Vegas Tales review

Vegas Tales tells the story of the owner of the fabulous Bellflower Casino Hotel in Las Vegas who has unfortunately fallen terminally ill. Given that he dedicated his whole life to his work, he finds himself without any family or friends that he can select as an heir to inherit the Bellflower. He managed to narrow it down to a small group of people who have strong personal connections to the hotel, but whom he knows little else about. They’ve all agreed to be interviewed without knowing what’s really at stake. Can you select the right heir for the Bellflower Casino Hotel?

Vegas Tales is an FMV, full-motion video, experience where as yourself, you have to interview a handful of different people in order to help the owner of the Bellflower Casino Hotel select their proper heir; A psychopathic magician, a homeless dying young woman, a suspiciously too happy family who considers The Beatles a wild rock band and newlyweds. As you engage them, they will offer up additional information about themselves. Asking a question or probing to get more information will result in new possible questions. In order to get the most information out, you need to ask them all.

When you first start a new conversation, you’ll have a choice of initial questions to get the conversation going. But as the interviewee reveals more information, new questions are available between “chats” that you can choose and ask. Questions are usually one, two, or three-word questions that basically takes valid information given by the person and add a ? at the end of it. Nothing too fancy or complex.

And yes, the game is far from perfect. I first started the game on my Xbox One S; after the first 2 interviews, the game started running like a$$. So I rebooted my console and re-launched the game. Still stuttered, slowdowns, and long black screen cutaways, so I installed it on my Xbox Series X where the game was notoriously more stable. I can’t imagine how bad this would play on a Day 1 Xbox One. The other issue is the utterly horrible editing job. Once you select a question, you’re treated to a brief dark screen and the character then answers. It completely takes out of the experience and it’s not as smooth as other FMVs.

It’s kinda hard to knock the game/experience’s presentation given that it’s a full-motion video performed with real actors. All of the interviews take place in the same room, so not much to add here. I would’ve appreciated a bit of diversity in the locales; I can assume they all took place within the confine of the casinos, so why not one in a room, another one on a balcony, in a garden in order to vary the settings a bit. Sound-wise it’s fine, I’ve heard worst voice acting in movies or other FMVs, but they make it really hard to care about any of them.

I’m gonna be blunt: if you’re looking to dabble into the FMV genre, Vegas Tales ain’t the one you should be looking for. Poor to mediocre acting, technical hiccups on consoles it was supposed to be played on, very amateur-ish editing job, Vegas Tales doesn’t have a single redeeming quality about it. Since I’ve started doing reviews and enjoying the FMV genre, this was the first FMV experience where I kept telling myself “Is it over now?”. If you’re looking to dabble into the genre, look for anything made by Wales Interactive.