Spoilers - T. I. M. E Stories The Marcy Case - What Went Wrong

Hello folks, sorry for the delay in getting this done. Let's just jump right into it. Just like the last time, we'll keep this picture-free so others can safely scroll by.

Spoiler Mode: Engaged. For your safety, scroll down to the next spoiler warning image.

The first thing that bothered me with The Marcy Case was that it showed its hand too early. Your characters come out of time jump right into a scene of carnage, with zombies killing people. Before the game even starts because the new rules talk about "attracting the infected" with the sounds of gunfire. I would have preferred a slow burn approach, where we arrive in town and people are getting sick, strange things are happening, and then zombies are revealed at a pivotal moment that shakes up the plot.

Even if they had delayed the reveal for five minutes (and didn't spoil their own game in the rules), it would have had more impact. We arrive in a deserted town, there's a body but nobody else is around. A lone police car is in the middle of the road with it's lights still on. The radio in the car still works, but nobody responds. We know something is definitely wrong, but we get a couple minutes of suspense before the big reveal.

So Many "Got ya!" Moments
Another thing that irritated me was that they give you a friendly character right on the first scene, and then take him away from you almost immediately. There isn't a way to play through the game without the convict betraying you. What's the point of rescuing him in the first place? It's just another frustrating "Got ya!" moment that serves to slow down the game. There's another instance of this at the church. The priest there asks for 3 health packs, and if agree, your reward is getting locked in a room with a giant zombie brute.

At the police station, among all the papers, radios, and bodies, there is a big red button. There is no indication anywhere what the button does, it just says "RESET" on it. If you push it, the evacuation helicopter that was on the way gets cancelled. Why? There is no instance that you as a player would ever need to delay the evac. There's also no reason for a police station to have a "cancel emergency transportation services" button either. It exists without any context or suggestion to its function and its only purpose is to waste your time.

I feel like the ending is just one big got ya moment too. We got to the helipad, we saved all four girls and the scientist and had the bottle rocket flare thing. The helicopter came, we put the right girl on it. It flies away and says, "Good job, all remaining survivors on the helipad were torn to pieces by zombies." What a hollow victory. We went through all the effort saving everybody we found, even when we already knew which girl was the right one. We didn't sacrifice anybody when given the chance, and we got the medicine that prevents infection, but it was completely pointless.

Your Mission is Not Interesting
In the other review I mentioned that saving Marcy was the least interesting thing about the setting. Through the progression of the game, you find out that there's a totally super secret bunker (that most people in town know about some how) where they do experiments on young girls. What are they researching? Why? Why doesn't anybody do anything about this? None of these questions are answered. Did the research end up causing the zombie outbreak? How? They have a cure for it, so it must be at least partially related.

The guy in the church says he worked at the laboratory and that they were doing experiments to try to make humans stronger, but it's never explained what went wrong or how it spread. Also I appreciate the nod to Resident Evil with the red and white umbrella on the wall of the lab and the bunker.

All of those are more interesting plot hooks than finding a girl because her parents asked. Saving Marcy would have been a great bonus objective. It feels like they put in all the zombie combat nonsense first, then quickly wrote up a mission and some hints. There's only a couple clues related to that entire story line, red tape, green tape, the picture in the woods (unlocks the lab), and the note pad from the hotel. Considering you already start with a 25% chance of picking the right girl with dumb luck, it's not that great of a plot device. The real Marcy is the only one that you don't have to do anything to save, too. The hotel girl can die to the zombie, the girl in the bunker requires a key (and the bunker is a hidden area), and the girl in the police station is handcuffed to the radiator. When you bump into the real Marcy, you automatically get her without having to do anything.

Aside from all that, why is Marcy so important? All we know is that her parents hired the Consortium to save her. Does that mean that if you're rich enough, you can pay people to alter time? Does she become the world's finest anti-zombie researcher in the future? Having to go back and save her also implies that she wasn't saved in the 'real' past, right? So that means the world our characters are in before they take this mission is a future without Marcy. Things must not be too bad, then, if these people that have the power to travel through time are taking private requests from people. On the box it says 'Save little Marcy, save the future!" so if we have to save Marcy for the good of mankind, why do her parents have to pay us to do it. I should know better than to ask too many questions in a time travel-related plot.

Frustration
While already having fewer explorable areas than the previous T.I.M.E Stories game, The Marcy Case has one that is entirely without purpose. The river serves only as an alternate route to a helipad, but it takes a lot longer is and much more dangerous. I don't know why anybody would ever choose this over going to the roof of the hotel beyond trying to make it harder for themselves.

And then there's the bunker. You can enter it by guessing a code until you get it right, but you take damage and/or waste TU for every wrong guess. The scientist eliminates a couple of the wrong codes, but there's a note in the forest that tells you the correct code right away. It would have made more sense to just have the bunker be 'locked' until you get the 'key' that is the note with the right code on it, instead of  this silly trial and error mechanic.

There's also a new mechanic they added in The Marcy Case in the form of 'Street' cards. Every time a character shoots their gun (or is prompted by a card) they put a noise token on the codex. Whenever your group moves from one area to the next, you turn over one of the street cards and do what it says, which will be "If you have between 2-5 tokens, this happens." "If you have between 6-9 tokens, this happens." and "If you have 10 or more, this happens." Somehow my group got lucky and every time we ended up with nothing happening. The bad options are health loss, TU loss, and having to fight zombies.

I don't think the mechanic was well done, but I don't think it was completely awful either. It was uninteresting because of the randomness of it, it didn't make us question whether we should use our guns since more noise doesn't directly mean more risk of getting attacked. And, of course, the only pay off is either "Nothing happens." or "Got ya! Lose health/TU."

Spoiler Mode: Disengaged. It is now safe to move about the blog.

That about wraps up my feelings on The Marcy Case. It plays like an unfinished story game that focuses entirely too much on combat and rolling dice. The puzzle/mystery element is very weak, and the plot could have been better. Thanks for reading, and feel free to let me know how wrong I am.