She Sees Red | PC Review
Full Motion Video games (FMV) are quite hit and miss. On the one hand, we have classics like The 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria and Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, and on the other hand we have stinkers like Tender Loving Care, Night Trap and Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. Even Netflix got on the FMV train with the recent Black Mirror episode “Bandersnatch”. It looks like FMV games are making a comeback, and now we have a new entry into the genre with She Sees Red, developed and published by Rhinotales.
Who Did It?
She Sees Red takes place in a nightclub, where a murder is being investigated. We follow the investigator while she is discovering clues and trying to find out what happened. When she finds something, we flash back to the murderer and we see what really happened. You play this murderer and make decisions for him. It plays almost like a choose-your-own-adventure book. You have several seconds to choose between two actions, and then the game takes you to the next scene to see how it plays out. Eventually, you come to the conclusion, and you get to see one of the endings.
Russian Doll
The game encourages you to play multiple playthroughs to get the entire story. There are four endings you can find, and every path towards that ending has unique scenes to discover. There are a total of 62 scenes and 15 achievements to earn. A playthrough takes about 20-25 minutes, depending of course of the choices you make. The story has some nice twists and turns and, like a good movie, knowing the ending actually adds a layer to the game.
Multilingual
The game can be played in English (dubbed) or in Russian with subtitles in multiple languages. I played it in both and actually liked the Russian subtitled version best, because I believe it is always better to see and hear the actors in their own language.
Red Endings
The acting and production values are very high. While many previous FMV attempts were mostly clunky and corny, here the developers went all in, and it shows. It serves the story well, and the story is dark. Very dark. The more you find out about the plot, the darker it gets, and several of the endings end in red. Blood that is. Whose blood? That’s for you to find out. Choose your path wisely and you live to find out why she sees red.
Conclusion
I had my concerns when I started playing this interactive thriller, but the game quickly won me over with an interesting story, good acting and simple game play. We’ve had plenty of FMV games that give the genre a very bad name, I am glad that Rhinotales has given us a title with She Sees Red that does this particular adventure game sub-genre justice.
This review is based on a PC review copy of See Sees Red provided by Sandbox Strategies for coverage purposes. It is also available on iOS.
She Sees Red
$2.99
Pros
- Good Story & Acting
- Multiple Languages Offered
- Multiple Endings Stimulate Replayability
- Simple Gameplay
Cons
- Relatively Short
- Very Dark, Not For Everyone
