Contradiction is a live-action FMV Murder-Mystery game. You play as Inspector Jenks, a British Policeman who goes to investigate the death of a girl named Katie in a small outskirt village. Her death was investigated and called a suicide, but there was morphine in her blood at her time of death and her driver's license was pinned to a tree in the forest away from the scene of her death, leading our character to suspect there's more involved in this case which he takes personal interest in. His work quickly leads him to find there is indeed something going on in this town...
So, like many FMV games, this game does have an edge of B-charm, laugh-out-loud moments, a lot of this comes from some of the acting and facial expressions the actors can have in specific scenes. But that's not to say this is a so-bad-it's-good type of game, in fact the opposite, it actually got kind of gripping as it developed and in contrast some moments were acted out rather well. It's got a multi-layered mystery that gets deeper and deeper as the night goes on, and is actually surprisingly interesting.
Gameplay is rather basic. You walk around a town and look for clues hidden about, and people to interview. When you interview people, you take out clues, both physical and conversation topics you earn from talking to others, and watch FMV scenes as they interact. When the scene is done, your character has taken 'notes' to the key points of the discussion. You then can take the key notes from that discussion, and every other discussion you've had with that character, and try and spot any 'contradictions' the character may have said. If you find a contradicting point, it triggers another scene, which either will lead to you having to do further digging or creates a new conversation topic you can raise up to others. Other conversation topics can be found around as objects or weird things in town that strike up a good conversation topic, and some rare objects found can be used to explore deeper certain areas in the village.
The game has a solid cast of something like 10 main characters, and is backed by some rather good-quality video for the backgrounds, FMV scenes, etc., and an actually pretty wonderful soundtrack. Music added a lot to specific scenes, and there were a few moments without music where you can hear the atmosphere sounds and drone noises that made some scenes legitimately creepy. On that, while the game is down-toned most of the time, there's the odd scene that plays every once in a while that can catch you off-guard, something that's just kind of creepy, or unexpected, shocking in some cases. I won't spoil anything with that, but the game has a few sudden scenes that happen as you investigate that might catch you off-guard.
It's got a few minor flaws. There are a few times where something the character said was obviously a lie or a contradiction to something you already knew, but because you didn't have the 'conversation topic' piece, you couldn't accuse them of this. A few contradictions (or what seem like contradictions) the game doesn't think quite are. Also the game, while it does have an ending and wraps up the case, proposes more questions, especially near the very end, and has several loose plot threads. They seem to be a sequel hook, and past the game credits a message pops-up confirms this saying "Thanks For Playing!", they'd like to make a sequel, but the only way to do so is for the game to do well-enough, and they appreciate reviews/videos/the like on their project.
So that raises the question, "Is it worth it?" To which I say, for me, absolutely so. I liked it, I enjoyed it. There were a few moments I got stumped on what to do (get too stuck and you can use a cheat system to tell you what to do next, a feature I never used, or call your chief for a vague general hint) and as you collect more clues you're given maybe too many conversation points to look over, but I actually ended up enjoying the mystery that unveiled in the game, the loose plot threads interest me to see continued, and the story had some fun twists and turns, was sometimes unintentionally amusing, but other times more consciously so, and was gripping at times. Worth it if an FMV Murder-Mystery sounds up your alley, and want something between hammy entertainment and something more gripping and interesting. Hope to see this world revisited in the future.
