It’s really wild how sometimes with games it comes down to what could be considered intangibles to sink the entire experience. Sure, controls, overall design, play mechanics, and fun are all critical pieces of the puzzle for success, but sometimes unexpected elements can sour you to what traditionally matters most, and that’s what happened for me with this particular title. It’s true that the game is pretty inconsistent and awful, but right from the jump its main character sucked any potential enthusiasm I would have had for it regardless.

Playing out as a sort of escape room-esque puzzle game, mixing together semi-interactive point-and-click elements with some pretty low-production value FMV sequences, it’s a bit of a mess of a concoction regardless. While there are some other first-person escape room titles on the system, pretty well all of which feel better conceived and executed than this, there’s at least a novelty edge here for the use of video. But what typically makes or breaks these sorts of games is the quality and smarts behind their puzzles, and in this case more often than not the feeling is that they’re simply sloppy. Whether the issue is them being obtuse, feeling somewhat random, or some other issue, the concept that these have been crafted by some crazed genius killer strains credulity.

Unfortunately, the much bigger problem, one that pretty well slaps you across the face before your significant other is even abducted, is that your character is really an intolerable jerk. Normally when you’re given dialogue prompts you could have choices that would aim in a more negative direction, but in this case I can’t say any of his choices were anything I was happy with. Honestly, at the point it was clear his girlfriend was abducted, I could as easily have believed he’d just go home and move on with his life for all of the care he demonstrated in his opening conversation with her. This isn’t a great game overall to begin with, but piling on the fact that your protagonist is so thoroughly unlikeable, I just can’t see any positive angles for giving this a whirl.