This is exactly the type of game I would have loved to be able to get behind. It's a small project made by a team of only 8 people who really poured their hearts and souls into trying to bring their wild vision to life in as close of an approximation to a triple-A title as they could manage on what was likely a very tight budget. The premise feels like something you'd see coming from Remedy Entertainment, with you playing as an amnesiac, completely insane man with psychic powers who at any point will just start having nightmarish hallucinations on his quest to uncover the mystery of his origins. It leads to a lot of crazy sights and inventive scenarios that, while not really pretty to look at thanks to the ugly graphics, are certainly interesting to behold. Unfortunately, the experience frustrated me from literally the second it began and did not relent until it's conclusion.

Things kick off in one of the more horror-flavored dream sequences in which you run around a small apartment for far too long firing away at weird mannequin monsters who will instantly kill you if they get too close. It's an aggravating process due to the limited amount of ammo you're given forcing you to make every shot count, lest you be left with an empty clip and an unavoidable demise marching straight towards you. A task that's easier said than done as a result of the loose aiming making it difficult to line up your reticle with a target quickly, effectively, and without wasting precious bullets before they reach you, leading to a lot of irritating checkpoint reloads (which in my opinion are always placed too far apart). It never gets better from there. Whether what you'll be doing next is a Silent Hill-inspired stealth/puzzle stage that takes place in a creepy location, or a Jason Bourne-style action level set in a posh hotel, the tedious design, unreliable controls, poor damage detection (sometimes headshots flat-out won't register at all), and plethora of cheap one-hit deaths suck all the fun out of this remarkably varied, unpredictable adventure. The writing doesn't fare much better...

With all of the crazy concepts and unique imagery floating around, you'd hope the plot would at least be somewhat decent. The narrative is a jumbled mess of ideas however, constantly hinting at hidden agendas for the supporting characters, giving you a glimpse of a forgotten tragedy in the protagonist's past, or implementing some new sci-fi element like Matrix-esque pills that don't receive the slightest bit of explanation or development. We never even find out how the leading man got his abilities or lost his memory, which was supposed to be the whole point of this! It's the kind of thing that will leave you confused, unfulfilled, and with a TON of unanswered questions after the credits have rolled. A cliffhanger ending offers a vague promise of actually exploring the litany of components introduced here in a sequel, but to be brutally honest a follow-up probably has next to no chance of ever coming out.

Past Cure does a legitimately great job of presenting an intriguing package brimming with imagination, creativity, and uniqueness. The devs were even nice enough to further flesh it out post-release with stuff such as entirely new sections and mechanics through a free patch/update that acts as a soft relaunch. Yet, it altogether drops the ball with its storytelling and gameplay in ways that cause it be both unsatisfying and downright painful to persist through, despite the glimpses of inventive potential shown by its creators. So while I've been able to embrace similar low-rent anomalies in the past when others have lambasted them (i.e. Deadfall Adventures, Zombeer), I find myself wholly unable to recommend this at all. It isn't just one of the worst games I've played in recent memory. It's one of the worst games I've ever played period.

3/10