SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
An intense, well-acted horror-thriller, Erica is a fairly compelling argument for the return of full motion video but is often overshadowed by numerous narrative and technical issues.
With Erica, full motion video is back in business. After being announced at Paris Games Week in 2017, it vanished, only to make a surprise reappearance as part of an otherwise lacklustre showing by Sony at this year’s Gamescom. Not many games can claim to represent the video-game industry collectively coming together for a “wow, this is interesting, let’s see how we can run with this” moment, but Erica most certainly can. The fact that a decent game that’s not particularly mind-blowing by itself still managed to give us that moment makes it weirdly compelling.
After receiving a gruesome package in the mail, Erica Mason (Holly Earl) is taken into protective custody by the police at Delphi House, a mental hospital founded by her father years ago before his murder at the hands of an unknown assailant who carved an ancient symbol into his chest. As the police investigate the ties to her traumatic childhood, Erica discovers that not all is as it seems. Something seems off about Delphi House and its inhabitants, and in order to survive, Erica must find out the truth before she loses her mind.
It’s an excellent thriller that crosses boundaries and becomes a macabre psychological horror. From its opening moments, Erica is unrelentingly intense, thanks to accomplished cinematography that creates an all-pervasive atmosphere of dread. Holly Earl, who plays Erica, carries it on her shoulders, playing a traumatised young woman tossed about by vivid nightmares. The strength of her performance means Erica is less about determining personality and more about nudging a fully fleshed out character along different paths and seeing how things play out. Despite the numerous dialogue options available, Earl pulls every line and scene off effortlessly, making the player’s choices fit seamlessly into the sequence of events.
Unfortunately, the narrative isn’t perfect. It flows like a delirious nightmare, with cinematography contributing to this deeply unsettling feeling. At points, the plot becomes too dense to properly understand. This is an unfortunate side effect of the need to give Erica replayability; there’s no way to gain a full understanding of events without multiple playthroughs. It makes for a replayable game, but ensures the underlying drama is poorly structured. The pacing is sometimes off; it doesn’t flow like it should and ends too quickly with conclusions that offer no sense of resolution or satisfaction to Erica’s story. The fact that the player is given time to choose inevitably breaks the flow, no matter how carefully crafted tone and narrative are. Still, not all of Erica’s narrative problems can be blamed on the inherent design of FMV games. Some are just plot structure problems, plain and simple.
This is one of Sony’s PlayLink games, so by nature it’s more experimental than their usual offerings. Essentially, players have to download an app on their smartphones and connect it to a console instead of using a controller. The fact that you can play Erica using a controller doesn’t necessarily mean it stands out from the rest of the line-up however. “Controller” in this case means using the touchpad, an experience which compares poorly in terms of accuracy and fluidity, to simply biting the bullet and downloading yet another app. The bigger the interface the better, and even the smallest smartphones have an edge over the comparatively tiny DualShock 4 touchpad.
The experience still isn’t seamless. You can connect your phone and console to the same Wi-Fi network, or let the Erica application turn your console into a hotspot and connect your phone to that. The former depends on a decent connection, while the latter is smoother but becomes decidedly fiddly should you want your phone connected to the Internet. Both phone and console apps have their issues; on more than one occasion the game inexplicably stopped responding to my phone inputs and forced a restart. While it should be noted that the vast majority of Erica’s technical issues stem from the phone-console arrangement, the game has its own problems, namely random freezing mid-scene and occasional crashes.
Up to a certain point, these things are totally acceptable and even expected. For the most part, Erica works, and swiping and tapping on your smartphone is a novel way to experience something that’s both game and movie at the same time. A lot of people enjoy Choose Your Own Adventure books, and anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie knows how their characters often act foolishly. Erica gives you the chance to relive both in an updated and refreshed form. The fact that you get to decide what to say and do, including deciding not to walk straight towards life-threatening danger, is exciting.
Over the years, FMV has given way to more conventional videogames, but if nothing else, Erica makes a compelling case for its return. It’s an experience that combines an intense thriller powered by a good performance with gameplay mechanics that give an audience agency. It’s certainly an experiment, but one that’s been at least partially successful.
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