In a burgeoning and growing industry, fewer and fewer videogames are considered rancid piles of excrement because developers take the time and care to use their resources and budgets wisely to craft enduring and unforgettable experiences. Past Cure is a rare instance where craftsmanship and talent seemed to have been sucked up into an air vent and ejected in puddles of gruel, vomit, blood and puss; that's right Past Cure is as close this generation has come to emulating the filth of notable failures like Ride to Hell:Retribution last generation-but replace Ride to Hell's offensiveness and broken design with incredulously boring characters, interminable repetition, incredibly dull corridor shooting and archaic stealth design making this the PS4/Xbox One's grand recipe for a modern videogame failure. How do all these ingredients come together to amass this frugally crap lava cake? Let's find out.
The story goes that an unremarkable ex army schmuck called Ian has found out he has supernatural powers and wants to go back to the past to find out more about why he has these powers. Yes, so instead of learning his abilities and finding ways they can prove useful, he'd prefer venturing to the past to find the the origins of them-this premise is about as boring and banal as the protagonist. Ian also suffers from intermittent hallucinations that send him into episodes where he fights off porcelain people and meets a strange woman he has never met before-like some kind of spiritual guide but without the intrigue. Ian staves off hallucinations by consuming blue pills, which also grant him the powers of perception and a temporary slow-motion ability-the former for solving puzzles, and the latter for attempting to make gameplay a tad interesting despite blatantly ripping off Max Payne and doing an amateurish job of incorporating the mechanic.
Past Cure is designed by committee no doubt, this is evident by the consistency of genre changes throughout the experience. At first Silent Hill appears to be the inspiration, but then the third person shooting pirouettes into Max Payne territory before bounding about trying to be Agent 47 and/or Sam Fisher with an antiquated implementation of stealth sequences. There could be further inspiration, but the unmistakable trend of Past Cure is its sour execution in everything it tries to do. The sole positive here is at least there is an attempt to shake things up continuously, but you can't just hold up a house with bricks and glue and Past Cure ultimately makes the a mess in almost every other regard.
One starts to fathom the atrociousness of Past Cure by first witnessing a brooding environment set inside a dream, where all you do is shoot the aforementioned demented porcelain figures, who emerge from glowing doors-and then all you do is shoot them all until the next wave comes along, and then you run out of bullets, die and retry again until you figure out how to get past the level without losing your patience and sanity to carry on. This first level is supposed to ape Silent Hill but it instead comes across like an agonising shrill. Doesn't help that just as one of these mannequins gets the jump on you, Ian would scream “NO! NO! NO!” taking control away from you while doing so-time that could've been spent defending your position by holding them back.
Shooting is irritable as the reticles are wily, and there are two of them you need to line up in order to take a successful shot. Sometimes aiming is made difficult as the inner reticle can have a mind of its own. Then you've got a gourmet banquet of four guns you get to play with. You get a standard Desert Eagle, sub-machine gun, a powerful handgun with laser sighting, and towards the end of the game an overpowered shotgun-no room for complex weaponry like sniper rifles here, nor any explosives-how rebelliously old school is that?! The gunplay overall is rarely satisfying because you've got a ludicrously meagre arsenal of guns and throughout you effectively play corridor shooting in copy and paste environments like a boring as ass parking lot, sure to bring about fond memories of the concrete pavements you walked on when you were younger.
The story goes that an unremarkable ex army schmuck called Ian has found out he has supernatural powers and wants to go back to the past to find out more about why he has these powers. Yes, so instead of learning his abilities and finding ways they can prove useful, he'd prefer venturing to the past to find the the origins of them-this premise is about as boring and banal as the protagonist. Ian also suffers from intermittent hallucinations that send him into episodes where he fights off porcelain people and meets a strange woman he has never met before-like some kind of spiritual guide but without the intrigue. Ian staves off hallucinations by consuming blue pills, which also grant him the powers of perception and a temporary slow-motion ability-the former for solving puzzles, and the latter for attempting to make gameplay a tad interesting despite blatantly ripping off Max Payne and doing an amateurish job of incorporating the mechanic.
Past Cure is designed by committee no doubt, this is evident by the consistency of genre changes throughout the experience. At first Silent Hill appears to be the inspiration, but then the third person shooting pirouettes into Max Payne territory before bounding about trying to be Agent 47 and/or Sam Fisher with an antiquated implementation of stealth sequences. There could be further inspiration, but the unmistakable trend of Past Cure is its sour execution in everything it tries to do. The sole positive here is at least there is an attempt to shake things up continuously, but you can't just hold up a house with bricks and glue and Past Cure ultimately makes the a mess in almost every other regard.
One starts to fathom the atrociousness of Past Cure by first witnessing a brooding environment set inside a dream, where all you do is shoot the aforementioned demented porcelain figures, who emerge from glowing doors-and then all you do is shoot them all until the next wave comes along, and then you run out of bullets, die and retry again until you figure out how to get past the level without losing your patience and sanity to carry on. This first level is supposed to ape Silent Hill but it instead comes across like an agonising shrill. Doesn't help that just as one of these mannequins gets the jump on you, Ian would scream “NO! NO! NO!” taking control away from you while doing so-time that could've been spent defending your position by holding them back.
Shooting is irritable as the reticles are wily, and there are two of them you need to line up in order to take a successful shot. Sometimes aiming is made difficult as the inner reticle can have a mind of its own. Then you've got a gourmet banquet of four guns you get to play with. You get a standard Desert Eagle, sub-machine gun, a powerful handgun with laser sighting, and towards the end of the game an overpowered shotgun-no room for complex weaponry like sniper rifles here, nor any explosives-how rebelliously old school is that?! The gunplay overall is rarely satisfying because you've got a ludicrously meagre arsenal of guns and throughout you effectively play corridor shooting in copy and paste environments like a boring as ass parking lot, sure to bring about fond memories of the concrete pavements you walked on when you were younger.
All the levels look like they run together into each other too-a mark of a poorly designed game, but one you cannot explore as there are locked doors everywhere. Past Cure keeps the experience directed, meaning in this case you cannot pick up anything unless it's tied to the story in some way, and there are a few farcical and spurious attempts at player choice where you either proceed to the next cutscene or objective or you get to do nothing and stall yourself.
There exists a PS2-era stealth section in Past Cure-one where you can get up close to character models and stare gormless at the convincing comparisons they share with GTA Vice City's. Anyway once you stop fooling around, you'll find out that a failure in stealth happens when you make noise and alert the guards to your presence-no room for adaptation here-you gotta go back and try the mission again-just don't let the poorly placed checkpoint systems stub you on the way to another attempt at completing the mission.
Attempts at puzzle-solving are faint but mentionable. With the perception power, Ian can warp outside of himself and find switches he can use to access the next area. This ability comes with limited range, but the puzzles are so easy to solve you'd hardly care for limitations. Oh and you may need to deal with those porcelain mannequins while accessing perception too-so let that warning embed its way into your psyche.
There exists a PS2-era stealth section in Past Cure-one where you can get up close to character models and stare gormless at the convincing comparisons they share with GTA Vice City's. Anyway once you stop fooling around, you'll find out that a failure in stealth happens when you make noise and alert the guards to your presence-no room for adaptation here-you gotta go back and try the mission again-just don't let the poorly placed checkpoint systems stub you on the way to another attempt at completing the mission.
Attempts at puzzle-solving are faint but mentionable. With the perception power, Ian can warp outside of himself and find switches he can use to access the next area. This ability comes with limited range, but the puzzles are so easy to solve you'd hardly care for limitations. Oh and you may need to deal with those porcelain mannequins while accessing perception too-so let that warning embed its way into your psyche.
So yes it's true, Past Cure plays dreadful, looks dreadful and sounds dreadful. The entire game can be beat in under 4 hours and you'd constantly be day dreaming of better games you could've been playing otherwise, but don't be too neglectful-Past Cure is a great lesson in how the industry can still churn out abysmal piles of dreck. Despite attempts at variety and some sick headshots, Past Cure is naught but a defecation on current-gen hardware, Ian may need pills to deal with hallucinations-but you may very well need the same pills to forget Past Cure existed in the first place.
STORY: 2/10
GAMEPLAY: 3/10
PRESENTATION: 2/10
LIFESPAN: 2/10
SCORE: 2/10
Atrocious in just about every way, Past Cure dreadfully apes its inspirations but utterly fails to make any credible use out of them. Past Bore.