Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within

The Beast Within is part of the Gabriel Knight series and the slew of FMV games that burgeoned in the 90s. If neither of those legacies evokes a preemptive groan, this might be an interesting experience for you. You probably need a fondness for adventure games to appreciate GK2. And a willingness to use a walkthrough. Or, if you spurn the thought, infinite patience for obtuse puzzle design. Now that these hurdles are out of the way, let's talk about Gabriel Knight! Yes, the character. Leading man of the series and staple of mysterious bad boy chauvinism. Gabe's played by Dean Erickson in this installment, a casting decision of pure epiphany. Unlike his previous incarnation, a bore with seriously problematic tendencies towards women, this Gabriel is charming and engaged. He navigates on intuition and tends to downplay his intelligence to get people talking, a lost art in this day and age. Dean the actor tends to use pretty broad strokes in his craft, but it totally works. He's not the most fascinating character on display (that would be Peter J. Lucas as Baron Friedrich Von Glower), but his performance carries the FMV. The story is pretty good, overal. Historical facts & phenomena are mounted on an urban fantasy vehicle and you're taken along for the ride. New Orleans/Benin are exchanged for Bavaria. Pro: less room for racist tropes. Con: another really white point & click adventure game. Like it's predecessor, it does deliver the infotainment. The way themes and locality are woven into the story is actually amazing. Gameplay? Easy to navigate, but goals and directions are often vague and occasionaly vexing. The notorious moustache puzzle sequence in GK3 has nothing on the unadulterated folly that is the con with the cuckoo clock in GK2. Grace Nakimura (Joanne Takahashi) as a playable character is a cool addition. Gameplay is the same as with Gabriel, but she approaches the world differently - a nice touch! All in all, an interesting remnant of a bygone era.

The second in the Gabriel Knight series, this one switched to full-motion video, which was all the rage at the time, but it is one of the few games I've seen that pulls off the transition really well. The story (which, as you might expect, involves werewolves) sees Grace and Gabriel travelling to Germany to uncover the truth behind a series of brutal murders.

I played through this game with a friend of mine back when it came out. I found it to be quite enjoyable. It does use full motion video, but at the time it didn't really bother me, which is a bit surprising. I think for the most part it was done quite well, but there were definitely some times when we had some laughs making fun of a few of the actors. The game definitely does not sacrifice any interactivity though; even though there's a lot of video, there's just as much full-on puzzle solving, and I appreciated the fact that almost all the puzzles actually made logical sense and avoided the adventure game trap of being overly obtuse. I can't remember if we ever got really badly stuck... I think for the most part we were able to figure out the puzzles but we might have consulted a walkthrough a couple of times. Definitely worth checking out for fans of adventure games.

Back in the day, I played this game and it was awesome. It was really fun to go back and relive all the classic scenes from the game. If you like supernatural mysteries, this game is for you. It's not that hard, and there are lots of funny things throughout the game. If you haven't played the first one, go back and see where it all started.

An other game that just won't work on my system (Top of the line coreI7 processor, graphic and sound cards). I tried to run it on Win7 but it just freeze as soon as I try to get into the car. I tried all the tricks available on GOG but to no avail. Mind you I got the complete series on GOG at a weekend discount price so I am not complaining about money but just the shear fact that I really wanted to play the whole thing rather than just the last one. Major bummer!!!