroiled in a conflict over the course of one night (we won't say any more for fear of spoiling the experience for you). What you should know, however, is that the role of the player is to make the choices that define what Matt does that night.
These moral choices are everywhere and determine which of the seven endings you receive, but they're also the only gameplay element that the player can interact with, since there's no way to control anything else about the character, much as it was in The Bunker (which, we should mention, has noticeably more structure to it). Late Shift is based solely on choices, then, decisions that should be taken quickly, especially during the first play-through.
From an artistic point of view, CtrlMovie does a rather good job; the direction is always very deliberate and in some ways it reminds us of the live-action sequences from Remedy Entertainment's Quantum Break, with great care and attention paid not only to the actors' respective performances, but also as a cinematic experience in the broader sense. The thrilling, noir-tinged atmosphere of a damp and dark London provides a constant tension, always pushing us to find out how Matt will survive the night.
It's hard to assess its value as a video game, though. As mentioned earlier, the player's actions are limited to making choices without any kind of added interaction, and from this point of view Late Shift takes a step backwards when compared to what was offered in The Bunker. As a video game, Late Shift relies solely on an intriguing plot and the choices that lead towards an ending: nothing more, nothing less. That's why clarifying this interactive experience as a video game isn't as straight forward as it maybe first seems.
One aspect that we didn't appreciate, at least in the version we played for review (Xbox One and Xbox One S), was the constant drops in frame-rate and sporadic freezing towards the second half of the game; these technical issues naturally interrupted the flow of the narrative. While we can't confirm whether they affect all versions of the game, we can confirm that they were a disruption for us.
Overall, Late Shift is an interesting proposition, and because of its artistic quality and what turned out to be an engaging plot, CtrlMovie's interactive film offers an engaging experience. However, when we consider it as a video game, it falls flat; it's missing pretty much all of the core pillars associated with the medium. Just offering choice and the use of a controller doesn't necessarily make it a game. Despite this conundrum, and regardless of what Late Shift actually is, it's still worth a look.