Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

It's too bad I was never able to play this around the time it came out. After I played it for the first time a few days ago, I'd have to say it's one of the top adventure games I've ever played--no exaggeration! The good: Great characters and script, and a great plot which is nicely delivered piece by piece instead of one big exposition at the beginning or end. Interesting puzzles: although the usual "find X and use it on Y" kind of puzzle is still in the game, there are some more innovative ones as well. My favorite puzzles involved the secret codes in the game (but I like that kind of stuff already). The bad: First, I experienced some audio de-sync, especially during a cutscene (but this may be a problem with my system rather than the download). But it wasn't a huge deal. Second is pixel hunting for certain items was very difficult. You really have to examine certain screens closely to make sure you get each item that you can and well...with certain items I think they were too hidden. Finally, there's an issue at a certain point in the game that may stop you from progressing. You should check the support forums for this game if you find that you're unable to go any further in the game, because there's a solution posted for this (here on the GOG support forums).

I'm so happy that GOG.com has decided to release this classic game on its website. This game series is one of my all-time favorites, and it makes me so happy to see it can be picked up by a new generation of gamers. I sincerely hope that GOG will release its two equally wonderful sequels soon. If you like adventure games at all, buy this at once! You won't be dissapointed.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is generally considered to be one of the greatest point and click adventures of all time. If true, it's a telling indictment of why the adventure game genre almost died out and is kept hobbling along these days by the life support machine of indie developers and hardcore fans. First of all, the good. The story is excellent, revolving around murder and voodoo practises in New Orleans. There's a huge amount of well-researched detail about voodoo and most of the cast, especially the main characters are well-written, interesting and charismatic. The quality voice acting helps here enormously. Another plus is that you need to complete all the day's tasks before the game will move on, so there doesn't seem to be any chance of falling into that old adventure game nightmare of finding the game uncompletable after days of play because you overlooked something back at the very start. The problems come with the actual gameplay and while this might read as a bit of a rant against adventure games in general, it's all relevant to Gabriel Knight. My first big beef is that the game requires you to behave in the most illogical manner possible. You're constantly lying, betraying people's trust and stealing from friends and strangers, even when you have no in-character reason to do so because it's the only way to move the game forward or get items you'll need to use days later. Need to trick a devoutly religious old woman into letting you into her home? Hey, it's lucky you stole that priest's outfit from the church and have been carrying it around for two days for no good reason whatsoever. Backgrounds are detailed with descriptions for most things you can see. Unfortunately, now and then a seemingly innocuous background item is the key to a puzzle solution or opens up a dialogue option you need to progress so every single thing on every single screen needs clicked on with the look icon, then the take icon, then the operate icon, then the open icon...just in case it turns out to be usable or relevant. Miss something like this early and later you can be left with no idea what your next objective is, wandering back through all the locations trying to find something you might have overlooked. The other problem with these games is the often illogical puzzles. It might have seemed perfectly obvious to the designer that the way to distract a certain character was to get a mime from two screens away to follow you back to annoy them, but to me it wasn't even clear that the certain character needed distracted in the first place, let alone that the mime was anything other than background colour like all the other musicians and street performers in that area. I expect a lot of people would argue that what I see as problems are just classic genre tropes. I'd argue back that sticking to these genre tropes is why so many people gave up buying adventure games. Unlike other genres, adventures didn't evolve better gameplay mechanics and suffered as a result. So, the story is excellent and involving but the actual game play is little more than a frustrating chore. This is par for the course for this type of game, unfortunately, and you'll probably know if this appeals to you or not. If it does, then sure, this is a classic. If it doesn't but you like good story driven games it's well worth picking up cheap and keeping a walkthrough or hint guide at hand to help you past the worst of the design problems.

If this were 1993, I would definitely add another star and write about how the voice acting is great, the action is compelling and the gameplay is superb. But as of this writing it's 2011 and some things about this game don't hold as much water as others. The only true flaw in this game, however, tends to be how much saving one has to do in the last fifth of this game when compared to all other parts. It's very unabalanced and most of the game gives an illusion of safety when the reality is that there are two very specific moments where dying often can become a rule, rather than an exception. Death can strike swiftly, suddenly, and almost without warning. Figuring out what to click on and where when at death's door can be frustrating, but thankfully these spots are at a minimum. I'm running this game off a new-ish laptop that's not really geared for games, and I did have to futz with some DOSBOX settings (alternately smashing CTRL+F12 when hitting sound/animation issues or CTRL+F11 when I was zipping along when I should have been meandering), but those are minor issues. The game is very playable, and the story still holds up surprisingly well. While there are some clunkers in the voice acting and some poorly written one-liners and puns, overall the story is very enjoyable and does a great job of covering up most other flaws in a game of this type. It's worth well more than $5.99 - that is for certain.