Erica

This is my first full motion video game  (FMV). Basically it is a movie where they have recorded many possibilities and you, as a player, choose what the main character should do. I have played Telltale games, which are built on the same concept, but animated instead of real actors. The format has a lot of potential if done right, like enhanced story telling if you want. 

Erica is a thriller about a girl in a mental hospital. She’s there to be protected from the person that killed her father. If you think of all the tropes surrounding a girl in a mental institution you pretty much know all the details. The story is completely unimaginative and there are no surprises. The characters are really shallow, the script is awful and the acting is horrible. I think the protagonist had the same facial expression through the whole experience.

But what about the game play? It is also really bad. You get options of how Erica should respond in dialogue. That is fine. But the gimmicky “drag to open” brings nothing to the experience except for irritation. I couldn’t get the phone integration to work, so I played this with a controller which obviously was not the way the game was intended to get played. I missed a couple of dialogue options because the controlling was really bad. 

I rate this game as BAD.