Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo Review

"Shaking Twists & Turns"

Campaign

September 14, 2023 at 5:55pm
By Jason Stettner

The film collection of Alfred Hitchcock is legendary and his expertise is particularly displayed with the masterpiece Vertigo. So to share the name with a game it lends a certain level of expectation.

Within the game Vertigo, they’re using that name while not really fully living up to that concept and at the same time sharing very little with it outside the conceptual theme of obsession. It’s a strange game as while I loved the story with its winding twists and turns, the outer layer of this one is rather rough.

It’s a lengthy tale that comes across as somewhat bloated in your actions with dated mechanics and honestly some of the worst voice acting efforts I’ve seen for a game. It’s just bizarre, as again I really like the story here and hope that maybe someday it gets remade as I think it could shine with some further refinements.

The narrative is split between a selection of perspectives. It’s largely Ed Miller who runs into this young woman and takes care of her, alongside that his long term trauma around Vertigo that has been reawakened.

Then there’s his therapist, who’s breaking down his barriers across sessions and changing the perspective you’re seeing throughout the story. Other perspectives come into play, but I won’t comment on those as not to spoil big elements of the plot.

Gameplay

Taking the approach of a modern adventure game you’re lightly inputting movement and buttons on the occasion while taking in the story that’s progressing. As mentioned the mechanics and style of play feel very aged. They’re awkward and paired with just awful lip syncing that made the poor voice acting even worse.

The mysterious lady’s voice acting was actually a stand out once I saw more of the game and understand the approach, so I felt that was needed to be commented upon. There’s nothing necessarily bad performance wise as it does run well and I didn’t have any detrimental issues. It just doesn’t look aesthetically the best despite there being a decent art direction.

It’s this weird low quality presentation mix that holds back what’s actually a strong tale of twists and deceit. You do make some choices here through dialogue but that won’t really alter what happens. It just determines some side events that take place. Depending on what you choose may also lengthen what feels like a slow, padded out sort of structuring.

The Conclusion

Alfred Hitchcock – Vertigo provides an exciting story that goes deep into the darkest depths of crazed obsession, but is stuck within a rough shell featuring poorly aged mechanics and presentation. It doesn’t really share much with the movie although I do understand the angle they were going for with that.

The story had really good twists that kept me intrigued despite the slower pacing and padding trying to hold me back. It’s like two fronts fighting one another in this game and that was entertaining. Mostly since I was laughing a fair bit at the voice acting quality and the poor voice syncing. There’s something really good here, but the style failed it sadly.

I would like to see this redone at some point since it’s sinister secrets and mature tone are something we don’t see too often in the gaming space and it would have been nice to have a better outer package to get folks into what this has to offer. If you do play it I recommend not reading into it much, as it’s fun to see how things change over the course of the story and the big secrets slowly get revealed.

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Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Microids

Rating Overall: 7.0