PAST CURE
You’ll wish you suffered from memory loss after this
For anyone who’s played a videogame before, there’s a good chance you’ll see some trace of it in Past Cure – except, perhaps, if it was a sports sim, or Tetris. German indie studio Phantom 8’s selfpublished debut is a smorgasbord of familiar mechanical and narrative beats, a palpable echo of several titles past; but it doesn’t ever come close to rivalling its inspirations. Past Cure casts you as Ian, a former soldier who’s still got the tools of the trade at his disposal – firearms proficiency, stealthy movement and iron fists. But there’s more to Ian than meets the eye: he was the subject of experiments to expand the potential of the human mind, and while he has a giant blank spot where his memory of this painful process should be, he’s now capable of feats that almost seem like magic.
On his quest to discover who stole a chunk of his past, and why, Ian can use astral projection to see the environment around him from above his own body. He can slow time, to slip past patrolling guards or stab them between the ribs. He can bust security cameras with his mind, and slip inside the heads of others, controlling them to do his bidding before popping their brains all over the floor once he’s done with them. All this is at the risk of his sanity, which he has to keep on a level by chewing on special pills called ‘blues’.
Which all sounds fine on paper, even with the seen-itelsewhere sanity meter and the out-of-body tomfoolery. But Ian’s an unappealing protagonist, a tediously gruff fellow with a painfully monotonous voice. He clears out erratic-AI identikit enemies with less dramatic tension than a primary school Christmas play. He scowls as if he’s suffering from the worst migraine in the world – but it’s nothing compared to the pain of playing through this game.
NIGHTMARE MODE
We get to explore Ian’s dreams too, which are overrun by phantom figures that march towards him with murderous intent – or sometimes just kind of stand around. It wants to be evocative of, say, The Evil Within. But such is the abject dullness of this man’s imagination that these sequences are colourless, repetitive endurance tests to play through, as deep and meaningful as a puddle on the floor of a public toilet.
The team at Phantom 8 have tried to deliver a cinematic third-person adventure that mixes a strong narrative with multifaceted action – but they’ve overstretched themselves horribly. The black bars at top and bottom are presumably meant to give it the feel of a feature film. But this is less an admirable B-movie from plucky newcomers, and more a Razzies clean-sweep contender. Tedious stealth, clunky combat, a dull story and some of the worst voice acting you’ll hear make for a game that, like Ian’s past, is best left forgotten.
VERDICT
“PHANTOM 8’S DEBUT IS A PALPABLE ECHO OF SEVERAL GAMES PAST.”
Past Cure’s mix of Max Payne’s grittiness with Beyond: Two Souls-style spectral silliness and elementary stealth never gels as much as its makers would like. A joyless chore. Mike Diver