I've had my eye on this game for a while, partially because Polygon gave it a pretty emphatically positive review last fall while everyone else ignored it but also because I just like the idea of FMV games catching up to technology that could likely make them fully work. Selfishly, Holly Earl also has a look I always find appealing. Unfortunately, because Erica wants to be the length of a standard movie it subsists on a bunch of bog standard tropes in both its dialogues and scenarios that leave the player constantly wondering if this wouldn't have been more charming if it were animated, or perhaps more importantly engaging if it were non-interactive.

It's a shame because there are some things the game does right. By designing itself around a companion app on the phone (that consists solely of swiping around on the screen) it allows for passing the controls off to friends who maybe only backseat game or never game at all, and in that context I think a lot of the more trope-y moments would elicit a laugh rather than a groan. I didn't play the game that way, though, and so I mostly spent my two hours wondering why so much of it was interactive, why the phone app wouldn't recognize landscape mode so I could open a drawer in a single swipe rather than two or three, and most importantly why the director seemed intent on tasking his lead with performing like a wet log. I did get a little entertainment out of how often tearful young women were wrapping in blankets or wandering dead eyed down halls with their hands tucked into their sleeves, if only as a reminder that I was hoping for more out of Erica than it ever intended to give back.

If you're super into the idea of FMV games, I will say there's something to the look of this thanks to its truly live action filming. Most of the interaction moments have this very unique, dreamy and stop-motion like quality to them that makes one imagine a photographer capturing dozens of shots of a single scene to create ultra detailed flipbooks. It's also spared no expense on fidelity - at 40 gigs, you can be sure the colors really pop in this thing, even if that often means exposing the sound stage nature of the sets and pretty amateur blocking from the photography crew. It looks like a cult TV show destined to be canceled before the end of its first season, and it chooses to never break immersion with trophy shouts, waiting until the end to reveal what you did and didn't do.

Perhaps the biggest shame about Erica is that the game is clearly designed for you to get really invested in it, curious how things might have turned out differently and play it at least, I suspect, three times over to learn the whole truth behind what's going on at Delphi House. Unfortunately, I found the climax such a bounty of "oh sure, why not" clichés that I was bursting at the seams to get this C-movie heap off my hard drive and re-download Sekiro to test out the latency on my brand new TCL 6 Series (I think this TV and its low latency will be the thing that lets me finally beat Lady Butterfly and finally love that game the way I've always wanted!).