Developer: Wales Interactive, Interflix Media
Platforms: An, iOS, NS, PC (Reviewed), PS4, PS5, XO, XSX
Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Wales Interactive
The Isle Tide Hotel is a live-action mystery (FMV) game/interactive film. The game is published by Wales Interactive and developed by Interflix Media, Wales Interactive. This live-action game is an immersive experience where you get to make choices that lead to the end of a certain timeline. This interactive film reminds me of another interactive film game called The Gallery. This review was done for the PC, but the game is also available for all other gaming platforms.
The Isle Tide Hotel is a game that is played single-player, but it’s a great game that you can stream with your friends and make decisions as a whole. The game has a lot to offer, which includes seven main endings with fourteen different outcomes. There are also many side quests with dedicated endings. The game has many hidden easter eggs and cryptic notes, and of course, the great, live-action concept that responds to your choices.
The Isle Tide Hotel is a story about a man, Josh, whose daughter Eleanor has been taken by a cult. The cult is keeping Eleanor at Isle Tide Hotel, and even though Eleanor is a complete stranger to Josh, he rushes to action when he finds out about her disappearance through a private investigator, Price. Josh goes on a journey either by himself or with Price to rescue his daughter and, along the way, meets very peculiar characters.
The game is filled with suspense and captures a good essence of murder mystery aspects to it. Nonetheless, it also sets an extremely unsettling tone and with the different choices and narrative branches, the story can get even more wild. What I like about the game is that with the many different endings, it’s great to replay and make different choices this allows the players to get a full look at the overall story as well as meet new people and solve different scenarios. What I also like about the game is that there is a good amount of interaction to it as well. For instance, in The Gallery, there was not much interaction you could do besides interacting with choices. In this game, there is a directory that allows you to further inspect documents or items you can also be brought to a screen with many different interactions, which makes it seem like a real-life play.
The controls of this game are fairly simple; all you have to do is use your mouse/trackpad to select an option. The cinematography for this game is outstanding. As you start the game off the bat, the quality is so high definition and so clean that it looks like you’re watching an actual movie. What is also nice is that you can actually get a 4K DLC, which makes the game look even more stunning. The scenes are all so crisp and clean; they run so smoothly with zero lag. I enjoyed the different shots that were featured, with a close-up, zoom, a pan and many other creative shots. The dialogue for the game was also written really well. In addition to this, the acting was done extremely well by all the characters. The cinematography is like no other, and it does not even seem like you are playing a game. Everything from the sound effects, music, props, and dialogue to all the visuals itself is done extremely cleanly.
I would say 100% I enjoyed the game because the concept of interactive films are just intriguing. It allows players to first make their initial choices to get their very first ending, which later makes them even more curious about the other endings. The game also offers so many different endings, so getting through them can be such a blast. The only thing I would recommend is that they make the decision timer a bit longer, and it went by extremely fast. Like in most instances, I would not even be able to read up to the second decision, and it would go away, so definitely, I would say the timer needs to be increased. Besides that, I enjoyed the game. It was like you, yourself, were placed in the setting and without spoiling the story too much, the endings and narrative branches were extremely interesting to delve into.
If you want an immersive experience where it feels like you get to control a movie that you are sitting back and watching, then this is the game for you. It does not get much more thrilling and suspenseful than wondering about how you can achieve the best outcome for the game.
Overall: 9/10
This is S & S. We are world game explorers. We play games. We have played over 10,000+ games! We travel, we write reviews AND we play more games!!!!
