Past Cure Review – Intriguing But Unfortunately Incurable

Could you imagine having years of your life taken away from you? More than anything you seek retribution, but require stealth while something you could never imagine has already happened and affected your well-being. That’s the story behind Phantom 8 Studios physiological thriller, Past Cure.

Past Cure gives you four separate difficulties to choose from, one of which, Nightmare Mode, is available after completing the original story.

As for the campaign you play as Ian, a man who has just awaken inside a parallel world that pits you against random clay-like beings that obviously seek to harm you. There’s a gun and bullets that will be your way through the nightmare as you search for a way out. Managing to escape the maze of corridors you later find yourself inside an ominous rip between time and space (Similar to The Evil Within) with a mysterious woman looking to help you… maybe (no spoilers).

Waking up from the nightmare you speak to your brother Marcus and learn more in-depth how you were a captured soldier in Syria for three years and experimented on. You somehow escaped and with the help of your brother Marcus look for answers that can lead to a clear understanding of what happened to you. And for the truth it sometimes send Ian back to his dreams.

Ian is able to equip himself with various weapons, pills to control his unique abilities, slowing down time and manipulating objects through telekinesis, and adrenaline shots for his health when in need. Not every mission will require force however as a few stealth missions required Ian to destroy cameras and secretly take out a few henchmen here and there. You can also look forward to plenty of puzzles as well, some requiring you to slow down time or solve various riddles.

His help inside and out of his dreams is the fact that Ian is taking more pills than Max Payne called “The Blues”, more so needed to help control his level of sanity and avoid hallucinating. Ian level of manipulation only gets better the further you progress, including manipulating enemies to follow your instructions while attacking their minds.

I liked the smaller details like writings on the wall hinting to a darker story, only it never led to anything. Just rambling of his past, a tie-in that doesn’t go too far in the end.

Now while it may all sound good, and most of the action sequences are, the story overall was very bland, leaving me wanting to complete the experience though never thoroughly enjoying it. Even with all these powers that crossed Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, it never pulls in the “WOW” factor that left me wanting to finish what Ian started.

To point out a few flaws I was confused as to how enemies were alerted and more just arrived. No notice, no radio, just showed up in numbers. I get being caught in the heat of the moment in stealth missions, but when a random guard saw me and jumped, more enemies came running, taking away the sense of realism or me having a chance to stop an alert from going through.

Cutscenes are also very choppy, almost feeling like pieces were cut and pasted together, taking away the game’s fluidity in transition. Even during the boxing tutorial the game crashed twice as I tried to perform a counter attack and combo in the ring, taking me a few minutes back in the story, though luckily not too far.

The voice actor honestly reminded me of Jean Claude Van Dam, giving me a bit of humor in the experience, though enjoyable one. My only issue were a few times I had to read the subtitles as the voice of Ian never spoke or spoke too late, causing the scene to skip the entire conversation between him and his brother Marcus. As for controls, once you get used to them (specifically telekinesis), it’s all pretty straightforward. (On console the controls felt a bit more fluid as Past Cure was played on both PC and PlayStation 4).