This is very slow and slogish game. Long and tedious cutscenes are followed by meaningless gameplay without a lot of sense or engagement. The only reason you want to finish this eight hours game is to see how the story unfolds. But then the end comes and the story just ends without a real purpose or interesting conclusion. The characters are annoying and without a real meaningful motivation, nothing logical actually happens (I know, we can argue about that :D)... And that final scene... really?! I have to watch the movie again instead of this boring game.

It has a solid idea, but it has so many annoying things to it, that I just couldn't make myself play any longer. Plus, the game is really slow, like, really really slow.

And what's with the women in this game, too? They all act so weirdly.

Not much to do with Alfred Hitchcock, either.

I did not watch the movie, so I cannot draw comparisons. Treating it as a generic movie adaption, I initially thought that it was okay - an intriguing mystery, and a lot of loose ends that actually get tied up. But in reality, it's underwhelming.

As most movie games, it strikes an unsatisfactory balance between both. The cutscenes are just fine and you wouldn't think twice about them if they were in an action game, but focused like this, all the undecipherable and exaggerated facial expressions, the frequent lack of shot composition, and random camera pans or cuts become more visible - though it at least avoids the uncanny valley. As a game, it unsurprisingly offers running through locations and QTEs, not too exciting either.

I'm not sure about the themes in the game; this is where seeing the movie would've been useful. What sticks out the most is the orchestration by a seemingly all-powerful plain evil person - a background that for some reason also gets explained during the about last ten minutes - and an unquestioned, unwavering belief in memories and their factual accuracy that only superficially gets challenged - oh, your memories are wrong? Just remember harder, then the real factually objectively true events can be reconstructed.

Lastly, I think it's just too long. This is reminiscent of the pacing of Daedalic games, specifically State of Mind, which start out pretty slowly - but at least they pick up pace later. Vertigo stays put and its generally laudable desire to tie up its loose ends starts to feel like a roadblock, explaining everything in detail.

I'd just say to play State of Mind instead - it has superficial similarities regarding the pacing and the annoyingness of the main character, but does it better, plainly speaking. Mainly because it doesn't want to be half a movie.