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I should have known better with this one. A new Alan Wake-style film noir puzzle game billing itself as an eerie French thriller. But brand new price of only £9.99? Sounding a bit fishy already, n'est-ce pas?

Well, Broken Pieces is testament to that old adage that you get what you pay for. Not only is this no triple A release, it's confusing as hell. Half the puzzles are actually in French. And the main protagonist says some things which are extremely weird too.

For example, reach a dead end and she'll declare "This route is condemned". I mean yes it's obvious from context that she means "This way is inaccessible" but it just makes the game feel like the studio never even ran it past a native English speaker before releasing it.

What's even more vexing however is how this lack of care makes the unusual 'puzzles' of the game even more vexing. For example, in one puzzle you are instructed to input the 'inauguration date of the lighthouse' to open a lock (yes, rather like one of those unimaginative escape room puzzles). However, all the plaque tells you is its construction date, which is actually the answer you need, but just seems unnecessarily inconsistent.

The very worst aspect however is that all of the internal signs within the lighthouse are rendered in French. Now my French isn't brilliant. It's ok, but the puzzles really require advanced intermediate French for non native speakers, and if you've got that then, in my opinion, you might as well just not have bothered to translate the dialogue to English and just left the whole thing in French.

So yes, this is a really poor show indeed. Alright, it's not the worst game on the PS4 that I've ever played and I have this strange feeling it might well be a very rare title in the future (perhaps even the PS4 equivalent of Rule Of Rose; that game's not much good either). The trouble is it's sloppily localised, and this has resulted in the puzzles increasing in difficulty, when they were already obscure, and dead boring, to begin with. Even at a tenner, I'd recommend giving this a miss.