Gets The Golden Raspberry For Worst FMV Game
It’s my own fault, really. I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother was never going to be a masterpiece. But the title, the cheap price, and a deep-rooted fascination with FMV games (this is your fault, Night Trap) means that I’m here, reviewing it. And by golly, I wish I wasn’t.
I’m pretty sure that my GCSE Media Studies coursework was shot better than I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother’s FMV scenes. I’ll have to dig it out and hold them up side-by-side. It’s certainly got similar production values: you can barely hear the dialogue at points, and the lighting bleaches out the characters. There were scenes – particularly at the start – that clearly needed another take. Lines are fluffed and the main characters, Noah and Michelle, just keep trucking on, as if it could all be fixed in the edit. Spoiler – it’s not fixed in the edit.
I’m In Love With The Other Games On My Backlog
We’re going to sound like xenophobic Brits here, but the accents are strong enough to be a problem to our ears. There’s a fair amount of mumbling and the sound editor has gone AWOL, so chucking in strong French accents only adds to the chaos. Noah and Michelle might be saying something funny, but we can’t always tell. We’re not sure if Noah and Michelle know.
The overall effect is of a home video circa 1995. It feels like some co-workers who barely know each other have got their hands on a camcorder and improvised a scenario where they have to date one another. There is a chance that you might find that awkwardness endearing, but I’m willing to bet that you have to be a mate or family member of Kimulator’s Films’ team for that to be the case.
I kind of wish we could end the review there. But we should probably dig into why I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother made us want to have a cold shower after watching it.
Come back, Wales Interactive
An example: Noah, the main character, begins I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother with a bulge in his trousers. He’s lunging about with something clearly in his undercrackers. He yanks it out and it’s a toy camera, which he promptly uses to take photos of Michelle, so that he can – and we’re guessing a little here, as it’s mumbled – share them with his mates. They prefer nudes, but this will do.
Let’s ignore the fumbled delivery and poor audio for a moment, and focus on the content. Because, even in this example, I’m hoping you can see the problem. It’s a big, sloppy mass of juvenile jokes, slightly wayward morals and leery posturing at the camera. I think it’s aiming for edgy, but I found it as comfortable as being locked in a room with a drunk geezer gloating about his past conquests.
We’re being a little unkind as the opening five minutes are absolutely, 100% the worst five minutes of I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother. You can see Noah and Michelle gaining a little bit of confidence over the twenty minutes (yep, twenty), which drags down the mumbling and discomfort. They’re still there, just not in such vast quantities.
There were even moments where the planets aligned and we found something funny. Broken clocks and all that. Noah in particular does have some comedic timing, and he leans into absurdities. There’s a moment when Michelle hides from him in her bathroom, and he complains that she “looks like a door” right now, because, you know, he can only see a door (look, it’s the best we could find).
The rest of I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother veers between cringey and asking yourself “what were they going for here?”. Noah, having tried to woo Michelle, then begins to dislike her. He spots a photo of her dead grandmother, whom Noah fantasises about. In dream sequences, we get to see Noah pretend to be a plumber (pronounced plum-bur), an ‘80s kid, and her dead husband in an effort to seduce her.
Ah The Hilarity Of Ageism
There are two things you have to find consistently funny for this to work: a) the idea of a young guy getting jiggy with an old lady needs to be intrinsically hilarious, and b) the word ‘poo’ needs to set you off. Because that’s all that I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother really has. The joke in the title – that someone deeply wants to romance a dead grandmother – pretty much spoils their one joke.
You’ll notice that we’ve only really talked about ‘watching’ I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother. That’s because this is predominantly one twenty-minute FMV. I counted seven moments where you can make a choice, but none of them really have an impact. Only one of them branches, at the very end, and the others are mostly a chance for Noah to dress up differently. There are a couple of QTEs, but the ‘Quick’ is used very, very loosely. You have about twenty seconds to make a one-button input.
The Longest Twenty Minutes of Your Life
A rousing finale might have pushed the mark up, but I got the feeling that I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother either lost steam or budget before the end. It abruptly ends with one of two endings; one of which doesn’t even make sense. The good ending at least gave us a second laugh: a weird, avant garde moment that we wish they’d explored more of previously. But none of them are resolutions. You could imagine – and a little bile popped into the mouth here – that a sequel was being set up.
Honestly, I’ve seen better home movies from police bodycams. I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother is a car crash of an FMV game, with the car crashing because the driver was mooning out of the window. It’s puerile, barely audible and entirely uncomfortable. If you want to experience the longest twenty minutes of your life, look no further.
Important Links
I’m In Love With Your Dead Grandmother Launches On Xbox And PC – And Yes, It’s As Strange As It Sounds! – https://www.thexboxhub.com/im-in-love-with-your-dead-grandmother-launches-on-xbox-and-pc-and-yes-its-as-strange-as-it-sounds/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/im-in-love-with-your-dead-grandmother/9nbwr9c4dnzr
