Past Cure (PC) Review

The game opens in a strange nightmare-ish world, a run-down old manor where the walls are covered with a strange rot and some of the furniture inexplicably hangs from the ceiling. This tutorial moment sees blank-faced porcelain mannequins come trotting towards the player, only to be blown to shards with a single bullet. The dreamlike nature continues as suddenly the character - Ian - is running through a space-scape towards a woman beckoning in a radiant doorway.

It's an overly long tutorial introduction, after which Ian awakens from his nightmare but, sadly, the player never does. The prospect seems solid and the presentation looks promising but Past Cure is flawed in almost every regard. Across the eight-to-ten hour play time there are plenty of twists and changes to the plot and the gameplay, yet every change is almost worse than the last.

The first stage after the absurdly long tutorial nightmare sequence sends Ian off into the world's first Escher-built parking structure. Here the game begins to show off the choice between taking on the enemies via stealth or via going in guns blazing. Neither is fun. Stealth-wise, the AI is so awful it's ridiculously easy to clear area after area with no real effort. Guns blazing, the controls are wonky, the mechanics hit-and-miss (sometimes a headshot will be walked off), and the general repetitive poor design makes it get very boring, very quickly.

Ian has some special abilities to try and enhance the experience somewhat. Initially, this consists of being able to astral project and to slow time. The astral projection can be used to interfere with electronics, such as cameras. Slowing time allows Ian to move at high speed, making shootouts even easier, or allowing him to dash into cover during stealth sections. There's a cost to using these special powers, though, as they eat away at his sanity. Luckily, he has some special blue pills that happen to be scattered around stages to refresh his sanity meter.

After the parking garage, there are more shootout sections, dedicated stealth sections, more nightmare worlds, and puzzles. Each is appallingly bad; the story is completely dumb; the new powers add nothing; the gameplay and mechanics are clunky and not enjoyable; the animations look ten years old; and the voice actor performances are as horrendously bad as the writing itself.