Late Shift Review Header. In my first playthrough of Late Shift I played on instinct, choosing options that I felt would alter the storyline in both an exciting way, but.
Hopefully representing the start of a shift in popularity for the FMV
The Switch is so great for accessibility for so many genres of games, and Wales Interactive are doing a great job of making the FMV one of those successful genres. The Bunker, released on the Switch eShop in April, was a solid start, and now Late Shift follows quick on its heels.
For those unfamiliar with the genre, FMV games are pretty much the video game equivalent of decide your destiny books, where you’d read to the end of the page before turning to one of a choice of pages to control the destination the story takes. In live-action video form, this gives you the feeling of being the director, and in Late Shift your decisions can influence our protagonist’s personality, making him a shy and untoward wuss, or a blood-thirsty uber-criminal who gets right into the thick of the action.
As the plot is the main course of what’s offered here, I can describe it in very limited detail, but the titular ‘late shift’ is the protagonist working overnight in a car park, but his lack of responsibility for the cars that he takes charge of end up landing him in the middle of a robbery of a high-value item, with a romantic interest, police interrogation and scenes of gun violence and torture all on the cards depending on the decisions that you make.
The overall production value is somewhere between a TV movie and a B movie, though there’s a decent car crash/explosion budget on offer. It’s by no means an all-star cast – Joe Sowerbutts, who plays lead character Matt, is perhaps best-known for voicing Harry Potter in the Philosopher’s Stone video game, while leading lady Haruka Abe was in the video for Clean Bandit song Rather Be – but the acting is slick, and does well to aid the escapism. In some cases, you get two options to choose between, in others three, but they all seem to seamlessly add together to form a complete and satisfying narrative each time, with the scenes chopped and changed on each playthrough.
At a total runtime of around an hour, Late Shift isn’t a mammoth task from start to finish, but the beauty in its length it to encourage replayability. There are over ten different endings, some good and some bad, to the game which can only be revealed if you make the right decisions throughout the game. Trying to piece together and remember the decisions you made on the last playthrough can be a challenge, of course, but the game does keep a record of the decisions you make, as well as the number of game endings which you’ve seen, in order to present it back to you at the end and inspire the completionist within you to start the story once again.
Respect must be paid to Wales Interactive for identifying FMV as a game genre which works on Switch – taking a movie like this on the go is impressive, though I’d hope to see the floodgates of the genre opened now to see all kinds of short films make an appearance in this form. Night Trap is already on the way, thanks to Limited Run Games, of course – but props to The Bunker and Late Shift for leading the way.
3.5
Summary
You can’t fault Late Shift too much for what it is. I’d have liked to see a few more decisions on the table for a more hands-on role as the director, but given all the scenes that were filmed, it’s impressive seeing all this bundled on a small screen you can take on the go.
Hello and welcome to my review of the game Late Shift. Despite the official TA review of the game, which is much more technical and in-depth, I’d just like to explain my experience with the game and why I think it’s really a fantastic throwback. For achievement-hunting purposes, the guide by Alf Ganikiller is very in-depth and helpful.The game uses Full Motion Video to tell its’ story, in the same vein as The Bunker recently. Primarily, FMV was widely used in the 90’s in great games such as Wing Commander, Dark Forces II, Rebel Assault, there was a terrible X-Files game for Playstation, etc., the list goes on. Luckily for us, technology has improved to the point where it also makes for a nearly seamless experience.Basically, you play the game from the perspective of Matt, a young Londoner who is preoccupied with probability, as he is studying to become some sort of Mathematician.
At night, however, he’s the attendant for an affluent apartment building’s garage, where he pines for vehicles that would keep him “in school for a decade.”The plot thickens when he’s kidnapped by a car thief who was on his way to a larger heist. At one point, Matt alludes to a shadier past, which I suppose gives you an excuse as to why Matt can so easily cooperate with the plan, if you chose to. As someone who has played the game and completed it, I can tell you that sometimes the choices that make the most sense are the least helpful or productive.I freely admit that I’m biased in favor of this game, so my objectivity is slightly skewed.
If I had to step back and critique it though, I would say on the technical side that the video occasionally freezes, and then moves at an accelerated speed to catch up. This is small, but it takes me out of the moment. Story wise, the game is a little bit on rails at times, with some predetermined outcomes, no matter how you’re acting.
It’s just odd when in one scene you’re joking with someone, and in the next they want to kill you. Also, the game doesn’t give you much time to make your dialogue choices.It’s hard to chart the plot because there are so many variables. The game is tailored to how you play it, like the TellTale games. However, it is also reminiscent of Mass Effect.
You reap what you sow. You could be a goodie-2-shoes and subvert the plan or run to the cops. You can play it middling, where you’re pragmatic enough to go along with the heist, but you have some lines that you simply won’t cross. Lastly, you can play it full-on Renegade Shepard, where you’re the alpha.Being a dick to everyone is always good for a laugh, but I found that the game leads you to the ideal playthrough. Some courses of action simply make more sense than others. For example, there’s a point where you must make a choice entering a security code.
There is an achievement tied to this, but aside from that, if you’re going along with the plan, why would you purposely enter the wrong code? There should be some logic to your behavior.In conclusion, the best part is that you can complete the game in under 40 minutes. Not only is it entertaining and suspenseful, but it’s fast enough to warrant multiple playthroughs, and as a completionist, I usually hate to retrace my steps. Each playthrough I pick up on something I missed the previous time through. This is not a game where you run around shooting monsters.
This is a story-driven experience with a lot of dialogue. An experience, I might add, that is well-worth your time. In terms of FMV games I've played recently, I certainly liked this a lot more than The Bunker. I felt that the story was far more engaging with the Late Shift. I guess I like the choice and consequence style of gameplay more than the point-and-click style.You play as Matt Thompson, a college student who works the late shift as a valet/car park attendant. The night appears to be rather quiet, until a robber breaks into the car park, holds you up at gun point and forces you to drive to a house where a robbery is being planned.
Unfortunately, the guy who kidnapped you suffers an injury when he broke into the garage and Matt is forced to take his place in the robbery instead. The robbery goes awry and you end up in the crosshairs of a Chinese triad gang, thus beginning the adventure to escape with your life based on the decisions you make.' Gameplay' is fine for what it is; a choice and consequence, FMV style game. Certain choices can lead to entire chapters being locked off until you try again on another play through, so there's at least some consequences for your actions.The acting is fine, it's kind of interesting to watch Matt's character arc quickly go from an average, innocent college student to a hardened criminal. The music is just kind of throw-away, although I wish they hadn't mixed the music to be so loud and the voices to be so low. I had to drop the music levels to about 60% just to hear what the actors were saying to each other.There are some technical issues I've found with the game. The subtitles and the actors lines don't match up on several occasions, there was one instance where I pushed my luck and managed to get a 50% share in the money for the robbery.
The subtitles matched that decision when it played out, but the actor recited the line where it was only 25% (If you don't push your luck). There's also random multi-coloured bars that can flash up on screen momentarily and I get some frame rate slow down and acceleration with a number of scenes, leading to believe that maybe parts of this game weren't rendering correctly. Could simply be a console vs.
PC thing.I do wish there was a way to check what choices you've made, what ending you got and even compare your choices globally with other players. I don't really care that I made X number of choices in a play through, when would that ever tell me anything of consequence?Overall, Late Shift is short, fun FMV game that I can recommend if, like me, you've never really played many FMV games.
Do try to pick it up on sale, though. I picked it up for $7 CAD, as oppose to $12.49 CAD.
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March 2023
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