Full Motion Videos (FMV) were all the rage in the 90s gaming world. Mostly, the games themselves weren't really in FMV, but the cutscenes would generally be pre-recorded FMV. Gems such as the FMV cutscenes from the CnC and Wing Commander games will give the elder gamer equal parts cringe and nostalgia for the past!
Contradiction (released by Baggy Cat in 2015) is one of the newer wave of FMV games that integrate the videos into a sort of adventure or choose your own adventure genre of gaming. Both types of integration make the game more like an interactive movie rather than what most people would consider a "real" game, making it more accessible to the casual audience. In fact, there were a couple of moments where my wife looked over to see what was happening.... it might a game that she could be interested in!
Contradiction falls squarely in the adventure camp of this new wave. This makes it a linear experience, with a single non-branching storyline unfolding as you complete tasks in the "gaming" part of the game.
The Setup
You play as Detective Jenks, who has been sent into a sleepy little English village called Edenton to investigate the drowning suicide of a PhD student, Kate Vine. Of course, you are viewing this all from a third person perspective, so you can to have front seat ticket to the slightly overacted part of the detective! Still, it is entertaining in a bit of a kitschy sort of way!
The location setting for the game (Edenton) is quite well set. It's a small English backwater town... which does seem to be based loosely on a University type of town, given the high number of postgraduate students that are studying and living in the area. There is a strange sort of disconnect between the number of people that you interact with and the apparent size of the town, compared to the fact that there seems to be a largish university nearby? However, that little niggle aside, it is a beautifully set town to wander around in!
The Game
The game plays out very much like the adventure games of old... however, with much less random sorts of "stick gum to rocket ship" type of nonsense puzzles. You will be interviewing a cast of interesting people who live in the town, from the bartender and students through to the local business people. The FMV clips of the interviews are really quite nicely done.. if you can get over the slightly camp acting of the main character! The rest of the interviewees are generally quite interesting and engaging.
During your time in the village, you will uncover little tidbits of information or objects which you can then present to people in the interviews. These can range from objects that you've picked up or discovered around the village through to little hints that have been dropped by an interviewed character.
Asking about an item will trigger a FMV response from the interviewee, and you will have a few key pieces of information that you will have written down in your notepad. This is where the game mechanic kicks in. Within all of these answers and across the interviewees, there will be a few contradictions.
If you manage to link two contradictions (they always appear in the notepad for the SAME interviewing character, not across character interviews), you will be rewarded with a new FMV cutscene as they aim in explain the discrepancy. This can often lead to new information tabs that can contradict more earlier statements... or more likely, uncover new objects/information that you can use to quiz the other characters in the village (to hopefully uncover more contradictions!). Phew!...
As you uncover the contradictions, the storyline will advance (the hour of the investigation moves forward). As I had mentioned before, this is done in a very linear way... you will have to uncover the contradictions and they are pretty much done in a specific order as you unlock the various objects to ask the interviewees about.
You can navigate around the town (and inner locations) using the mouse buttons on the main screen... however, it can get a bit confusing as you get turned around a bit whilst navigating and things aren't on a grid.
The easier thing is to use the pins on the map to fast-travel to a specific location, and from there you can use the mouse arrow buttons to do the navigation within the locations. There are very few rooms that you can visit, so you don't get so lost doing this!
One of the frustrating niggles about this game is the fact that occasionally in the game, you will need to just happen to have wandered into the woods to pick up a vital story item/clue to ask the interviewees about. Sure, there aren't that many locations that you can visit on the map... but you have absolutely NO REASON to visit the woods... no one suggests that you should have a peek there in the interviews, and it is more likely to you are just racking your brain trying to figure out the contradictions in the interviews rather than thinking that you need to visit a location that you've had no cause to visit!
If you get a little bit stuck, you can check in with your chief by calling him on the local pay phone (remember what those looked like?). He might give you a little hint... or at least tell you who to check out again. Or sometimes he is distinctly less helpful...
... if you are really and truly stuck, you can also go back to the main menu and "cheat" by getting a fully fledged clue from the chief. However, by doing this you will lose the achievement for not getting extra hints. Or there is Google....
That said, much of the appeal of the game is that the puzzles aren't crazily obscure or difficult... it just requires you to really put your mind into logic mode and think hard! It's much more rewarding than following a Google guide!
Visuals, Sound and Performance
Visuals and Sound are top notch on Contradiction. Most of the action and interviews are done in a static fashion, there are no car chase scenes or anything like that, so you can really focus on the reactions and the individual portrayal of the characters. Most of the characters are really well done and acted, but I do find that the main character is a bit on the camp side. However, I guess that is part of the appeal... that the game doesn't take itself too seriously!
There is very little in the way of music, which makes the moments when it does kick in have more impact!
Performance-wise, well,,, seeing as it is pretty much all pre-rendered videos, if you can play a movie or use YouTube on your computer or device then you will be able to run this game with no problems! In common parlance, potatoes will run this!
My Thoughts
These days, I've been missing having games that are a bit more linear with clear-cut defined endings and well crafted storyline. Contradiction fills that scratch to a tea, well acted FMV cutscenes, a light logic gaming mechanic and a storyline that starts to evolve from a simple investigation into a deep dive into the character interactions in the little village of Edenton.
It's a great antidote for the gigantic 40-80 hour mega-commitments of the open world genre or the unscripted emergent storylines of survival games. It's unpretentious and engaging, a nice alternative to a murder mystery movie. If you are into Agatha Christie, I think this would be right up your alley!
Review Specs
Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:
XMG Fusion 15
CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD (SATA/Nvme)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 2070 Max-Q
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