Telling Lies Reviews

4/10

I got the game after playing Her Story and loving it. Unfortunately, Telling Lies didn’t leave the same impression. I played the game just like Her Story—together with my wife. I was operating the game, while she was taking notes and directing searches. One issue was the length of the videos. Previously, they lasted up to a minute, but now the clips can drag on for 10 minutes! Also, many videos have two versions—showing two people talking, but in each clip, we hear just one side of the conversation. This disrupts the careful balance between watching and playing that Her Story nailed perfectly. The main plot didn’t really resonate with me. In first few hours, you pretty much understand the role the guy played in the lives of the three women. As far as I can tell, there are no sudden twists or turns to shake things up or change your opinion. You just gradually uncover more details without stumbling upon anything truly gripping. Another thing is that having a sex worker as one of the main characters didn't exactly help pique my wife's interest in the game.

Bottom line up front: The UI/navigation in this game can sour it for many people; it didn't for me. If you like other Sam Barlow/Half Mermaid games then give this a try (you can always refund it w/in Steam's restrictions). I let the negative reviews on account of the UI/navigation steer me away from this for a long time and I now regret that. It is phenomenal. The review proper: 'Telling Lies' adopts a very similar gameplay experience as its predecessor, 'Her Story': type a word or phrase into a database search box, watch a clip, use info in that clip to inform future search queries, and unravel a mystery all while doing so. (If you have not played 'Her Story,' I strongly recommend doing so before purchasing this game; it is slightly simpler but will act as a good litmus test for whether 'Telling Lies' will jive with you.) The story is much stronger in 'Telling Lies,' if only because you engage with a greater number of characters (roughly four main ones). By the time one reaches the end of the game (having watched such-and-such many videos, including certain key ones) they are suffused with the narrative's themes, subtext, and irony. It is a slow burn, but one well worth enduring. Fortunately, Water is Life. The black eye on this game, as most negative reviews single out, involves how one navigates the videos. Unlike 'Her Story,' most of 'Telling Lies' 's videos come from two-way FaceTime-style calls. That means some videos will have minutes-long breaks of silence from one party, indicating its complementary video to involve someone else talking for that time. The game allows for fast-forwarding and rewinding, but the maximum speed at which one can do so can still be painfully slow in many cases. When choosing a video to play it will start at the time during which the relevant word the player searched is tokened by its speaker. In a 9-minute video whose search term appears at the end, rewinding to the beginning at max speed can take minutes. Even if patience is a virtue, in gaming and in life, no virtuous person enjoys spending minutes at a time rewinding a video. Some have suggested that it would have been useful to have a synchronization function that, once one has identified a correct video-pair, they can synchronize them in order to watch both simultaneously and experience the conversation in real-time, rather than trying to piece it together by going back and forth between the clips. I can't say I disagree, but I wouldn't say this would necessarily make for a better game, just a different one. The lack of such a function didn't bother me in my playthrough. And one can always watch YouTube videos of the completed video pairs afterwards. Overall, I strongly recommend this game for fans of Barlow/Half Mermaid's other FMV titles. Do not let the negative reviews stop you from at least trying it.