Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Jan 22, 2022

  There's probably much to admire in this game, but for me, there was a central and insurmountable problem with this game. As individually talented as these actors are, it is clear that each filmed their lines without the other actors present, nor a continuity/script supervisor, and the result is that when you watch two halves of a single conversation, the rhythms are out of sync to the point of absurdity: one actor pauses for nearly 90 seconds in a line break the other actor fired out their entire speech in 7 and a half seconds; another actor's slow, flirtatious-gaze-heavy delivery is partnered with an actor who delivers their lines rapid-fire and away from cam without a hint of sexuality... this happened again and again and totally broke the immersion that the otherwise naturalistic acting was meant to generate. Either stick to single character games, Sam, or work with your actors together: I promise it's worth the inconvenience of making schedules work, and they'll be grateful for it.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 8, 2022

  As a fan of Her Story, it pains me to say I can't recommend Telling Lies. Before I get into it, I should note an odd, but not unique, technical issue I had... On first loading the game, I was just greeted with a completely black screen. It turns out that, for some people, this game has a weird issue with Steam Cloud Saves that just makes it kinda not work. Turning that off got me in the game, but it was an odd first obstacle to have to get past. Her Story is a game centered around arbitrary functional limitations, deliberately. You only see one side of the conversation, so while you hear answers, you never know what the question was. You can't access videos directly, only by searching for words spoken in the video, and you can only see the first 5 results for each video. And there's no metadata to help out, only an optional tagging system. This is all deliberate, and works well - it's a maze of vocabulary, where words said in one video give paths to others, following non-linear threads back-and-forth through the timeline as you piece things together, with big reveals that re-contextualise everything you've seen. It's great. I can see what they were going for with Telling Lies - More of everything. More actors and settings, more, higher quality videos... And more limitations to navigate around. Those additional limitations, combined with the (much!) longer videos, bury the game. In Her Story, a keyword gives you vids of usually just a few seconds. You click it, watch the whole thing, and move on, scrubbing back-and-forth if you didn't watch something or want to check a detail. You're only hearing one side of the story, but the setting... a woman being interviewed by the police... makes that perfect. This isn't the story of anyone but her. It is... wait for it... Her Story. The bite-size chunks of information are easily digested, and you can process and move forwards easily. In Telling Lies, a keyword gives you a video of several minutes, and because those videos are generally one side of a two person conversation, an awful lot of those videos are an actor silently reacting to speech we can't hear. Also, the interface no longer starts the clip from the start, but from the sentence with the keyword you selected. Also, the only way to move through a clip... Say, if you want to rewind to hear it from the start... Is to rewind/fast-forward through, at a rate that seems to cap out at about 2x real time. That's mouse-driven only, for some reason - you have to click and drag left/right and hold the button down to navigate through the video, accessibility be damned. Put altogether, this absolutely kills the pacing. In Her Story, the time between searching for one keyword and another was generally a minute or two at most, including watching all 5 videos it brought up. In Telling Lies, by that point you'll have probably only just finished rewinding the video. You'll spend another 2, 4, 10 minutes watching it, struggling to focus at the end while trying to remember anything useful you heard along the way, then you'll probably want to track down the other side of the conversation, at which point you'll spend the same amount of time again probably learning nothing new (and maybe still not fully getting it, unless you somehow perfectly recall what the first person said and when), and then you have 4 vids from the original keyword still to go. It becomes a slog. There's a fan-made mod which adds keyboard navigation for watching videos, including an instant skip to the beginning, which improves things a lot, but doesn't fundamentally address how much of this game is spent watching people not talking. I guess the idea was that you weren't supposed to play the game that way. You were meant to treat each sentence as it's own Her-Story style bite-size chunk, watch for a few seconds, and move on. But that's almost impossible to achieve in practice, given that the "you already watched this" markers are per-video, making them useless if you're only watching a chunk and then moving on, and it also doesn't make sense - why would you not watch the whole file while you have it open? None of this feels like it adds to the 'puzzle', rather just being an arbitrary time-wasting exercise. On a purely subjective level, the story just didn't hit as hard for me as Her Story's did. While there are certainly events that occur that shake things up a bit, the videos you get directed to by the opening keyword telegraphed most of where the plot was going to go to me, and there's nothing that happens that alters what you saw before in hindsight, as was the case in Her Story. It's telling that Her Story, despite being an objectively smaller game with far less video to watch, had me rack up almost 9 hours of playtime by the time I was done, compared to only slightly over 5 for this one (which, yes, I completed). It isn't all bad. The money on the actual video production was well spent. The actors all do a great job. There are some parts in this that will genuinely stick with you... In particular, I thought the scene where our "Hero" is talking to his daughter while his wife talks to a Doctor in the background was a very cleverly done scene evoking a complex emotional situation. I didn't come out of this game upset or angry or feeling like I'd wasted my money or anything. I just think the ambitions of the project worked against how it plays as a game instead of for them, and that's a shame. I would definitely get a third game in this pseudo-series, and I hope they make one. But I can't recommend this game, and certainly not over the much tighter Her Story. ...Also, seriously, what's with the Solitaire game with the missing card? Was that meant to mean something? Is it a bug you just never bothered fixing? That's just plain annoying, come on.
• Jello

  Sep 22, 2022

  I imagine most people considering this game are doing so because they played "Her Story", a game in the same format by the same studio. If I were you, I'd recommend passing on this one. The story in "Telling Lies" is not nearly as tight as as the one in "Her Story" and the protagonist is not nearly as interesting. "Her Story" manages to use the game's purposefully counter-intuitive search engine to great effect, hiding critical information late in chronological order and keeping me intrigued the whole way through. I never felt like I knew absolutely everything about "Her Story's" protagonist. There was always a new piece of information to keep me guessing or a new lie to uncover. Even after finding enough files to clear the game I spent an extra few hours trying to discover all the remaining ones just because I was curious. Not so with "Telling Lies". In telling lies I had basically figured out the protagonist's entire deal within three, maybe four search term's worth of video. I was like "Oh, he's probably X and he's trying to do Y" and I had it dead-on right away. I was hoping the game would have additional later twists that would surprise me, but it never did. While "Her Story"'s Hannah is multifaceted, interesting, and someone you can never quite read with 100% certainty, David is a terrible liar and it's immediately apparent whenever he is telling his titular lies. Additionally, unlike Hannah who is unique and bizarre, David a protagonist I've seen in about fifteen other True Crime/Mysteries works, and he always sucks. I've never met a single person who likes this character I wish people would stop telling stories about him. The narrative seems to realize that David is a piece of shit and that we're not supposed to root for him, but it fails to realize that if you give me 5 hours of video footage where 80% of it is just watching a dude that sucks, I'm not going to have a good time. When the game told me that I had unlocked enough videos to close things out, I decided that I didn't care enough to investigate any further and instead of searching for more files I just closed the game. I feel like that's a pretty bad sign. Perhaps the biggest problem with "Telling Lies" is the fact that the UI/UX works against the player for the entire game. In "Her Story" the search function is the main antagonist, but it's fun to fight against for the most part. Once you find a new video it puts you right at the beginning. Additionally, the videos tend to be short with most of them being around a minute or less and only the really juicy ones are longer than 2-3m. Finding a long video in "Her Story" feels like unearthing a gold mine. Finding a long video in "Telling Lies" makes you go "UGH... now I have to watch David talk for *seven minutes*... aaaaauuuugh..." The worst thing about "Telling Lies" compared to its predecessor is that the devs have decided to add the AWFUL feature where a search term will teleport you to the MIDDLE of a video, where the searched word is being said. If you want to watch the whole thing you now have to rewind through the footage, half of which is now blank space while another, invisible character is talking. What's more, many of the clips are 5+ minutes in length with several in the 7 minute range, meaning that if you want to watch something from the beginning, you have to drag the video back using the Rewind function for entire minutes of dull silence. I have... absolutely no idea who greenlit this function. I literally can't think of a single situation where I'd ever want to teleport to the MIDDLE of a video and miss out on half the information. This is a game about context and information gathering. Why would you EVER want to ignore half off a video? This wouldn't be such an issue if there was a simple "Play from beginning" button, but there isn't! Literally unbelievable! The first game is so tightly put together that this oversight is literally unbelievable to me. The rewind/fast-forward is a necessary evil given how long the clips are, but honestly it's not fast enough Even dragging as far as you can (which is sometimes cumbersome and will randomly reset you 10+ seconds in the opposite direction for some reason?) is shockingly slow. It can take a full minute or more to rewind a 7 minute clip to the beginning if you're unlucky enough to search a word that comes up at the end. I would've preferred a system where each video had a timeline that you could drag at the bottom of the screen and maybe hotkey buttons that can shoot you 10s forwards and backwards if you want to traverse quickly. Mapping FF/Rewind to the *mouse drag* is an absurd decision. I have absolutely no idea why it's not mapped to the arrow keys or something static. One last note: This game's video files are all halves of a single conversation, always with two participants. I'm sure this would've been difficult to program, but I really think that once you discovered the second half of a conversation you already viewed, they should REALLY start playing side-by-side. I think in the entire game there was maybe only one or two videos where I didn't find the other half *immediately*. It's not like they're difficult to locate. One character will say a proper noun or a key phrase, you search that, you immediately get the other half. Just... put them next to each other instead of making me watch two conversations with 3 minutes of silence each. tl;dr - The UI/UX is worse in this game than it's predecessor which makes playing it physically less fun, but the nail in the coffin is that the main character sucks and the core "mystery" is too easy to figure out so there's no intrigue keeping you going. If you haven't played "Her Story" yet, go play that one and ignore this game.
• qksjeli

  Mar 20, 2023

  The game mechanics are really interesting, but the story's conclusion is unsatisfying and the objective is unclear. You are never really filled in on what to do or how to play other than "type things in the search bar". You don't really know what's important, and I guess part of the point is so that you can figure that out yourself, but there's also no objective for the player figuring that out other than curiosity. If you're interested in playing it, that's fine, but I recommend not burning as many hours as I did on it.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 18, 2023

  This game is fantastic it is an absolutely awesome storytelling method and it super satisfying to piece things together and figure out the story. You can go down rabbit holes of different plot points and characters throughout time as you figure things out and learn. Finding complementary recordings is also a great feeling whenever you are listening to one side of an call and trying to figure out what the other person just said to elicit this response. Getting it right then being able to listen to the other side also and connect all the lines together is amazing. Some of the characters I wasn't interested in, so I just explored other parts of the story and didn't have to care about them. My only complaint is that there isn't a way to start a recording from the beginning, so you have to manually rewind to the start, which is annoying but you get used to it. Was only super bad for like 3 recordings where I had 5+ minutes of rewinding. Highly recommend, it won't stroke your ego with flashy effects and exciting gameplay, but it will keep you engaged with an interesting story and character driven conflict.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 24, 2019

  Like a new art-form, neither movie nor game and yet both at the same time...dependant on fantastic writing and acting - mysterious, compelling and well worthy of your time.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 24, 2019

  no papa
• gamedeal user

  Aug 24, 2019

  If you like detective games and FMV this is absolutely for you. Sam Barlow and team did an exceptional job telling a very fragmented story in a clever way. I'll keep this simple: Pros: - Great acting and cast. FMV falls into three catogories: Campy, unintentionally hilarious, and serious with solid execution. This was the last one. - Plot was unexpected with some good twits and turns - While the rest of the cast is great, Logan nailed it - Extensive footage if you want to go deep (I think I got about halfway through it at 3.5 hours) - The protagonist, aka you, has some of her own "moments" to break the focus and the fourth wall - iOS designed for the game adds some immersion - Audio is good, and not too distracting - One-sided Skype/Cam calls is a really unique way to present the footage Cons: - I hate to single someone out here, but as a UX/UI designer the branding, interface, and "fake iOS" were fugly - Solitaire has no victory screen - The notepad is basically broken, with the cursor constantly appearing in the wrong place; made taking notes difficult - Without any kind of spoiler, the vast majority of characters were effectively terrible people - Maybe I got lucky, but within 3.5 hours I felt like I pieced together the entire story pretty easily. Granted there is a TON of footage, you really only need to see about half of it to have a pretty good idea what's going on - Price point is a little high On that last con, I am well aware what goes into production of something like this. This wasn't just Sam Barlow hacking together a script and phoning in some garbage talent. This was a full on production, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of Bandersnatch without a lot of special effects and a massive camera crew - thanks to the style choice of making this more like watching one side of a Skype call and home video/ found footage. I can respect that. However, $20 is a little steep. I would imagine the core 4 cast in this alone probably devoured the budget, but I still have to say that $15 or even $10 would have probably been a better price point to reach a larger demo and make more money in the long run (ROI). I can see a lot of people hesitant to drop 20 bucks on a detective FMV game that could potentially only last 4+ hours. The last thing I'll say on a negative front is the open-ended story. It just kind of... ends. There's no conclusive moment where you fill in the blanks, connect the dots, or make an authoritative declaration. I may be in the minority, but was I right? Did I understand exactly what happened? I have no one to ask; so it feels a little inconclusive and personally, I'd like the author(s) to say "yes, you found the right footage. Yes, you uncovered what was needed. Yes, that's the gist of it, even if you missed some details." Few stories (if any) are engaging enough for the reader to become the author, and I felt like I had to towards the end. Not much of a complaint, but I'm in the "wtf was that. REALLY!?" crowd when it comes to the fade-to-black the audience figures it out philosophy in storytelling. Overall, it's a great game, and if you liked Her Story or other games in this genre you won't be disappointed. This is a high-budget version of those games, and if you want more like them, developers could use your support, because quality FMV is still a dying breed.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 24, 2019

  Am I stupid or there is no button to jump to the beginning of a video?
• gamedeal user

  Aug 25, 2019

  [h1]FOR THE LOVE OF [i]GOD[/i] DO NOT BUY THIS GAME NOW[/h1] I loved [i]Her Story[/i]. I bought this Day One. It is a [b][i]freaking nightmare.[/i][/b] 1) The average length of clips in [i]Her Story[/i] was 20 seconds or so. The average length of clips in [i]Telling Lies[/i] is [i]8 minutes.[/i] 2) There is no way to play clips from the beginning. Clips start at the first mention of the keyword you entered to bring them up. [b]The only way to see a clip play from the beginning is to hold down the Rewind key and wait a couple minutes for the entire video - the entire [i]digital[/i] video - to "rewind" like a VHS tape.[/b] Oh, maybe we weren't [i]supposed[/i] to watch entire clips, you suggest? Well, [i]no[/i], because [i]Telling Lies[/i] has the same system as [i]Her Story[/i] where videos you've already watched are marked in search results so you don't repeat content. Except here, [i]it's utterly useless,[/i] since clicking on a video doesn't guarantee you'll be watching the whole thing, unless you - and I cannot complain about this [i]utter stupidity[/i] enough - [b]HOLD "REWIND" FOR [i]A COUPLE MINUTES[/i] AT THE START OF [i]EVERY SINGLE FREAKING VIDEO.[/i][/b] Do [i]not[/i] buy this game until a "Play Video from Start" feature is patched in - as it inevitably will be, as the board is rightfully up in arms. That said: even when that [i]completely idiotic[/i] decision is patched, this game is gonna have issues, because of Problem 1) up there. In [i]Her Story[/i], the length of the videos was perfect to tell the story yet keep your mind guessing & engaged and your typing fingers busy - you had a great balance between cinemas and gameplay. [i]Telling Lies[/i] reminds me of a '90s CD-i title that got coked up on an actual Hollywood (well, TV) budget: it's obsessed with showing you the [i]FMV future of video games[/i] - but forgets all about the "game" part. You're just watching way-too-long videos (once you rewind them, of course). CD-i games were this way because a) the ability to put FMV in games was novel at the time and b) no one on the staff had ever made video games. Well, a) is no longer true - and what's Annapurna's excuse for b)? The retention of name actors is actually detrimental to the project, since they want to show off where their money went but can't think of anything for the actors to [i]do[/i], so for literal minutes at a time, you're watching some doof chew popcorn on a couch. What's the story? I DON'T CARE. [b]I CAN'T FREAKING WATCH IT. [i]Who in Hades playtested this?!!?!?!?!!?!?[/i] WHO LET THIS OUT THE DOOR?![/b] In conclusion: please play [i]The Infectious Madness of Dr. Dekker[/i] instead.