Death Come True Review (sywex)
I wish I could give Death Come True a thumb up, but unfortunately this interactive movie that barely qualifies as a game has been a disappointment. Read the summary at the end if you want a tl;dr.
Let me explain. First of all the gameplay element is very light. Every scene in Death Come True (DCT) is acted out by real people in live action. The game is closer to a visual novel but in film form, than say interactive adventure games from Supermassive or Quantic Dreams like The Quarry and Heavy Rain where you can fully control the characters’ movements and is able to interact with multiple objects within a scene to trigger branching paths. However, what makes good visual novels a game is that choices are consequential and branching story paths and scenarios are distinctly different and have substantial length. This is not the case for DCT where one can finish under two hours, and it is more linear than it first appears to the player. The general gameplay flow goes you view one scene, at the end of it you make a choice among two or more actions (except the first scene serving as a tutorial where there’s only one choice). Where DCT falls short is that there is only one story scenario, you either pick the action that advances the story or pick from the rest of the actions which immediately results in a very brief dead end scene or an invalid choice where the protagonist goes “that’s wrong, pick from the other options”. Granted some of these dead ends can be rather humorous, but they are not enough to make up for the illusion of choice.
Okay, so how does DCT fare as a film? In my opinion, a B movie. The story and premise is uninspired and the central ideas have been explored many times over past decades in much greater depth and sophistication. Those ideas were used quite shallowly in this game and without spoiling too much, I’d say this is a murder mystery crossing the Matrix minus the action, with gaming tropes like reloading a death, like in Re:zero. There are flashes of the quirkiness and ingenious absurdity from director Kazutaka Kodaka who created the Dangaronpa series, but the script is mostly mediocre and forgettable. The dialogue can be quite corny at times, like when you watch a live action adaption of an anime. Sometimes real people saying anime stuff just don’t work. Video quality is not very good either, the game being ~5gb and 1.5-2 hours long means you can expect Youtube 1080p quality with visual artifacts. Visual effects, music and sound, and the acting are not bad but nothing to write home about, aka mid. I feel like most of the budget went into hiring the actors, many of whom while not A listers are likely familiar faces to people who watch many Japanese films, TV shows and anime, like Chiaki Kuriyama from Battle Royale and Kill Bill, or Yuki Kaji who is primarily a voice actor with roles like Eren from Attack on Titan.
In summary, what I liked:
+ Recognisable cast.
+ Ability to fast forward and rewind right from the start. Important because you can only have 1 save and you can’t do chapter select until you have 100% the game, meaning if you want to redo an early choice you have to start over.
+ Extra footage, behind the scenes, blooper reel, like you would find on a movie DVD. Some of them are funnier and more interesting than the main story LOL
What I didn’t like:
- Lack of gameplay and meaningful choices.
- Mediocre story and writing.
- Short length.
I bought it heavily discounted during a sale, and even then I find it debatable if it was worth my money.
My score: 4.0/10