You and a female fellow soldier called Kat are stranded on the roof of a factory on an island in a post-nuclear world. Your pilot is dead and your helicopter needs a small but vital part. You are wounded, so Kat is the only person who can find the missing part, and to do so she has to enter the building that crawls with madmen led by General Minh. From the Control Room where you are hiding you can help her, so you may have a chance to survive.

Critical Path is an interactive movie with action-based sequences, in which the main character Kat has to shoot, fight, set traps etc. It also has puzzle-solving elements as you, as the wounded soldier in the Control Room, have to enter codes and push buttons to help her survive.

Kat starts with nine lives. When she looses a life, the player can continue with one less life or reload an earlier part of the game (automatically saved; the game has no saving slots). When all nine lives are used up, Kat dies and Minh kills you in the Control Room. In this room you will find Minh's notebook with clues and instructions about the workings in the factory and his special traps.