Past Cure Reviews
Past Cure never does anything special. Every time it tries to do something interesting, it immediately forgets about it and does something else. Don't get me wrong: it's not a bad thing to include a number of genres within one game. In fact, it can help keep it fresh if they serve as a breather from a strong central idea. The problem is that Past Cure has no strong central idea to take a break from or return to. Whether it's the initially compelling yet convoluted supernatural story or the interesting gimmicks that never leave the tech demo phase, it's a disorganized bundle of ideas that are never given a chance to develop into something out of the ordinary.
Phantom 8 Studio shouldn't be discouraged from future attempts at delivering a cinematic experience of a game on par with triple-A output, because they still have some neat ideas and directions to take.
The only positive thing I can say about Past Cure is that I've taken this hit and played the game for you so that you don't have to. In a time where I believe games are better than ever, I implore you to spend your hard-earned free time cozying up to literally any other game — even Superman 64. Past Cure is not just the worst game I have played over the past few years; it's now on the shortlist of worst games I've ever played in my life.
Past Cure wants to be something great, and that ambition is the only thing it has on its side. This is a game that is flawed to its core. The mangled story and shoddy design prevent any single aspect from ever sticking out as something special. Don't even risk taking a bargain bin flier on this one. You'll only end up frustrating yourself.
Past Cure is a mixture of good intentions: unfortunately, it ends up putting too much flesh on the fire, and attempting to keep together various playful and narrative elements, it fails to deepen anyone. The result is a dull, tedious experience, with unjustified difficulty peaks and terribly long, boring sections.
Review in Italian | Read full review
One of the worst games of the generation, but at least it's an interesting failure – with almost comical attempts to mimic everything from Max Payne to Silent Hill.
Past Cure is an odd mash of Max Payne, The Evil Within, Heavy Rain, and a bit of Inception, without ever fully realizing any of those influences—compartmentalizing each section instead of creating a unique blend. Ideas teased early on never come into play, with nightmares and the real world staying largely separate from one another until the script calls on them not to be. An intriguing narrative is interrupted by long bouts of boring wave-based shooting against generic enemies in dull locations. I can't help but think of the early moments in Ian's house, seeing ceramic horrors in reflections and being excited for a cinematic psychological-horror action game that would never come to be.
Past Cure is a game that tries to do too much at once to the extent that it ends up doing none of it well.
There's no denying that Past Cure is born from lofty ambitions. Regrettably, those ambitions are not joined with the necessary skill or understanding needed to make Past Cure anything close to a competent, coherent experience. A messy bore of a game that vomits its incoherent nonsense on your shoes as it rambles on mindlessly for ten minutes about why that's important.
Broken plot and bad controls combined with long and boring stages spoil the overall impression of the project, which could've been the next good adventure in style of Dontnod Entertainment and Quantic Dream games.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Past Cure is a bad game. It's bad bad. But it's also the best kind of bad game, in that it's not for a lack of effort or that the team were bereft of ideas that the finished product doesn't come together. If anything, the game is too ambitious, with too many ideas, and it inevitably crumbles under the weight of numerous poorly implemented gameplay styles and a total lack of a cohesive identity. It's a bit like when your mum tries making Baked Alaska for the first time – sure, the end result is a sloppy mess, but you've got to applaud the audacity to try it in the first place.
Past Cure is a bizarre experience. It feels like a half-dozen different games crudely stapled together, most of which are bad. Yes, the game is ambitious, it reaches for the triple-A brass ring, but the end product is unfocused, unpolished, and, for long stretches, exceptionally boring. Past Cure? More like Past Bedtime.
_______________________ “From guns to cool abilities, to quick and bone-crushing combat you'll find out just how awesome Ian is.
Let's get to the point : Past Cure is an atrocious video game, bad at every level. That's all you need to know about it.
Review in French | Read full review
Past Cure is fun with its mix of stealth and action. After the moderate entry, the mysterious story picks up speed.
Review in German | Read full review
There's always a temptation to cut indie studios some slack. Clearly, Past Cure has a much lower budget than most action games, and it's refreshing that the team didn't use crowdfunding to get their project off the ground.
Past Cure is an aggressively meaningless story broken up by astonishingly pedestrian gameplay.
Past Cure is a hodgepodge of stealth, action, and drama that reaches for the stars and falls somewhere far below.
Past Cure is the worst game I’ve played this year, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The whole experience feels like a fan game made by someone really into Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, and Quantum Break as it desperately tries to combine elements from all those games but fails to capture what made those games great.