Late Shift is a FMV game where you play Matt, a parking lot attendant forced into a dangerous criminal heist. Your interaction is limited to choosing from a number of options at points in the FMV footage. The game reflects the choices you make. The production qualities are good, upmarket cars some glossy visuals brooding music.

The tone of the game is very noir and downbeat and gloomy and dark. Proper actors are used for the characters in the game, the acting at times is rather theatrical but for that I blame the writer and director. There are twists and turns in the plot as reflects a noir story. On the first playthrough it all works pretty well, giving a sense of involvement which just watching a TV drama doesn't. There is quite a bit of swearing which for me doesn't add anything.

It's on the second and subsequent playthroughs as you try to get a better ending where it all begins to pall. You can't skip the long video sequences, you have to start from the beginning of the game each time. Your character Matt using the F word nearly every sentence starts to grate. You realise that many of the choices you make aren't really choices, the game railroads you where it needs you to go. This has to be so in FMV games but replaying the game makes it more obvious. There are choices you make which are significant but it may seem arbitrary which those are.

This won't bother very many but the writer could have tried harder with the mathematics that Matt supposedly knows. True it's not as bad as the science fiction author who wrote a story about the highest prime number. What I do consider unforgivable is that in a story nominally Chinese flavoured is the historical blunder. The Macguffin in this story is a late Ming dynasty bowl we're told. We're also told this bowl has been around for over a millennium. No that's impossible as the Ming dynasty was from 1368 to 1644.