By Steve Wright

Copyright stevivor

A delightfully schlocky horror FMV game, packed full of gore.

As is the way, hockey expanded my horizons and put Wales Interactive on my radar. While I’d played some of the publisher’s previous titles in passing — Late Shift immediately comes to mind — it was Letterkenny star Michelle Mylett’s turn in The Complex that had me really paying attention to the full-motion video (FMV) titles coming from it and its film-making partners.

Whereas The Complex was a sci-fi thriller and Late Shift a crime thriller, Dead Reset is straight-up B-grade, schlocky sci-fi horror — and that is very much a complement — with gore that earns it the R18+ classification it has here in Australia.

The premise of Dead Reset is simple. You fill the shoes of Cole Mason, a surgeon with no memory of how he’s ended up on the floor of a futuristic lab. From here, Cole very quickly realises he’s stuck in a deathloop. Will he be shot in the head by the trigger-happy security guard that’s watching him like a hawk, or will he be felled by the parasitic alien-like thing that’s embedded in the abdomen of the patient he’s being demanded to operate on?

The answer, likely, is both; Dead Reset is full of time loops, and each kicks off with Cole’s death. He dies a lot.

As to how you die is truly up to you. Choose Your Own Adventure-style — though my husband walked by and asked if I was playing old-school Nightmare and he wasn’t that far off the mark — Dead Reset is an interactive movie that mostly plays out on its own. Branching points of its narrative will prompt the player (or players) to make a choice, causing its narrative to ebb and flow accordingly. A full playthrough takes approximately 2 hours to complete, with a total of four endings to discover accordingly.

A tracker is useful for those wanting to explore all paths (and uncover all the ways Cole and the other occupants of the lab can die), even going as far as to tick off which big story beats you’ve encountered while giving clues as to how to access other paths. So too does the ability to skip cutscenes you’ve already witnessed while working towards new scenes and endings.

Dead Reset has something of a consistency problem when it relates to special effects, storylines, and acting — though I need to commend Daniel Thrace for a very strong performance as Cole — but that all comes together to nail the feeling of a B-grade horror film. Again, that’s a compliment; it’s giving off a pre-Disney Doctor Who vibe.

For $21.95 AUD — what I’m assuming is the price of this title, as that’s the usual RRP of Wales Interactive’s FMV outings — it’s hard to go wrong with a bit of gory fun. Gore, though, is the keyword here; if you’re not into that kind of thing, Dead Reset isn’t for you. Try an FMV crime thriller instead. Whatever you do, grab some friends (and turn on Streamer mode so you can debate choices), pop some popcorn and have a night of it; you won’t be disappointed.

Dead Reset is available now on Windows PC via Steam, Mac, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5, and Switch.

Dead Reset was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.