It’s important to hand it to Sq. Enix. After the horrible reception The Quiet Man received, you’d suppose it might keep away from FMV video games. Nicely, it did the other and printed The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story from recreation studio h.a.n.d. Nonetheless, much more shocking than the truth that Sq. Enix rolled the cube once more on what is actually a lifeless (aside from a couple of notable cases) style is that it’s really moderately good.
The toughest factor about making a very good FMV recreation is that, by its nature, the sub-genre is a gimmick. It was born out of studios desirous to leverage the full-motion video that laserdisc and CD-ROMs made attainable to considerably improve the graphics of a recreation past what was attainable with the 8 and 16-bit consoles of the time. Sadly, video is about in time, and there’s not a ton you are able to do with it to make it right into a recreation. Some current FMV hits, like Her Story, used scouring movies for clues as a part of the story, which labored nice. Whereas the method is extra easy, The Centennial Case additionally has you fixing mysteries.
Workin’ on a thriller
In The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story, you’re taking the function of Haruka Kagami, an acclaimed thriller writer. At an autograph signing, she encounters her scientific marketing consultant, Eiji Shijima, who hires her below cowl of writing about his prosperous household’s succession ceremony. Nonetheless, her actual mission is two-fold. First, he wants Haruka to analyze the identification of a skeleton that was unearthed from beside the sakura tree the place his household’s succession ceremony takes place. Most significantly, he needs her to look into the supposed existence of a Fruit of Youth that’s been a Shijima household secret for generations and decide whether or not it actually has the properties to cease the getting old course of.
Along with the succession ceremony, the Shijima household has one other custom. One among them is murdered roughly each decade. The meat of the sport is spent fixing the occasions behind every loss of life which in flip sheds mild on the present-day thriller.
Whereas the forged isn’t very in depth, the studio received its cash’s value out of them. Every chapter focuses on the loss of life of a single character, and Haruka investigates them by studying by means of articles or notebooks. Nonetheless, as an alternative of creating us sit by means of one thing that dry, we’re transported into her creativeness. To fill the roles in every chapter, Haruka attracts on acquainted faces. So, a forged member might play completely completely different characters relying on which a part of the sport you’re watching. This might sound considerably tacky on paper, however the recreation has surprisingly excessive manufacturing worth and will have simply as simply been tailored as a TV miniseries.
Goin’ wherever it leads
So, that is an FMV recreation, which implies you’re going to be doing quite a lot of watching. Every chapter performs out roughly the identical method. Every of them has a thriller that must be solved revolving round a loss of life. After watching the footage, gamers are taken to Haruka’s “cognitive house” to place collectively the clues.
Inside Haruka’s cognitive house, there’s a hexagonal board. Whenever you start to resolve the case, it’ll have a number of pink thriller hexagons asking easy questions. To reply these questions, it’s a must to match the gray clue hexagons with the proper image to the fitting thriller hexagon. Whenever you’ve related sufficient clues, you’ll kind a speculation hexagon. Creating sufficient of those will finally result in the creation of a reasoning hexagon, which completes that part.
Sadly, issues considerably crumble right here. There’s not a ton of problem to this part as a result of the hexagons could be matched utilizing the symbols positioned on them. Match the fitting speculation image to the fitting thriller image, and also you’ve accomplished it with out serious about the reasoning behind it. There are some fallacious solutions scattered all through, however it’s primarily a multiple-choice course of that’s straightforward to brute pressure.
The interface will also be a bit overwhelming. I appreciated the flexibility to immediately replay scenes, the connection chart, and all of the instruments to assist remedy the mysteries. I simply want that the precise fixing half had extra problem to it.
Luckily, there’s no precise fail state on this recreation. When you make the fallacious selection in your deduction, you’ll get a recreation over FMV and instantly be taken again to the hexagon to regulate your alternatives.
Runnin’ down a dream
On the technical aspect of issues, the PS5 model is the most effective to play. For some cause, that’s the one platform that options 4K video. Even on PC, you’re caught with 1080p. That may change in a future patch, however that is Sq. Enix we’re speaking about right here.
Aside from the above difficulty, the sport ran completely fantastic for me. There aren’t quite a lot of transferring elements right here for the reason that bulk of the gameplay is FMVs and menu, and people work effectively.
So far as audio choices go, there’s a Japanese and English dub in addition to full subtitles. In contrast to most weabeaux, I don’t thoughts listening to a dub. I get bored with studying subs largely as a result of each developer needs to make them ant-sized. Luckily, the English forged did a good job, and it’s a viable different to the unique Japanese.
The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story Overview: The ultimate verdict
I totally loved The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story, however it’s undoubtedly an oddity in immediately’s gaming panorama. It’s extra “interactive movie” than a online game, and it is best to undoubtedly go into it with the mindset that it’s one thing that’s meant to be watched as an alternative of performed.
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8.0
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