Shadow of a Doubt review – an engaging sandbox, but not much of an impact

shadow of doubt It’s a voyeur’s dream. You're a PI trying to eke out a living in a harsh alternative past, where megacorporations rule the country and sea levels rise and give birth to grimy, neon-drenched city islands. In a city of nobodies, you're a nobody; ideally, it stays that way.

Shadows of Doubt is a first-person semi-procedural detective game. There is no ultimate goal other than making a living for yourself. You find work from scraps of paper pinned to phone booths and put your ear to the police scanner in case something more interesting turns up - which is inevitable.

There are very few games I've played that promise a vivid world and actually deliver. Take "Skyrim" for example, there is a small village and the people in it have their own loops. They go to work, they go home, their name is Gerald. You know what to do. Their schedule determines where they are at any time of day, but there isn't much depth beyond that. In Shadow of a Doubt—at least on paper—everyone has a fully realized life, with everything from rent payments to eye tests for you to thumb through.

When you first load it up, it's hard to grasp just how dense Shadow of a Doubt is. In open world games, it's often normal for NPCs to have just the illusion of existence. Ultimately, they serve you, no matter what side quest you might be brewing at the time. Here, though, every citizen has a job, a place to stay, and a sleeping schedule - and it all functions like a functioning society (whatever that is).

Each person has a unique set of fingerprints, blood type, and even a specific handwriting style. When you learn something about someone, it creates a file about them - for example, talking to them in person will add their face to your file, but if you don't already know their name, it will show for"??" ? ". You can ask people questions, but most people don't like to be bothered and will tell you a lot of questions.

The jobs you'll take on range from solving murders to destroying apartments. Earlier, I stole a document from a man named A. Ba. That's all the information I got. I racked my brain and thought the procedural element was a bit of a nightmare, giving me an impossible task. How can I find Aba in a sea of ​​people who don’t want to talk to me?

I'm sure a lot of young readers don't know what this is, but we used to have something called a phone book that contained the names and numbers of everyone in a specific area. Well, Shadows of Doubt has a phone book - wow! I looked through the name book and found my man, A. Ba, his phone number and home address. This is awesome.

I walked across town to Mr. Ba's building, entered through the front door (as one usually does), and went downstairs. The address I got from the phone book led to a basement apartment. I knocked on the door and heard movement - he was back. It doesn't make my job impossible, but I have to be more careful. A man in underwear opened the door. I've woken him up. I asked him a few questions, like his name, but he didn't want to answer. I left A. Ba with it and continued on my way - straight to the hall vent.

Entering the vent, I walked around Abba's apartment and had access to his bathroom. I could hear him snoring in the other room, so as long as I stayed quiet I could sneak away without being noticed. The first thing I noticed upon entering the one-bedroom apartment was how sparse it was—a far cry from the luxury penthouses I may or may not have invaded at other jobs.

I searched as thoroughly as I could in the dark, but I couldn't find the file I was looking for. After a while, I heard Abba wake up. When he stood up from the bed and turned on the light, I started to panic and I crouched in the corner like a kleptomaniac goblin. A scuffle ensued. I managed to knock him out, and decided that since he wouldn't wake up for a while I'd leave the lights on and search the apartment again. there is nothing.

I was forced to leave Mr. Ba's house through the front door and quickly left the apartment building. What am I missing? I went back to where I had taken the job, thought about it for a minute, and finally decided to look in the phone book again. It turns out that there are two bastards living in this cesspit. oops. After laughing, I felt sorry for Ajani Ba, who just wanted to sleep after her shift. Instead, he grabbed me, a deranged-looking man in a trench coat, broke into his apartment, knocked him unconscious, and threw a bunch of couch cushions everywhere.

Shadows of Doubt gives you complete freedom in its dense sandbox. Sometimes there is too much freedom, as poor Ayeni Ba proves. Enter a tower and look up and you'll see dozens of floors, each filled with apartments and small businesses, each packed with people just going about their day. However, it was at this time that the cracks began to show.

The act of piecing together clues from the simplest information is fascinating. I feel like I'm very smart and working hard to achieve my goals makes everything I do worthwhile. Nothing is handed to you in Shadows of Doubt, which can be a bit frustrating at times, but I'm now convinced that this was user error rather than anything on the game's part.

Detection is satisfying, but sadly the rest of the game falls a bit short. Your conversations with citizens are repetitive and bland, showing no real personality. Covert operations are frustrating, but perhaps most disturbing is the complete lack of consequences for your actions. After my previous disastrous job, I returned to Ajani Ba's apartment to see what would happen. He came home again and opened the door when I knocked. I asked him how he was and the answer was "comme ci, comme ça" and he sat back down on the couch.

This city is so elegant. It runs like clockwork. The problem is that adding something unstable (me) into the mix usually destroys the illusion. I came across a man being mugged on a side street so I tried to intervene. Instead of stopping the robbery in progress, my aggressive behavior caused the robber, the victim, and others on the street to turn on me and beat me unconscious.

Shadows of Doubt is a very, very broad game, but when you get into it, it doesn't have as much depth as I would like. It's a truly impressive thing, with rain-soaked streets and neon-soaked interiors housing a playground that contains more boxes of lease agreements than you could ever hope to read in your lifetime. I could see myself coming back here, not to find a rampaging killer, per se, but just to exist in it.