With narrative-centric titles now two penny in today’s gaming climate as the industry wises up to its potential to augment traditional forms of storytelling, the sub-genre can no longer trade on its novelty. The standards have risen and consumers now, rightfully, demand experiences that parallel the quality found in other media – the TV series and films that compete for our time.
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| This man (vampire?) will give you nightmares |
Ultimately, if you’re going to endorse an approach that forgoes typical gameplay systems, you better be damn sure the writing is up to scratch. 4PM – despite its grounded themes harbouring the potential to resonate on a deeper lever than, say, The Walking Dead’s zombie apocalypse – falls well short of delivering affecting drama.
One of the game’s biggest failings is a lack of conviction in what it’s trying to achieve. The absence of a HUD or any menu screens work towards its primary conceit of being an “interactive drama” yet elements of traditional gameplay – that serve little narrative purpose – are employed at regular intervals.
For example, at one juncture you’re tasked with steering Caroline towards a nightclub toilet, having indulged in one too many libations at the bar. An on-screen timer ticks down until the moment of expulsion (why this couldn’t be conveyed through audio-visual clues is anyone’s guess) at which point a fail state is triggered. You’re then forced to retrace your steps and repeat the banal exercise until completion.
Similarly, a rudimentary stealth section in the penultimate chapter has you trying to elude Caroline’s boss as you attempt to sneak out off the office for a drink. Once again, getting caught making for the single means of egress resets you at the start of the chapter – instead of responding to your actions and shaping the narrative arc accordingly.
On the game’s official website, Bojan writes that the lack of inventory system and other obtrusive elements is intended to draw you into Caroline’s world, yet these aforementioned sections drag you right back out. It’s almost as if the creator didn’t have the confidence to let the plot breath for itself and felt compelled to shoehorn in these interludes to appease a specific subset of fans.
Time spent slinking through corridors cuts into the already meagre 20-minute playtime, leaving little opportunity to cultivate the characters and backstory. This comes to a head in the final chapter, wherein one character unspools exposition in a ridiculous fashion, using the protagonist’s fugue state as an excuse to fill in the blanks. The length isn’t the issue here (Pixar Shorts illustrate how impactful bite-sized narratives can be), it’s how inefficiently that time is used which proves its undoing, giving the overall impression that the developer spread his talents too thin.
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| If only you were given 24 seconds notice before you threw up in real life |
Nowhere is this more evident than in the unsightly visuals. There’s no doubt Brbora operated under a modest budget – despite the Steam blurb insisting no expense was spared on audio-visual style – so inevitably compromises had to be made on the graphical fidelity front. It’s surprising then that he didn’t embrace a more stylised aesthetic. Instead, the character models are hideous, the animations ropey, while the locales do little to generate atmosphere.
4PM claims to be an experimental title yet it’s as by the numbers as they come. Done well, this could’ve been a moving examination of some serious subject matters. In reality, even when 4PM reaches its revelatory conclusion, it’s hard to care.
4PM VERDICT
4PM claims to be an experimental title yet it’s as by the numbers as they come. Done well, this could’ve been a moving examination of some serious subject matters. In reality, even when 4PM reaches its revelatory conclusion, it’s hard to care.
TOP GAME MOMENT
The voiceover work is surprisingly good.
