Lucius

 

I knew nothing about Lucius other than the box art and the fact that its a cheap game that was tagged as Horror on the Steam store. From the box art and small glance at the store page it seems like its one of those tropes in horror where the child is actually the spawn of Satan or whatever and has magical powers to haunt people nearby.

As I played the first few chapters thats pretty much what Lucius is. The game starts off with you in a Kitchen and already in the first 60 seconds you're being directed to lock a lady in the storage freezer and make her freeze to death. So yes, this is a game all about being evil and assassinating people. Though, the game isn't a simple 'walking simulator'. I mean it actually has a few mechancis up its sleeve to try to incorporate 'gameplay'. At the start, you dont have any abilities. But it does play like some kind of classic Point & Click adventure game, where you walk around and look for objects in the enviornment to pickup and use somewhere else, or Combine in the inventory. The first task is to pickup a Lock and put it on the freezr, triggering one of many gruesome, entertaining death scene cutscenes. The cutscenes are probably the best thing about this game, they're all creative, very graphic, outrageous, silly, and rewatchable. The little closeups on the main characters face, Lucius, are equally funny and disturbing. He always has this stupid blank expression. Later on, the death scenes get more and more clever and insane. Crushing a guys head with a piano via telekenesis, Sawing someones head in half at a butchering area, Controlling peoples minds to commit suicide via guns or jumping off balconies, even a reference to the movie American Psycho, with the level called American Schizophrenic and you mind control a husband to murder his wife with a Nailgun. Awesome.

The game solely takes place in a massive sprawling mansion which feels more like a giant hotel or something. Its more like 3 mansions stitched together, with a big outdoors courtyard, multiple stories, and tons of bedrooms. The actual graphics and architecture of this place is very well done, the layout of the house  and the old Victorian style decorations and aristocratic vibe of the place is impressive, its like it would be a great place to have a Resident Evil game or something. It also made me think about how interesting it would be to live in a place like this. Like you could model a real house after this place and it would come together in a tangible way in real life because the architectural design in the game is so well done. Each room is distinct enough to where after a few hours you can memorize the whole place, theres lots of landmarks, especially old classical paintings which give the mansion a creepy vibe but also help you remember where you are and not feel like a maze, of course you have a map which is pretty basic but at the start of each mission atleast tells you where your Victim is with a green line and has some markings on it for basic places like the Garage, library, kitchen and so on. so even though the mansion is huge its not like this awful maze where everything is copy pasted without personality. Theres memorable rooms like the creep porno room with a peephole to the bathroom in the wall behind a poster, theres a religious room filled with crosses (which are a gameplay mechanic that harm Lucius's powers until you flip them upside down, a really nice touch I must say)

Unfortunately, thats about where the good things I have to say about the game end. The problem with Lucius is just all around terrible game design, bugs, jank, bad coding, bad execution. The concepts and ideas are fine. The game is almost like a kind of Hitman game where you have to go around and solve puzzles and cleverly take out your victims from the shadows. It doesn't really exceed in giving you this feeling or putting you in that perspective. All it does is give you an exercise in frustration and like the game saying "Fuck you" if you dare try to think of  anything logical or reasonable about the task at hand. I wouldn't even call this a horror game, really. It's a straight up Puzzle game where there is always one tiny rigid criteria of how you need to progress the missions, like finding a needle in a haystack, or worse, a screw in a haystack. This has straight up has nonsensical game design that actively fucks with you or works against you. For instance, there are optional objectives, aptly named Chores. Stuff like going around picking up laundry, brush your teeth, move boxes etc, or even a simple task like taking out the garbage turns into this ardious frustrating process. You eventually find the trash under the kitchen sink, ok where the fuck do you take it out? The mansion is so huge so of course you just waste your time walking around for 30 minutes with a trash bag in your hands until you eventually find the ONE dumpster you need to put it in to progress. Ok so anyway, doing these chores unlocks random shit, first you get a Ouja board, which spawns in your bedroom. This gives you one clue per mission, usually in the form of a riddle , and its one of the only useful things in the game. The next reward you get from doing optional chores, is a Music Box. Well what the hell does this thing do? The description in the inventory says "It will help you find what  you are looking for"  Great. It has 6 uses per mission. So you use the thing, and your whole screen flashes red for like 5 seconds then it just stops. How the hell is that useful?  It's not, unless youre already standing in the exact room you need to be in - But heres the kicker, even then it doesn't  necessarily help. How it's supposed to work is it highlights objects in the enviornment which are crucial to progress, or points arrows at things you need to interact with. The PROBLEM is that the game design/coding is so fucked up and lazy or half baked that it can point to objects or areas that are from 10 chapters in the future (or past), completely confusing the shit out of you and even actively fucking you over to the point of complete confusion and frustration. It's like, I don't know, imagine youre playing Skyrim and 3 levels in you find an item that says "Help you progress your current quest!" and when you use it, it gives you every single objective marker in the game at the same time. What the fuck is that? Awful. I didn't even realize it was doing this until like halfway through the game, thereby completely wasting my time and confusing me. When I realized how badly programmed or designed this Music Box shit is, I basically just stopped using it until I was absolutely sure It wasnt pointing at irrelevant shit from some random chapter I'm not even on. It's like, did they even play test this? Was it intentional? Why would anyone design it this way. It just seems like a really lazy bug to be honest,  I don't see how anyone could do this on purpose.

That's not even the start of the annyoing shit in the game either. At first I was thinking the game was promising, the first few levels are really easy and short. Just basic stuff like using a wrench on the stove to mess with the gas output, and having a guy smoking a cigarette go use it to blow his face off.  Or messing with a piano to make it drop on the maintenance man's head. I had no problem figuring out the mechancis for the first few levels, I was even praising the game for having short 5-20 minute levels, making it a great 'pass the controller back and forth' experience. Sadly, after the first few levels it totally drops the ball on objective design and goes pants-on-head retarded for how demandingly obtuse and cryptic the puzzles start to get. After every few missions you start to meet with Satan in a burning room, hes like your real father of sorts, and he unlocks new abilities for you to use as the game progresses. Stuff like Telekenesis, Mind Control, and eventually this fireball thing that rarely gets used. The controls are quite badly done, though. You can't open doors while you have either an object in your hands, or if you have an ability selected. Its like opening doors its self is a separate ability, so you have to manually get in the 'Open Door' stance before you can use doors.  So there is an 'Open door' stance,  4 different buttons for your Ability stances, and then another stance for holding objects. It all comes together in a clunky, confusing mess that gets tiresome to deal with. As I said, the first few chapters were reasonable enough,  I could solve the puzzles in a standard point & click adventure type way.

Then comes Chapter 4/18 "Eat Healthy"
This one seems decent enough, the head-maid is constnatly hungry and is being brought food constantly. Ok, I found a bottle of "Deadly poison" a few chapters back in the secret room under the wine cellar. Yea, there was this crazy satanic torture chamber behind a curtain in the wine cellar that I found almost at the beginning of the game. There was a random bottle of poison on the table down there. So ok, I have this bottle of poison, and I have to find a way to poison the food thats being brought to the maid. I could NOT figure out how to do this. Ran around the whole mansion probably 50 times. Of course I first went to the kitchen, where the food was being prepared. There was even a basket of bread I could interact with, but the 'Deadly Poison' didn't do anything. After probably an hour of making no progress, I had to Google the solution. Guess what? The bottle of 'Deadly Poison' that I found in the wine cellar is NOT the right bottle of poison! Yep, it turns out the one that I found is actually a bottle that you need like 8 chapters in the future. So why the FUCK could I pick it up at the beginning of the game? Again, lazy, sloppy, inconsistent, bullshit time wasting game design. It turns out I actually need a bottle of Rat Poison. It just makes no fucking logical sense. Unbelivable bullshit. So to get the bottle of rat poision, you need to find the random room in the house with a guy sitting on a stool hunched over a rat trap or some shit. Theres no direction or hints to find him, you just have to waltz around randomly until you find it. Could take ages. When you find it, your journal updates and says "Rat poison, I cant take it now, better come back when everyone is sleeping"  So atleast it hints to you that you should go back to your bedroom and sleep. This begins the first stealth section of the game. It's a trivial kind of trial and error gameplay where you wait for the NPC's to open the doors for you as you hide in the darkness. Fail over and over again from learning the patterns, atleast theres a checkpoint. So you go all the way back and grab the rat poison, FINALLY I can use it on the bread basket, and the maid dies. This is the kind of routine bullshit I went through playing this game. Oh, sure it makes sense I just have to use my 'Deadly poison' to poison her food! oh, heh, actually thats not the right poison, you need the RAT POISON, we just basically gaslighted you and let you pickup an irrelevant item from chapter 10 at chapter 3, haha trolled! Awful idiotic game design.

But by Chapter 5/18 'Holy Day Slip' the game just got lost on me. This level is taking place around Christmas holidays, with awful twinkling chime music that drones on and on (loudly) over a cacophony of other noises from the 20 guests sitting around the dinner table, some of them also singing loudly. This gets repeated endlessly for the whole mission. And since I could not figure out what the fuck the game wanted me to do, it got mind numbing and even physically painful to where I had to just pause the game and leave the room for a few minutes to get some peace and quiet. The sound design in general in this game is just a mess, characters will endlessly repeat their 1-2 lines of dialogue if you dare to get within 10 meters of them.

So the objective on this Chapter 5 level consists of the map taking you to this butler guy, standing around idle at the bartending place. The journal says "Find a way to get rid of him outside" and the clue you get is "Something slippery"  Ok, so I can make sense of that. So I think yeah, I gotta lure him outside somehow and make him slip on something. Fair enough. Well I spent like 3 hours walking around the whole damn house trying to find HOW the hell I lure him outside. There is no more direction. Before you think I'm just a moron with bad deduction skills or enviornmental awareness - I was playing it with another person, too, passing controller back and forth. So either the game is just shit and has badly designed/directed objectives, or we're both stupid. Well after grueling amounts of wandering all around the map, I eventually looked it up. Turns out you have to go outside to the courtyard , find a TINY switch on the wall somewhere to turn off the one tiny string of Christmas lights, then that for some reason distracts the butler to go outside. What? That doesn't even make intuitive sense. Why would the butler give a shit about the Christmas lights? its not his job! Hes not the maintenance worker! I would have NEVER figured that out, (1) because the switch is so small and easy to miss, (2)there is a huge scene of all these people sitting around the dining table, making loud chatter like THIS is the important area to be in, so I spent a stupid amount of time just walking around the dining room inspecting every single detail trying to find some way to progress. It even let you brainwash a few of the NPC's at the dining room, even though it has NOTHING to do with what you have to do. Why can you brainwash them? Because you're able to do it like 5 chapters later on in the game, once again another example of awful game design. Why not disable the ability to mind control these NPC's until its actually needed, preventing extreme amounts of confusion? The answer because this shit is barely playtested and moreso feels like some good ideas but then the execution is just haphazardly slapped together without care.

That's not where the stupid shit ends, even with this chapter too. Once you lure him outside, he simply turns the lights back on and walks inside. Okay? what now?! Well of course I could NOT figure this out either and had to look it up. Turns out theres a tiny water bottle in the beginning of the level tucked away in your room that you have to pickup, fill with water, and somehow know to point your vision at a tiny spot on the ground which gives you an interaction icon signalling you can use your water bottle on it, creating a slippery pool for him to slip on after he comes to the lights. What. The. Fuck. That is so god damn cryptic and obtuse that it really pissed me off and actively started my hatred towards this game. I just mean shit like this could have been designed so much more fair and reasonably. Why couldnt the journal update and say something like  "The butler has been complaining about the lights"  or "The water bottle in my room could be of use"   Just any sort of direction at all instead of completely wasting your fucking time combing through this mansion with a fine tooth comb, its just awful.

I dare a single person to beat this entire game without looking anything up. I tried going on Youtube and watching people play this game, its really fucking obvious they're all dumbass cringe streamers who either got their Twitch chat to give them all the answers, or looked everything up beforehand before playing because they instantly run to all the right spots. Playing this shit blind is like trying to land an airplane blindfolded. Or bobbing for apples blindfolded and nose plugged,  but Surprise! one of the apple is covered in shit, don't bite it!

And it gets worse, too. After he finally slips on your icy water puddle, hes just laying there on the ground. You then have to aim your vision at a random icicle above him, use Telekenesis on it to make it fall and pierce through his head. Yeah, its a great concept and exciting way to kill your victims. But like I keep saying, its so easy to miss the icicle because again, its like needle in a haystack. There are so many ways they could have given subtle hints or guided the player better. Maybe if you look in the near vicinity of the objective it gives off a tiny red glow? ANYTHING.

I was hoping this would just be a one off shit chapter and the rest of the game would be good and brief, but satisfying puzzles. No, it never really picked up after this. The rest of the game was more extremely annoying , cryptic bullshit, sprinkled in with a few decent reasonable levels.

Then, the next level 6/18 'Fatal Affair' is about a maid being inlove with another guest at the mansion. The journal  says "Theres something going on between her and Uncle Tom"  Ok great, what now? Well of course you just have to kind of mindlessly wander around the whole mansion for probably an hour before you stumble across the room where you open the door and just see Uncle Tom banging another woman. Once again, game just wastes your time. No direction where this room is, you just need to walk around checking every room until you find it. Once finding it, the journal updates and says
"I saw uncle Tom with Susan. If I could just somehow show this to Jovita. I think Grandfather might have a camera up in his study."

Ok, great! It actually tells you that you need a camera, and where to get it. WHY is it telling me this? If it was any other chapter it would just say "If I could just somehow show this to Jovita.." and thats it, leaving he player to once again wander arind for god knows how long before being frustrated and looking it up. Why is the game design so inconsistent? Why couldn't other chapters, for example, have these kind of clues? for instance "Maybe the water bottle in my room can help" it's just baffling..I was really starting to hate the game around this point, dreading spending another minute walking around in circles in futility. So I go up, grab the camera, but it says it needs Film. I think I found that without much issues, it was nearby. So I go back, open the door to the two fucking, snap the photo. Ok awesome, I have the evidence that the Maids lover is cheating on her. Soo now I just go back and show her the photo? I go to the maid, hold the photo in my hand right in front of her face, nothing happens. I follow her on her route around the house to the bookshelf shes cleaning, combing over every single book on the bookshelf for somewhere to plant the photo for her to see. Nothing. In desperation, I use the music box. It highlights about 5 objects scattered around (and seemingly behind) the bookshelf. What the fuck is this?! Turns out, its nothing. Once again its just glitchy, shit, poor gameplay design that is highlighting random past/future objectives behind/ infront of the wall, severely confusing me. Fuck this game.

So I was pretty much at a loss here, no journal updates, nothing. My rational, logical senses arent working here. Why cant I just show her the photo? Maybe because I'm not supposed to have anything to do with it, ok that makes sense. Why cant I just plant it somewhere on her route for her to see? I'm clueless. I had to look it up. So I Googled it, it says you have to plant the photo IN HER BEDROOM, in her dresser. Why the hell would I have to do that? Shes cleaning the bookshelf every 30 seconds in the same spot, why cant I put it there? Ok fine, I eventually find her bedroom out of the 1000 rooms in the house, equip the photo, and NOW it shows me an arrow where I can plant the photo. As soon as I plant the photo, the journal updates and says:
"I should hide the photo in Jovita's room and plant some evidence to blame her for some of the other deaths."

...why is it NOW telling me this, AFTER I already planted it? Just yet another glitch and extremely poor coding? If its the case that its a glitch, and it was supposed to tell me before I already planted the photo, then its yet another weird inconsistency where the game is just deliberately telling you exactly what to do and where to do it in the journal, yet all the other missions would leave those details out and leave you clueless. After she finally sees the planted photo, shes distressed and runs to the balcony where you can then mind control her to jump off and suicide. That part was reasonable enough to figure out. It's just the giltches , the inconsistency of the journal hints, really take this game from being potentially awesome to a massive pain in the ass.

Chapter 8 is the chapter where you actually have to use the 'Deadly Poison' that I found in the wine cellar in like chapter 3 or something. I think I figured this one out without having to Google the answer. Its some alcoholic guy sitting on his bed and whining about the dead maid, constantly drinking liquor surrounded by bottles. Took me awhile combing through the enviornment to figure out that the second he puts his bottle down, you have to swap it out with another bottle that you pickup from the closet. You have to combine the DEADLY POISON with the bottle from the closet to make a Poisionous Drink or some shit, then he picks it up and dies. This level was decent enough, except for the fact I already found the deadly poision half the game before. Atleast the game throws enough hints at you where to get it. The Ouija riddle says something about chambers, and the journal says theres a secret map on the table near where you get the Camera, the map points towards the cellar. What irks me is just the inconsistency of pacing of some of the chapters. Like this should have been chapter 5 or something, its easier than the last few by miles. Its like they didnt even structure which missions to go where, its just all randomly slapped together making for bizarre and extreme 'difficulty' curves, and by difficulty I mean levels of obscurity.

The next  few chapters are alright I guess, ones about a guy mowing the lawn, you have to comb over the grass area to find a rock to plant on the ground then mindcontrol the mower to decapitate him with the blades, sure, fine enough. Then you have Chapter 10/18 'Betrayal' which is the biggest stealth mission in the game. Its another trial & error thing which starts off during a lightning storm, having to run outside to the balcony then back inside but theres a lady sitting on a chair that instantly spots you if you try to enter the room. Took me a long time of many instant trial-error deaths to figure out what to do here. The lights in the room are flashing off every 15 seconds or so, so it SEEMS like you should be able to just wait for the lights to turn off then creep past her. But no, the SECOND you get in her line of sight its instant fail. So after many failures I realized theres this hidden electricity box on the side of the house you have to telekenesis destroy, letting yuo pass....from there its just a simple matter of avoiding the AI and going down to the torture chamber, to amazingly enough, help your grandfather do a satanic ritual and torture this reporter guy, because your grandpa is in on the whole evil possession shit too. This wasnt too hard to figure out, and was kind of fun, you gotta light candles on the altar and place the blood bowls - but yet again, as soon as the game is halfway decent  its flaws pop up again. Like I said earlier, I found this torture chamber early in the game around chapter 3. And it would let me light the candles then, too. The music box would even highlight areas of this chamber like they are important objectives, even back in CH3. But we know now how unreliable and decievin the music box is. Because I remember it confusing me that I could light the candles in CH3, make a 'Ding, progress' noise, but then still say "Candle unlit" when I tried to light again. I was still having this weird glitchy behaviour on the correct chapter, too though. I would light the candles and then inspect it and it would still say "Candles unlit" I don't know, the game is just really shoddily programmed or something. It seems so half assed like no one even bothered to put this thing through quality assurance testing. Atleast when you know what to do in this game you can progress really fast. Actually working through the puzzle of what you need to do takes a lot of time, but once you know you can beat the level in like 90 seconds, so yeah I beat this one as well without having to look it up. The cutscene was awesome, you betray your grandpa and literally stab him in the back, like "Oh you thought we were on the same team just because we're evil? Haha no im more evil than you I have no allies"  It was funny and entertaining. I like the story of the game, its generic and derivitive but its entertaining the whole way what can I say. Theres a detective which follows you around the whole game so it also has this detective/mystery spin on the whole thing which really adds to the narrative too.

Instantly after this satanic ritual chapter you have chapter 11/18 which is like literally 40 seconds long level that introduces the 'Combat' mechanics where you just hold a button to charge up a fireball and shoot it at the reporter guy who wakes up as he runs around turning crosses on the walls, weakning your fireball power. Pretty goofy and stupid, but its a change of pace from the awful puzzles so I was happy with it. The enemy has a health bar and flies around with floaty physics, making the whole thing even sillier.

Chapter 12/18 'Shot For Education' is probably the best in the game? That's not saying much though. You have to kill your teacher, so you go to the classroom, he asks you a few basic math problems which you solve by holding the cue cards 1,2,3, then he goes and looks in a bookshelf for a Biology book. From here, its a dead end. He just keeps asking for the right book. Tried giving him every book in the room, nothing. Atleast the journal updates and says "I should ask for a day off from my father"  so I run around the whole mansion looking for his room. Long story short you have to distract the father, find a note with a safe code on it, unlock the safe to get a gun, find the gun bullets which are in the same office,  then return to the teacher. I returned to the teacher and just shot him in the face myself, failing the mission. That was funny. So yeah the game doesn't want YOU yourself to be the one killing the victim, the victim has to do it himself or accidentally or something. So what you do is place the gun down and mind control the teacher to commit suicide with the gun. Brutal. It felt satisfying figuring out all this on my own, the death cutscene was crazy, chunks of his brain going flying, and it wasnt too cryptic with no glitches, for once I almost had fun with the game.

I'll also note that the game has tons of achievements and its like every 120 seconds I'm getting steam achievements popping up for all sorts of menial or goofy shit, which atleast made the game more exciting than it otherwise would have. So props to the devs for that.

Chapter 13/18 Peeping Tom  was awful.
I thought this one would be a breeze.  I knew of the peep hole to the bathroom from earlier in the game. The victim is a maid. On her route, she goes to the bathroom and looks in the mirror. I figured great, just look through the peep hole and use one of my abilities to fuck with her somehow. Tried for probably hours, could NOT figure it out. This one is just fucking insane. No journal updates. No directions. Only thing journal says is "She is taking care of the laundry" and you just watch her go around the house and pickup random articles of clothing. I could just not figure out what to do here, spent ages following her around, looking through the peep hole, trying all sorts of shit.
Get this;
Turns out you have to go to the laundry room and use telekenesis on a random iron into the washing machine, so the maid goes to the broken washing machine, ending her shift, then she goes to take a shower. What the fuck. For one, who the fuck is gonna figure that out? For two, why even have the maid go to the bathroom earlier in the mission, confusing me? It seemed like before using the iron that I had to do something with her in the bathroom, because she would go there and look in the mirror and I could see her from the hole. Yet another instance of the game fucking with you and wasting your time. After I Googled that bit about the iron I could figure out the rest on my own. I even guessed previously that I was supposed to some how get her into the bath, then use the hair dryer on the bath with telekenesis from the peephole to electrocute her. Its just the bit about the iron in the washer that was obscure cryptic bullshit that no one would ever figure out. Couldnt they put a note in the journal like "I hear the washing machine is having problems lately" or some shit? They did similar things for other chapters, why not this one? Terrible. Also, again, the controls in general are sloppy and jank, so when you pickup the hairdryer with telekenesis its this really low budget early 2010s physics system where you have to use both analog sticks in conjuction to swing the shit all over the place and its just this tedious painstaking process, Its kinda silly and fun in how stupid it looks but more than anything it just feels low budget and shit.

Chapter 14/18 Overdose of Fumes was mind numbingly shit too.
Theres guys in the garage, theres an air vent running, the chapter title makes it obvious what you have to do.
Theres a panel operating the air vent outside the room, but you cant do anything to it. Tried everything. One thing that fucked with me, is once again, I picked up an object in like chapter 5 that belonged to this chapter (14). It was a 'Dry Rag'. The fact that they let you pickup crucial items from later chapters at any point in the game just basically ruins the whole experience. You're supposed to go in the garage and notice theres a rag on the table along with some paint thinner, I noticed the paint thinner, but it took me awhile to realize I had the rag to combine it with. Well, even then I had the rag with the paint thinner. Ok, great. I need a way to make the guy inhale it and die. The problem is I cant put the rag on the table because theres 2 guys there.  I need to lure the other guy out. Tried for ages, tried everything, mind control, nothing works. Turns out............you have to use the iron in the washing machine AGAIN. Two chapters back to back, same solution?! No fucking way. What the hell is wrong with these devs? I would have never guessed its just the same solution twice in a row. Total brainrot game design. After this you just put the rag on the table and then use telekenesis to turn the car on to make it look like the guy died from inhaling car fumes or whatever, fucking shit game, but again, the concept is great, just the execution is painful to play through.

Chapter 15/18 is very short, youre just in the garage with a guy chained to a shelf and you have to find a way to kill him. I tried fireballing him over and over but he just scoffs it off. Theres even a can of gas above him I tried shooting fireballs at, but nothing happens. Makes zero logical sense. Why cant I just shoot the can of gas with fire to make him blow up? After wasting a bunch of time, I found out theres A TINY pixel perfect spot you have to aim telekenesis at to unscrew the gasoline to make it pour all over him, then you can fireball him to death. Again, another chapter which basically makes no sense. Frustrating.


Chapter 16/18 'American Schizophrenic' (play on the movie American Psycho) has you outside in the garden with your mother, who you have to kill. the journal says theres no power to the shed, and you need to turn it on for some reason. If by some chance at this point you never noticed theres a power board in the garage then you're probably fucked here. What I did for a long time was painstakingly follow the power wire from the shed to the house, but its just a dead end. Seems like lazy design more than anything. You can see the power wire from the shed, but it eventually just goes into the wall in a sloppy way and just ends. If the game were carefully designed better, you would be able to see the power wire go all the way to the power box in the garage, giving a reasonable yet subtle hint that this is what you have to do. But no, the games shit, so I just had to keep guessing. I eventually found the garage power box, but I was doubtful if this was the right thing to do, because the texture on the power box is so low resolution it seems like a really unimportant asset, its like 120x120 pixels kind of thing, you cant even read the text on the labels. I figured if it was what you had to do, youd be able to clearly read the labels like "Kitchen"  "Garage"  "Shed"  kind of thing. Well, it IS what you have to do, its just sloppy game design again. Theres a tiny fuse nearby on a shelf you have to pickup, luckily theres big boxes with "FUSE" on it nearby, so it gave me some clue. So turned the power to the shed back on, then I had to figure out to get the nailgun and find the tiny box of nails inside a box on a shelf nearby, use the air pressure machine on the nailgun, and NOT kill her myself with the nailgun, but instead mind control her husband when he gets close to kill her himself with the nailgun. I mean yeah, its an amazing idea/cutscene, obviously inspired by American Psycho so I like the reference, I guess the level was ok? except for the 'power the shed' bit with the lazily designed power cord just disappearing into the wall. It could have been executed better, with the power line from the shed being more distinct and running along the wall to the power box in the garage instead we just get a sloppy job again.


Last two levels are thankfully really short
17/18 is this first person camera angle inside a room with a cop, you just swing some statues with telekenesis around and the cop gets scared and shoots around the room, breaking the crosses on the wall recharging your powers. Then he shoots the ceiling fan, which falls down and decapitates him.
Last level is a fight against your father
At the beginning, it shows two pictures. A puzzle piece, and a fireball. So its asking you if you wanna do another puzzle, or combat. I picked combat, cause I figured thats the shortest way to get this game over. Then its just this short fight inside the burning mansion where you fireball down a few preists and then your father shows up with a fire extinguisher and fireballing him seems to do nothing cause he just sprays it away. Took me quite awhile to figure this one out. More tedious bullshit. Cant do damage to him at all. Turns out theres a random pillar in the room you have to mind control and make fall on top of him when hes standing at just the right spot. Ok great. Games over , end credits.

I'm really surprised to see that this game has 3 sequels. Maybe, just maybe, this first one is a rushed product and hasn't gone through much playtesting and the sequels have actually improved and fixed all the complaints I have? I'm doubtful, and I don't know if I'll ever play them. But the first Lucius game is a fine example of something with a great concept, something that could be even fun to watch a playthrough of (when the player knows what to do) - But actually playing the game yourself for the first time is a complete pain in the ass, arduous task of time wasting "What the fuck do I do / where the fuck do I go" laughable gameplay of finding needles in haystacks or actively being deceived by the games many bugs/glitches or just generally poor design. I have to say I'm sort of disappointed and misled by the tag 'Horror' on this game. It really is just a puzzle game, when I installed it, I was more wanting a kind of cinematic 'walking sim' without much bullshit. How disappointed was I to spend 10+ hours slogging my way through this slop.

3/10