Accident Review

Reliving disastrous and often fatal car crashes of the past through the medium of virtual reality is an incredibly unique premise for a videogame, but in Accident, that’s exactly what you do. Developed by Duality Games, this educational puzzle simulator is a brief, yet fairly enjoyable experience, despite its serious themes.

Taking on the role of an unnamed journalist, you are tasked with donning a virtual reality headset to examine road traffic accidents from the past, in order to uncover how they occurred. There is no overarching storyline — save from a few text messages from your boss — instead, each case is its own self-contained short scene where you piece together clues to reveal what happened, and who was involved.

There’s no way to describe the graphics of Accident as anything other than rough. It feels like a harsh word for a budget priced game, but you’ll constantly see low-resolution textures, geometry floating above the ground, and character animations that wouldn’t look out of place in an original PlayStation CGI cutscene.

Sound fares a little better, thankfully, with tense music to keep with the game's theme of urgency. Accident doesn’t feature any voice acting, but with the only dialogue in the game coming from the emergency service operator on the other end of the phone, it isn’t a huge deal. All the other environmental audio effects, including a victim's laboured breathing or the sounds of a wrecked car’s engine spluttering, sound good, with the majority of them sounding slightly different each time.

Accident seems to act almost like an educational game at times, with small facts on how to properly deal with a similar situation in the real world constantly popping up in your heads-up display. Each mission places you into the shoes of a first responder, and you must quickly secure the scene before checking on the people involved. It’s a simple premise that often repeats each mission, although there are slight variations to mix it up a little (such as having to secure a car about to plummet off a cliff, for example).

Once the paramedics have arrived, it’s time to hunt for clues to determine how this accident happened. If you’ve ever played a Sherlock Holmes game then you’ll be familiar with how this plays out: Search the scene, collect enough clues, and place them in the correct order on a timeline. You’re unable to collect any clues deemed “irrelevant”, which drastically reduces the difficulty in piecing the evidence together, though it would have been more fun to have to figure out which ones aren’t pertinent to the accident yourself, potentially extending the time it takes to complete a case.

After completing a mission, you’re “treated” to small biographies of what happens to the survivors (or the families of those that died) in the aftermath of the accident. It can be a little shocking to read in so much detail that a child is now an orphan as both of their parents died on impact, so much so that I had to research whether these were based on real life tragedies. It turns out they are, which is slightly depressing. Finally, you’ll see a cutscene of what happened during the disaster, with some real Final Destination-esque scenes playing out.

It’s a quick ride, with my final playtime (including unlocking the Platinum trophy) being just under two hours. It therefore doesn’t last long enough to become stale, and a few more cases with more unique scenarios would have been nice. But for how inexpensive the game is, it’s hard to be too critical of the short length.

In closing, Accident is a short, surprisingly educational game that, if nothing else, has me feeling more prepared should I ever witness a car accident. A few extra gameplay mechanics and more variety would have made it more enjoyable, but as it stands, Accident isn’t a bad way to spend a few hours and earn an easy 100% completion.