Lucius II Review

Lucius II is as tonally bizzare a game you’re ever likely to experience. An unflinchingly po-faced script – laden with references to classic horror movies – is contrasted by farcical ragdoll physics as you commandeer the son of Lucifer on his quest to fulfill a wicked prophecy.

Lucius II follows on from where its predecessor left us, which just so happens to be in the wake of a ruthless killing spree (in the first title, six-year-old Lucius is visited by his real father, the Devil, who then tasks him with killing his biological parents). With the authorities none the wiser as to this seemingly innocent child’s hand in the bloodshed, Lucius is sent to the psychiatric ward of a nearby hospital for evaluation – incidentally, this backstory and the cut scenes thereafter are narrated by the detective from the first game, who aids Lucius in the prophecy after becoming corrupted by the Devil’s tongue.

These devil bobble-heads are littered around each level and grant a small amount of experience

Crippled by a sense of abandonment, Lucius spends a few idle weeks in the psychiatric ward before he hears whisperings of a prophecy from a visiting “woman in cloth” (nun), renewing his sense of purpose. It’s here where you assume control of Lucius, pulling the plug on a patient’s anaesthesia machine as a prelude to more creative massacres in the future.

The hospital serves as your first playground, a sandbox in which Lucius can manipulate the environment to enact all manner of creative murders. Lucifer strips you of your powers when you enter the facility (all part of his master plan), so you’ll need to put your thinking cap on and dream up more ingenious ways to dispatch of your helpless victims, which in turn earns you experience that can be spent on unlocking powers. These abilities (Telekinesis, Mind Control) are rarely, if ever, essential but instead broaden your options.

Mousing over any object or point of interest in your surroundings brings up an information box that provides some not-so-subtle hints as to how they could be exploited for nefarious means and whether they’re breakable or modifiable. You can break metal racks and use the poles to stun doctors, launch vials of acid at unsuspecting workers and ignite pools of flammable liquid you find stashed away in store cupboards. These examples are all pretty much par for the course; unearthing the more inventive methods is when the game’s at its most rewarding.

My particular favourite was the ever-reliable poisoned doughnut. Certain items in the game are tagged as “compelling”, acting as magnets that draw the attention of anyone that spots them. In an accurate imitation of real life, the humble doughnut is irresistible to any of the male gender. As such, mixing some strong medication with the sugary treat is a recipe for fatality.

The hospital Lucius is admitted to serves as your playground for the first half of the game

Not that you need to spike the doughnuts for them to be an expedient for evil. At one point, I surmised that the easiest way to lure a doctor into the compression chamber he was monitoring was to launch a fresh batch of the ringed delights through the hatch. Sure enough, he took the bait and quickly realised his grave error when the steel door slammed shut behind him.

This twisted humour is a persistent thread running through Lucius II. Nurses will attempt to resuscitate melted corpses, patient prescriptions can be modified with inevitable outcomes and slow motion cinematic shots accompany projectile kills. While this works well in framing some of the more unpleasant acts – turning off patients’ life support, for example – in a more comical light, it still feels completely at odds with the mood the narrative attempts to generate.

The script itself feels like it’s been cut and pasted from a low budget horror movie. I found the voices hard to hear – even with the respective slider turned up in the settings – so was forced to read through the typo-heavy subtitles weighed down further by pseudo-religious ramblings. This husk of a story would’ve been easier to overlook if the gameplay had been consistently enjoyable, yet there’s a bevy of technical and internal logic issues that mar the experience.

A troubled child, indeed

Chief among them is the dim-witted AI. The game is predicated on the idea that Lucius needs to avoid detection while he restores his powers through the slaughter of innocents. Working counter to this goal is the suspicion level of each individual that rises when they witness Lucius engaging in a supernatural activity or trespassing in a restricted area. Because you have to rack up five levels of suspicion before someone tries to “bust” you, there’s little danger of getting caught. Furthermore, doctors and civilians alike will turn a blind eye if you perform quick actions that don’t completely fill a suspicion meter, leading to ridiculous situations where you can steal acid from a laboratory or fire gas canisters at someone’s head with no repercussions. To compound the issue, NPCs will regularly get stuck in walls or on tables and items can magically disappear from your hands – in fairness, the developers are still working on the current build and insist there will be upcoming patches to address such bugs.