Past Cure Reviews

Past Cure sounds like the name of a remedy that’s inaccessible to my current being. Like a paradise that’s out of reach; a river in the desert that reveals itself when I’m already dying of thirst.

In reality, it’s Phantom 8 Studio’s third person, psychological horror thriller, stealth action, puzzle solving game. If that sounds like an amalgamation of too many ideas, then take heart – this Unreal Engine-developed title introduces them in as arbitrarily, slow-paced, poorly thought out and clunky a way as possible. Oh, and there’s a mystery or three thousand to be solved.

Past Cure has no shortage of issues like this, and although many of them are not as invasive as the aforementioned pair, it’s still a mess nevertheless. The pace to the gameplay is off too. Past Cure will throw everything and its cat at you, rather than slowly and subtly introduce you to new mechanics.

Where the game’s fun actually lies is sadly not one of them.' From what’s meant to be a psychological horror game, we’re suddenly thrown off the rails into a puzzle-rific abyss of blank textures, like Portal’s lab settings with even more life sucked out of them.'

Let’s start with the story. It begins with Ian, a scraggly-bearded soldier who’s stuck in a nightmare with killer mannequins. The nature of these mannequins and the inconsistent textures of Ian’s beard fascinated me. As I gunned them down casually, running out of ammo in the penultimate encounter and only getting more by dying and resetting, I was suitably less fascinated.Ian has been having these nightmares for a while. There’s a period of his life that’s a complete blank – three months with no recollection of what’s occurred. The void now hosts these hallucinations, which Ian can suppress using blue pills. Interestingly, the pills help bring down his Sanity meter.

“Oh boy!” you’d think. “A rip-off of Eternal Darkness where low sanity causes me to hallucinate various monstrosities!” But no. That’s not quite the case.Anyway, Ian is looking to hunt down the people who did bad things to him with the help of his brother Marcus, guns and the recollection of a strange woman from his dreams. There’s also a bearded guy that keeps showing up. He has no hair on his head, distinguishing him from Ian but not from the other bearded dudes. Given how nondescript all the personalities are, the shoddy nature of the writing and the ham-fisted “self-talking” form of story-telling that a million other games handle way better, you could be forgiven for never caring about anyone ever.From what’s meant to be a psychological horror game, we’re suddenly thrown off the rails into a puzzle-rific abyss of blank textures, like Portal’s lab settings with even more life sucked out of them.

Ethan, I mean, Ian can use Astral Projection and hit switches. He can also use Bullet Time. You also have the ability to sneak around and – get this – use Bullet Time to sneak by dudes more easily. It’s a potpourri of mechanics that are tossed at you, overstaying their tutorial-esque, blatantly one-note direction for far too long.' This game’s puzzles don’t need you.

They don’t need your intellect or participation or even passing interest.' Apparently our dude’s father liked to punish his boys when they were “naughty” as evidenced by a memory within this dream.

But hey, at least Isaiah has that memory of that woman who he gifted a frigging baseball bat of all things to on Valentine’s Day, except he doesn’t know who she is because that’s how mysteries work. It was around this time that I suspected the two didn’t get an amicable divorce and go on their respective merry ways.It’s a testament to the game’s optimization that even with such bland visuals and an abnormal resolution (the thick black bars on the top and bottom of your screen a la The Order: 1886), the frame rate is abysmal. It improves when there’s literal darkness on your screen or just plain white textures. That’s not a compliment by the way.

It’s just that I was so out-of-my-mind bored with the game so early in that I took to noticing the most insignificant things. Between the horrible implementation of anti-aliasing, making edges fuzzier then our dog when he’s had too many KFC bones, glitching textures and clipping issues, I would have thought this game ran on Unreal Engine 2.Ethan plays chess with a sleeping mannequin and after some pawn metaphors and running around circles, you’re exposed to the other fatal flaw of Past Cure. This game’s puzzles don’t need you. They don’t need your intellect or participation or even passing interest. Click a button, watch the boring cutscene with Iago’s bland voice-acting, click a button.

Find a door that needs a passcode. Discover a piece of paper with the passcode.

Press a button on the door. Hate life and ponder about the punishing games that you’d rather suffer through time and time again instead of playing this mess. Repeat, repeat, repeat. The only real interaction I had during a puzzle was a series of button-mashes necessary for possessing a dude’s mind with Astral Projection. That’s being very, very generous mind you.Oh and using Bullet Time or Astral Projection drains your Sanity meter.

But don’t worry! It slowly refills. Why did it have to be a “Sanity” meter then? Lucifer take me, I don’t know.'

I don’t know how I stumbled into this grad school student’s version of Max Payne. I’m not sure the developer knows either.' Good because now we’re getting into the stealth, cover-shooter portion of the game (surprise! Cover shooting!). Isabel breaks into a hotel where one Dr. Fletcher, who’s had some nefarious hand in home boy’s condition, resides. There are Romanians protecting him though and they’ve got the building all wired up with varieties of cannon fodder. There’s Uzi Man, Handgun Man, Handgun-Man-With-Laser-Like-Aim-And-Oh-Lord-Why-Does-He-Hurt-So-Much and – my favourite – Runs-At-You-With-Fists-Man.

Do this again if you ran out of zen again.hope this fix will helppost a reply if it did not work'That isn't working for me. Zenonia 4 hack ios. I backed up my documents folder and replaced options.savThen opened zenonia and my characters were gone and a lvl 1 slayer was there.

Shotgun Man was somewhere in this mess as well. I think he was bald. Not sure if he had a beard though.You’re educated in the game’s close quarters combat mechanics prior to the “mission”, which involves flailing your fisticuffs at a dude before executing a finishing move in the worst parody of The Bourne Identity since The Bourne Legacy. You can also counter a foe and I suggest mashing the heck out of that button. The small window and poor indication of whether the button must be held – which does nothing – or pressed – which seems delayed enough to do nothing – is why.Oh, and have fun with the clunky shooting which throws two reticules at you for the realistic shooting portion of the game.

If the inner reticule doesn’t line up with the outer, then your bullet won’t hit the target. The former can sway this way and that while moving but seems to steady while using Bullet Time. I don’t know how I stumbled into this grad school student’s version of Max Payne. I’m not sure the developer knows either.Want to go full stealth? On one occasion, a stealth attack didn’t kill an enemy and instead alerted him. On another, an enemy with its back facing me was suddenly alerted to my presence. The one clever touch I liked was enemies becoming aware when you destroy security cameras using Astral Projection (which you can’t use to just randomly explode their brains, except that one canned QTE sequence). That led to certain instances where you draw their attention with a destroyed camera and then flank around to execute them.'

If this was to make firefights more “realistic”, then why do the enemies have such perfect aim while I battle these terrible controls?' Actually, the flanking part is negated by the fact that you can mantle over certain hurdles but not others. Still, I’ll give some credence to the game for making enemies aware when their comrades go down. I’ll spit on it for making my enemies deaf to next door gunfire louder than the voice of Cthulhu but immediately turning aggressive when they hear a door close in a cutscene.

And no, that particular instance of wanton door-closing rage wasn’t triggered the other dozen times I opened and closed doors.There’s no option to actually take cover – you awkwardly crouch and peek out to shoot at foes. Here’s how you best succeed in shoot-outs. When an enemy is a few feet away or rushing you, equip a Uzi and gun them down. When they’re far away, activate Bullet Time, quickly pop out of cover, fire one round from the Wood Hawk (it’s a play on Desert Eagle. Get it?) and then go back into cover after scoring a head-shot.Any prolonged time peeking out will earn you a million bullets to the brain and a quick death. This is on NORMAL difficulty, mind you. If this was to make firefights more “realistic”, then why do the enemies have such perfect aim while I battle these terrible controls?

If this was meant to be more “stylish”, why is the most effective tactic also the most boring available? Why in the seven hells did I receive the sprint function so damn late? Actually, that was so I would be slowly, painfully forced through the prior sequences and nightmares.' The only reward is that you don’t have to play Past Cure anymore.

You might as well not even bother to begin with.' You could argue that the tale of Past Cure is at least somewhat intriguing. However, my motivation to see how this all fits together was undone by the fact that the separate pieces are so badly written with awkward “banter”; badly voiced with drawl characters; backed by horrible cinematography with at least one “camera on the gun” cutscene that’s so bad it’s hilarious; and terribly deflating in terms of motivation. I’m sure Ian is a nice guy but he’s stuck in this magnanimously bad story that’s neither entertainingly terrible nor competently handled enough to negate all the other terrible aspects. I could dissect each and every portion of this game but then we’d probably be here all day.Past Cure is bad. Don’t play it unless it’s for a bet and even then, ask for the money up front. There is no brilliant moment where all of these ideas come together into an intriguing experience.

There’s no sudden catharsis to all the clunky gameplay you’ve endured. The only reward is that you don’t have to play Past Cure anymore. You might as well not even bother to begin with.This game was reviewed on Xbox One.

Past Cure is a clunky, uninspired mess in every single aspect and is without a doubt one of the worst games I have ever played.

I won’t mince words: Past Cure is a bad video game. Merely calling it bad, however, doesn’t honestly explain just how shockingly terrible itis in every way. Between its nonsensical story, horrible gunplay, and animations from the PS2 era of consoles, Past Cure has blown my mind and reached new depths of awfulness that I didn’t know was possible in 2018.

GOTHENBURG, Sweden-( )-The virtual world may hold the key to life after death, according toestablished online game developer MindArk.

“I won’t mince words: Past Cure is a bad video game.”

It’s honestly hard to know where to even begin with the major issues found in Past Cure, but I guess it’s easiest to start with the most dumbfounding part of the experience: its story. Up front, I want to state that coming into Past Cure I was very excited to see the narrative that Phantom 8 Studio had created. The team openly wore its inspirations on its sleeve saying they were trying to model Past Cure as a psychological-thriller in the same vein as films like Inception and Fight Club with an added element of action from something like John Wick. On paper, this made me intrigued.

That’s as far as my excitement got though. Moments into Past Cure, it becomes plainly apparent that you have absolutely no idea what is going on. The game’s simple premise follows a single-named protagonist known only as Ian who is hunting down a group of men that held him captive and performed experiments on him for years. After finally escaping, Ian learns that he has powers — if they can even be called such — that allow him to do nifty things like disable security cameras and solve block puzzles. I’m being facetious but the supposed powers that Ian has play no critical role in the gameplay portion of Past Cure.

As his powers he uses begin to cause him to delve into madness, Ian tries desperately to find his former captors and right himself. While this might sound promising, what the real issue with it is the way that the story is told. Past Cure contains a script that is so disorderly and so unwieldy that you’ll ask yourself questions like, “Wait, who is this character?” and, “What the heck are they talking about?” at least a dozen times over the course of the five or so hour playtime. In fact, the only way I was able to even restate the plot of Past Cure to you was by looking up the description of the game on its website. Large sections in Past Cure will make you think you missed something, but nope, it’s just poor storytelling.

Also worth noting in regards to story and characters is that Past Cure contains the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard in my life. Not just in the video game medium, either, but in any digital storytelling medium. The performance for Ian, in particular, is so devoid of emotion that I’m less upset with the voice actor in question for his performance and am instead more bothered that Phantom 8 deemed it worthy enough for the game. For a game that tries to rely so heavily on its story, the simple act of listening to its characters speak becomes a chore.

Even further, it doesn’t help when the dialogue in question is so bad that I begin laughing when I shouldn’t. My roommate came into the room while watching me play Past Cure this past weekend and within moments he started cracking up by merely listening to the characters speak. Days later and he’s still making jokes about one section where a character reminisces about the time they received a baseball bat as a gift. So I guess you could say that the dialogue is memorable but not for the right reasons.

On the gameplay front, things aren’t much better. In fact, they’re probably somehow worse. The best way I can describe Past Cure concerning its movement and gunplay would be to have you imagine a third-person action game from fifteen years ago. Got it? Awesome. Now I want you to imagine that same sort of early 2000s third-person game with more imprecise aiming and a character that feels like his knees don’t bend when walking — a note we alluded to in our previous vertical slice preview of the game. This image should hopefully help give you a better picture of what its like to play Past Cure.