FMV games can often be a mixed bag. While the niche genre can sometimes provide dramatic gems like Her Story, more often than not they are on the lower end of the scale, either due to embracing the cheese too much or not quite having what it takes to properly balance being a movie and a game. The Complex belongs somewhere in the middle.
Wales Interactive have built a bit of a quiet reputation for themselves over the last few years for releasing worthwhile yet unspectacular FMV games that are always just short of climbing the next rung. The likes of The Bunker and Late Shift have become cult favourites for offering player choice through their almost winking-to-the-camera attitudes, and The Complex is their next attempt to bridge the gap between the two worlds of entertainment.
The Complex starts off promisingly enough, a scientist by the name of Amy dealing with two locals of the definitely-not-North-Korea Kindara who have become infected with a pathogen. She is aided by the wise-cracking Rees, who dips when the going gets tough with only one cure for either of the patients. The player must choose which of the patients gets the cure, though the choice is made plenty obvious when one of them is pregnant. This is just one of the many times when The Complex’s multiple choices don’t offer much weight, the clear path being spelled out for you.
Five years later in the United Kingdom, Amy is holding a talk when she hears of another infected woman on the Tube, someone who works under her in the same (quite clearly shady) organisation. After being taken to the titular Complex, what unfolds is a barmy tale of conspiracy, terrorism, and lots of taking a man to the toilet.
To say that The Complex puts on many different hats would be an understatement, it swapping between themes of totalitarianism and capitalism while also doing its best attempt at science fiction on a budget — the impossibly white and sterile aesthetic of the Complex is obvious, but it mostly works. The nanocells that are causing the illness were intended for better means, and it being Amy’s creation, she bears some of the burden for when it falls into the wrong hands, especially when three annoyed Kindarans turn up and cause a complete lockdown.
While the writing in The Complex is ambitious and does mostly a good job in spinning many plates while still being easy to follow, it’s a shame that some of the actors can’t seem to keep up. The chemistry between Amy and the returning Rees is great, the banter they share allowing the script to have lighter, sometimes even funny moments in between the Very Serious Science. It’s just a shame that almost everyone else in the cast veers from adequate to pure Syfy so often, which is one of the concessions of having to shoot many different scenes and outcomes, I guess.
Speaking of different outcomes, The Complex regularly presents the player with choice and then takes it away, it deciding it will just do the opposite of what you selected instead. For instance, during the initial scene with the two infected people, selecting the pregnant woman will result in her just batting the syringe away and dooming them both anyway. Playing through the sequence again, choosing the man instead had the exact same result. Later, you can choose between accepting or rejecting an important call, but another character rejects it regardless.
Negating player agency like this took me way out of The Complex as it made me feel like nothing I chose really mattered. While you can make some actually big decisions later on, the illusion of choice really is a kicker in a few spots, as is the fact that it seems like a far less interactive game than most of Wales Interactive’s other titles. Long stretches go by without you having to make a single meaningful decision, and when your FMV game just becomes a low-budget sci-fi movie without the game part, the cracks begin to show.
Those cracks worsen when the super low budget begins to really show. While the effects are mostly competent, there are others that are plain poor, such as gas escaping from a briefcase and a hilarious section featuring a hole in the floor. Anybody who attempts sci-fi without a somewhat large budget is brave, and Wales Interactive should be commended for the majority of what they managed to put together here, but the flimsiest parts of The Complex are hard to get over.
Also The Complex’s credit, it makes it incredibly easy to go back through its story after completion to see the impact of the choices you can make, so you don’t have to sit through the roughly hour and a half runtime all over again. Having previously tried to bash a toilet in (don’t question it), I opted to blow it up with a big block of potassium a second time around in a perfect slice of nonsense.
While The Complex may be a good laugh with some friends over (perhaps not at the moment, though), its lack of meaningful choices, patchy performances, and low budget mean it’s one of Wales Interactive’s least tempting efforts to date.
Steam key provided by PR for the purposes of this review.
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