Lucius Review
Played on PC
Developed by Shiver Games
Released 26th October 2012
Back in 2014, there was a Let's Play series that I found myself watching endlessly despite not understanding what was going on, mostly because I was dumb as a kid. That series was PewDiePie's 'Infamous: Second Son' playthrough and was one of my favourite playthroughs growing up and acted as my introduction to PewDiePie. From there, I delved into his other gaming videos and stumbled upon "I'M EVIL! - Lucius: Part 1". That was my first exposure to this game franchise and for some reason, I haven't been able to get the game out of my head ever since, so with £6.99 and the need to reimmerse myself into my odd childhood, I bought the game and played through the whole 5-hour experience, and it might be one of the best cases of "dumb fun" in a game that is so "bad that it's good".
Not much is known about Shiver Games except for the fact that they're located in Helsinki, Finland and they have exclusively developed 'Lucius' games, including the 80s-style demake of this title. Their last creative effort was 'Lucius III' in 2018, the last game in the series, and it doesn't seem like they intend to make a comeback any time soon.
Story
The story of Lucius is as simple as you would expect it to be - You play as the son of the Devil and your goal is to kill everyone in your "fake" family, simply for the sake of killing them. If you expected a deep, intricate narrative from a game where you play as a 6-year-old with telekinesis then you've set your expectations too high. The story here serves as nothing but a backdrop to each level, a convenient introduction to new abilities and obstacles, and as fuel for the filler cutscenes to prevent making this game too short. There are internal affairs that each character has such as your "fake" father being a senate up for re-election, your grandfather being linked to the mob and satanism, etc. These are enjoyable tangents the game takes but just like the overarching tale, they serve as nothing but bonus information for the player and their attempt at taking centre stage felt too forceful at times. With all this being said, is this background story any good or interesting? Nah. To sum it up, it serves its purpose and exits both the story's relevance and the player's memory once it's done, however, it does dish out some unintentionally funny moments when the voice actors try to convey their fear of a child.
Gameplay
Concept-wise, the game did manage to land in the right ballpark with their entertaining idea of slowly killing people in a mansion via brutal deaths and creative puzzles. Execution-wise, they mostly achieved what they set out to do. Lucius is a third-person puzzle game with horror aesthetics in the sense that each of your puzzles is directed at killing a family member or the staff of the mansion that the game is set in. While that is what I expected, I found the experience to be more of a "find where you are on the map" style of gameplay as the hardest part of it was navigating the excessive number of corridors and empty rooms. Even when you manage to get to the puzzle area, it will unnecessarily spam hints and clues on how to do them, despite the fact that they're ridiculously easy. But when you successfully manage to do the puzzle without the hints popping up, there is a sense of satisfaction despite the ease in them as the game rewards you with a brutal, slow-mo, creative murder, such as getting your gardener to head dive into a lawnmower or crushing your handyman with a piano.
There are occasionally side objectives you can partake in such as helping a member of the household with something, but the only optional tasks that you get rewarded for are completing chores around the house as that leads you to receive toys that you can fling around with your telekinesis before ultimately unlocking the tricycle for faster mobility around the mansion. The tricycle is fun to ride in and much faster to use than running, but I wasn't too fond of how tough the steering is, making cutting around corners harder than it should be.
The major flaw in this game, however, is the combustion magic. As you progress through the 18 chapters, your "real" father, Satan, will reward you with new types of magic that will be necessary to complete the subsequent puzzles. These ranged from basic telekinesis to mind control and were great, little inclusions to keep the puzzle variety alive, yet, once you unlock the combustion magic, the game turns into an action experience, which didn't feel right given the puzzle horror combo it was previously thriving on, especially when the final "fight" gave the player the choice of doing pure action (you just sling out fire until the 3 enemies are dead) or pure puzzle (you have to use all your magic an overwhelming amount of times.)
Characters
Nearly all the characters were forgettable. The downside to these characters is mostly the writing as none of them had that engaging characteristic or development that I was keen on seeing grow and develop. There were minor instances where they did occur like Lucius' mother slowly going insane and depressed, but the focus and attention to detail weren't major enough to be fully effective. The highlight of the characters is also somewhat of a flaw, depending on your view of it, as the voice acting captured that mid-2000s extreme sound of either a deadpan tone or an overdramatic presentation - neither fitting the tone of the scenes, but both being ridiculous enough that it made my playthrough more amusing.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere of the game had its highlights, but it wasn't enough to save the overall quality of it. The music during the gameplay sections was unexpectedly brilliant having this enjoyably sinister or unnervingly charming energy to them, having that 'innocent child' and 'Devil's spawn' mix incorporated nicely into the audio. However, the music for the cutscenes and practically the rest of the game consisted of bland stock "dramatic" music and the credits confirm this as 80% of them were attributed to the free sound effects the development team found. Now for an indie effort, this wouldn't be considered a flaw, but it is here due to the fact that it feels like they didn't even try to find better alternatives for the OST, despite clearly putting the effort into the sound effects which resonate decently.
The visuals suffer a similar issue; grand performance in one case, lacklustre in the rest. Outside of the mansion, in the garden, is particularly the best scenic view of the game. The colours of each season emanate greatly and the lighting, whether it's from the sun or the Christmas lights, works brilliantly. In every other environment, it felt like a chore to the eyes. The murky, noir filter that this game has is pretty decent but it does little to save the repetitive imagery of white wallpapers and wooden floors. Even in different environments, such as, the hidden dungeon is a painfully boring grey box and the burning rooms are painfully boring orange boxes. I wasn't expecting a colour-fest, especially with such a bleak setting like in this game, but I was expecting more variety.
On the technological performance, there were a couple of bugs like character models glitching through the scenery in one or two cutscenes, getting stuck on stairs and more, but all of that was easily fixed by resetting these quick, easy and short chapters.
Story - 4/10
Gameplay - 5/10
Characters - 5/10
Atmosphere - 5/10
Mediocre
Not a good game, but it is fun for its duration.
