Pendulo Studios’ Vertigo begins, just like the 1958 film, with a visual and musical motif of spirals. Round and round they go until you meet author Ed Miller in the worst moment of his life. Ed narrowly survives a car crash, but he loses his wife, Faye and their daughter. Staring down at the wreck of his car in a ravine, Ed suffers a debilitating bout of vertigo, only to relive the suicide of his father shortly after. A little later, you step into the shoes of Dr Julia Lomas, a therapist called in to deal with Ed’s vertigo and why he keeps talking about a wife and child whom no one but him seems to recall.
While it’s called Vertigo, complete with the licence of Hitchcock’s name and likeness, the game makes hamfisted references to the director’s work. Yes, there are birds, yes, someone will be ripping a shower curtain to the side. But when it comes to embodying the spirit of Vertigo itself, Sight and Sound’s greatest film of all time, it falls almost comically flat.
