Lucius

Lucius didn't have much chance of leading a normal life, right from the get go, he's the subject of a summoning ritual while in the womb, and if that wasn't bad enough, at age 6 Satan decides it's time he became a contract killer.

Though don't get your hopes up that this is childhood assassin's creed, there's no combat, or planning out your custom method for taking out the designated target. Instead each "level" is; you wander around until the camera zooms over to your designated target, then you look at what's around that the game wants you to use to kill them. Sometimes the game helps you out and zooms in on your implementations of death too. Some of these kills get quite creative, others are pretty dumb and sadly others are obscure to the point of frustration. Speaking of which, there's also a night time stealth mission, which is probably the lowest point of the game.

As the body-count increases Satan comes more impressed with your ability and grants you additional powers. The most useful is telekinesis, allowing you to interact with things from a distance. Sadly the remaining powers are pretty limited in their uses; Mind Control does exactly that, but its a case of knowing when the game expects you to use it, who to use it on, and what specifically they are supposed to interact with, which really destroys the potential for experimentation. There's also fire, which serves as pretty much your only form of direct offense.

While the premise is pretty dumb, and working out what the game wants you to do can be laborious, the game does have some pretty interesting puzzles on offer, and what's more just the idea itself more than makes up for the lack of sparkle in the execution.

Sure, there isn't much to the world (it all takes place in a pretty large house) and it doesn't look great; the character models are serviceable, but the animations are really quite poor, and the voice acting (while there's lots of it) is pretty forgettable (except one of the maids and the terrible attempt at an accent). Oh and in the credits they list out all the free sound effects and music that was used in the game...

But for as idiotic as the plot is, it's pulled off so well! The progression from working your way up from the lower tiers of the household and the increased violence that accompanies keeps the game chugging along at a decent pace and leaving you wondering what could possibly be up Lucius' sleeve next.

The storytelling is actually pretty amazing, and the game manages to maintain the dark mood almost the entirety of it (a few of the kills are pretty dumb). An investigator chalking the initial deaths as accidental, the belief that the house is cursed, the idea that there's some kind of coverup, how the blame shifts from one character to another... It a really interesting tale. Sure the actual script isn't on point 100% of the time, but the idea stands up and shines through despite the shortcomings of the game.

Lucius, from a gameplay perspective, is not a delight to play, everything about the implementation is incredibly average to below average... But it is saved by it's plot, which is memorable and something that I've actually discussed with friends, even if only to talk about how messed up some parts are... Which is something that I haven't done with games that have far more polish. It may be asking a lot to overlook the aesthetics, but if you're willing to, you'll uncover one of gaming's better told stories.