Late Shift Review

Should I go with the plan or try to sabotage it?
Publisher: Wales Interactive
Matt, our protagonist, just starts his day like any other day, catching his train and clocking in to work as a car park night guard. Making little choices here and there till the meat of the story kicks in during his shift. It so happened that a group planned a heist and they planned to steal a getaway car the day of. Unluckily for them, the one tasked to get it didn’t do well in not getting caught. And well…didn’t do well staying uninjured also. Matt is quickly sucked in their schemes to steal a valuable antique rice bowl. With the plan requiring four people and it’s already too late to figure out a three person plan, Matt has to unwillingly be the fourth person in their plan.
Late Shift is well shot and acted, making it feel it could have very well been a movie rather than a game; in fact, a single playthrough is about the length of a movie. Having good transitions between each shots with couple weird ones that feel it could have been better if they we a little bit longer, especially ones that cut off lines (these are mostly due to having a choice selection originally though). The acting never goes into being terrible, but sometimes does go into being great, especially with some of the minor characters.
Each choice you do make does impact how Matt turns out, what ending you will receive, or some dialogue changes. The main story will not change, as Matt still has to go through the major beats, but everything else can be changed. The demeanor someone will have to you, how Matt acts, and what information Matt actually receives for example. Even small choices can come back on you. You can have Matt embrace the heist lifestyle or try to fight against it. There are a total of seven different endings that you can achieve, with some going in different directions than the last which can show chapters that you haven’t seen yet or demeanors Matt didn’t develop in other playthroughs.
The choices you make are more based on a split decision rather than something you think through, unlike Life is Strange, with many of the choices having a fast timer, which is faster than ones you see in Telltale games. I even missed a couple despite not having much trouble with the timers presented in Telltale. However, this does cause problems for those that can’t react fast enough or can’t read fast enough as the game will make the decision for you. You can get into the pause menu during this, which is the best way to get more time as there is no setting to make it easier for those that will have difficulty with this fast paced choice game.
After a few playthroughs and getting to know the different scenarios, some plot holes do become noticeable. Which isn’t a good thing considering we stay with Matt the whole time and we have to know what he knows to understand the story. An early one is that Matt will know how one of the members got injured no matter what scene you get, despite only one of them showing Matt having the time to search the area. They are not that bad of plot holes that it will ruin the experience, but it does raise some questions that could have been fixed with filming another scene to fill it up.
One of the main problems, which a lot of people have voiced about as well, is there is no way to at least fast forward long scenes nor is there a chapter select. The first two or three replays are not that bad, but it can get stale afterwards and become a chore to get more endings. It would help a lot in replayability if you were able to have a fast forward option on the longer scenes that you already saw or include a chapter select after finishing your first playthrough. It wouldn’t be far off as the game can already detect when you finish your first playthrough and which chapters you already saw and saves are just the start of the chapter. With it being 9-10 months from the time I wrote this review to when this first released, I sadly don’t see the option being added.
Verdict
Late Shift is an overall decent FMV. This is not the best that is out there, but it is still one that has good acting and is shot well. With the plot only having plot holes that show up after repeated viewing and afterwards wanting to see if there is any way to get Matt out of this situation. However, with not having any way to fast-forward or select chapters, the replayability that is encouraged, at the same time, is also discouraged. As it does get tiring to just watch the same long scenes just to get to that one ending and downright not worth it to see what each choice (that don’t directly drive you to one ending) does differently than what you originally picked. From what Late Shift set out to do, it did it while making an interesting thriller storyline that I didn’t regret watching and participating in. If there is any planned future games (more specifically FMVs) I hope they learn from what didn’t work out here and set out to do even better.
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