The Complex Reviews
The Complex is a failure of an FMV game, with meaningless choices and boring characters that would make you wish for your time back.
The combination of the shallow story, the predicted plot twists and the weak acting abilities of the cast, contribute to an experience that starts in a promising way, but falls flat a few moments later.
Review in Greek | Read full review
The Complex fails at being an engaging interactive experience, video game and story.
Is The Complex worth it? It's really hard to say. It's not exactly an expensive buy at £9.99, and the addition of choices make it more engaging than a television episode or movie. At the end of the day, it's basically a £10 movie rental with some button prompts added in. The best way to play it would be with a group of friends watching together, so you can argue over the choices and go for the path that feels best for you. Otherwise, there are better games and better movies available for the same cost.
The Complex is an interactive movie with a fairly interesting plot, a rather good performance from its cast and a decent amount of player involvement that goes beyond simple plot choices. While the genre may not be the most engaging when it comes to gameplay experiences, The Complex could have used some additional help with a flowchart for the plot choices and improving on some cliché elements. Overall, fans of interactive movies with sci-fi plots will have something to look forward here.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
If you’re okay with having minimal interaction, enjoy making tough decisions, and love an interesting narrative, The Complex is certainly an experience to add to your list.
The Complex is a decent story that feels bigger than it could be. While some choices feel very weighty, they are few and far between, leaving a lot of inconsequential decisions in between. Honestly, it may have worked if the experience was a bit shorter - sure, a common complaint has been it is too short, but maybe it would actually benefit from being trimmed a bit. As it stands, it feels like whatever ending you got the first time through, everything else is just "what if" scenarios that don't really matter.
A polished but disappointingly by-the-numbers FMV adventure that won't linger in your mind for long.
The Complex is a run-of-the-mill live action adventure game, in a genre that can't really afford to phone it in. The decent price tag makes it at least a bit endearing for the curious, but fans will find The Complex to be an underwhelming movie and a forgettable game.
The Complex is a cleverly made interactive movie with an intriguing sci fi plot that eerily parallels the real world.
The latest interactive film produced by Wales Interactive features both a chilling story and impressive acting talent. But does it innovate within the bounds of its genre, offering sufficient value for potential players? This is The Complex.
Mixing games and movies is hard, and The Complex still hasn't found the magic formula. At least, it doesn't take the matter so seriously as Until Dawn, but it just delivers what it promised: 6-8 hours of an interactive movie, set in a direct-to-video sci-fi context. Not a mastepiece, but stil better than the beginning of 2020.
Review in Italian | Read full review
It's your job to help two doctors – who are also ex-lovers – save an infected woman in this zeitgeist-y drama with eight possible endings
The Complex is an interesting experiment that sometimes yields the fruits of its labor. More often, though, it reveals precisely why developers stopped using live-action video as a means to tell an interactive story. With a minuscule budget and equally small ambitions for its narrative and characters, The Complex just doesn’t replace the gaping whole that TellTale left behind.
The timing of the release of The Complex is questionable considering the pandemic that's currently sweeping the globe. Once you get over the similarities between reality and video game, the plot is a great if brief distraction for a lazy afternoon. It's another smooth blend of movie and video game, even if there is more movie footage than gameplay, but this formula seems to be working well for Wales Interactive.
My thoughts regarding The Complex are very similar to the ones I had regarding Late Shift. Although better than its predecessor when it comes to its production values, setting, and overall plot, it still suffers from its limited gameplay and replayability. It’s an interactive movie, not a full-fledged video game per se. It’s good for one, maybe two playthroughs.
Having played “interactive movie” style games since way back when CD-ROMs first allowed them to exist with the likes of classics like The 7th Guest and Phantasmagoria (among others) it has been interesting to see the genre progress...
With a shadowy totalitarian state pulling the strings (thinly disguising North Korea) and a bio-terrorist threat in a major European city, The Complex could have much to say about politics, ethics, and other meaningful subjects. Instead, the game meanders in mediocrity to its meaningless climax, leaving with you little motivation to replay the game to explore alternative decisions.
The Complex's potential gets lost amid weird subplots, throwaway characters, and a ton of plot holes. With so few meaningful choices, it's not an experience worth repeating more than once.
There is fun to be had here, especially in some of the more ridiculous endings, but even those are examples of tonal whiplash in a title that plays it straight for the most part. More film than game, The Complex doesn't gain enough from the premise of being interactive - instead, it ends up as a strangely paced movie with a lack of focus and not enough tension to draw players in.