izigame.me

Mystery FMV with phenomenal acting and gameplay with a seriously tedious side. Art and murder. Cinema and lots (and lots and lots) of rewinding. Quality title that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Here you’ll find:
- Twisted story about twisted people. Very few of them are likable, so proceed at your own risk. This story is also geared towards cinephiles as this is a film about shooting three different films – all footage is dedicated to either being on set, or being behind the scenes, or actors talking about filming/art of filmmaking when they aren’t actively working.
- Gratuitous nudity. One may argue that it wasn’t (as a matter of fact, one actor in the first film does exactly that), but in my opinion – this could have been cut down at least by a third, as it starts to feel like overabundant sex scenes present only for the sake of shock value, which in turn makes them feel cheap and lose impact. Be prepared to encounter some variation of doing the hanky panky even in the scenes that look like they have nothing to do with it.
- Tons and tons of meta discussions on the value of art or artists or artistic attributes. Most of the time it’s deep, sometimes it’s a bit pseudo-intellectual and self-indulgent (like lots of art, I suppose), but in general - it flows well and has a thought-provoking layer to it. Nicely done if you don’t mind bunch of philosophizing about this métier.
- Gameplay that will consist of watching a load of movie scenes, clicking on objects in those scenes to unlock even more scenes, and then meticulously rewind every one of those scenes to find even more scenes. Sometimes you’d have to do it multiple times, as one scene can contain more than one inside it. For anyone who has an inclination to do things in order or any OCD-like organized pattern – beware, you can find yourself endlessly clicking object after object just to keep unlocking new stuff and be entirely overwhelmed with hours upon hours of footage, each piece of which you’ll eventually need to run backwards at a certain speed. Getting locked in in this kind of mechanic can be addicting and yet prone to sucking the joy out of playing this game at the same time. All this non-stop clicking, rewinding and unlocking new scenes can work better if you give yourself a break and just watch footage in front of you, sinking into the story without worrying that you haven’t uncovered it all.
- Speaking of uncovering it all – you’ll never know how far along you are or how much you have left until you are given achievement that you got it. This is, perhaps, the most frustrating quality of life feature that is missing from this game and eventually makes the process tiresome instead of fun. You aren’t given a total number of scenes for each film, and no percentage of how full your collection is. Are you searching for 30 total? 50? 100? Are you missing 15 or 7 or 1? All you can do is guess which makes playing Immortality always teeter on the threshold of outright frustration (an allegory for art, perhaps?). There’s also no way to tell which scene you have already watched, and which ones are new (lots of them will look absolutely the same at the first glance) unless you start over-using the feature that wasn’t meant for that, at times turning the entire core of the gameplay into a chore.
- What isn’t a chore of any kind is enjoying fantastic performances all around, wonderful cinematography and top-notch FMV. I don’t know who’s winning what awards, I couldn’t care less, but if someone does care – they should take a look at this brilliant cast where everyone from the smallest role to the megalodons of the scene doing it big, doing it bold and doing it right. Cheesy stuff need not apply, serious acting only. Very impressive.
- Fittingly cinematic score that pipes up on occasion. Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it isn’t, but when it’s present – it’s beautifully arranged and delightfully unmemorable at the same time.
This was certainly an interesting experience that left me satisfied and exhausted simultaneously (it took me weeks with breaks to finish it). It’s a unique, high-quality game with intensely complex plot, wonderful acting and cinematography and original gameplay that, due to the lack of features, can turn wearying and overwhelming all at once. This is a hard one to recommend or not, it will all depend on your personal ability to tolerate highly repetitive process in order to uncover some true gems. I enjoyed it tremendously at first but started caring less and less towards the end, as the wonder of it all began to get drowned out by all the clicks and rewinds. I’m happy I played this peculiar game, but I’m also happy to be done with it and move on to different things. Fulfillment and relief wrapped in one.
Will you risk it?