Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within

FMV usually sucks. Weird logic puzzles, bad acting, boring. But GK2 is different. 1 The puzzles feel like real adventure game puzzles. Yes, there is an occasional moment where you better use a walkthrough, but these moments are rare. 2 The acting is not bad, actually it's pretty good. The characters themselves reach from awesome to horrible. But the acting is always good! 3 The story is great! There went a lot of work into it, many of the history is absolutely solid. Except for the werewolf parts of course! If you are not only an adventure friend but also a German history buff you will enjoy this game even more. 4 The characters. Gabriel is not bad, but he is no Tim Curry. In the end it is a totally diffent Knight character. Grace reaches from fantastic (in her first scene) to horrible btch (after that) to again great (later in the game). The supporting cast is fun to interact with, especially the Lady in the Ludwig museum. No, in Germany no one in a museum is such a dick :) But my, I love her! There is a German dub, and it's so ridiculous that it's fantastic comedy material. They tried to shadowmask the language barriers with hard to understand German dialects, it's awesome! But the better way is to play it in English. If you speak English and German you have the best experience possible! You can read (well written) articles and signs that the main actors don't understand, so you always know a little more than them. You can skip the video sequences (for example getting in the car and driving away or walking up the stairs, or walking in the next room), thanks to the hard drive installation it's a pretty fluid experience, I don't want to imagine how that must have felt with 6 CDs. Also you can't die very often, it's pretty rare. Non the less, I advise to save often, you can skip a video but something was supposed to happen, and you missed it, so at least you can go back. If I had a top ten of adventure games, this game would be in it! Highly recommended!

Does it run on Linux?

GK:2 stands out as probably the best of a brief spate of games that came out in the 90s featuring live actors in streaming video. The game uses excellent actors, a simplified and intuitive method of interaction and a compelling story-line to perfect what was always a flawed gaming system and deliver a fantastic, deep adventure game. The Beast Within is, obviously a sequel. It rejoins Gabriel Knight, now as a struggling Shattenjaeger in Germany trying to solve a string of murders involving a suspected werewolf. Unlike most sequels, which just provide more of the same, GK:2 reinvents itself. Due to the method of using live actors the interface has been completely retooled. No more do you have to choose between take, move, operate and speak commands. If you can use it, the cursor will change to a dagger and allow you to do so. There is a great deal to operate, which gives you a much greater feeling of being involved in the action than most games of this type. Unlike other live action games, which often leave you feeling like you're just passively watching a bad movie, GK:2 keeps you involved, making you feel like a detective in a dime store murder mystery. GK:2 stands out, for me, as the best of the series. The quality of the series fell off sharply in the third installment as it attempted to make a transition to full 3-d. Here however, the game designers manage to transition beautifully into a new style, taking the best and discarding the worst.

The heyday of 1990s FMV (full motion video) games. No finer example, imho. I wish more had been done with FMV, but thereafter games went to naff early 3D (which took another decade to be as nice to look at as FMV) or went down the interactive-movie route (which frankly bore me). Sure, today's 3D AAA games make FMV redundant/dated, but I feel what could've been another decade of FMV gaming was abandoned before it's time. Compare these previews to the 3D ones in Gabriel Knight 3 - 3D would be trash for at least another decade. Story-wise you get a nice sense of the mystery. I'm only knocking a star off for some typically clunky 1990s gameplay sequencing - eg a neat little location I found and searched thoroughly for evidence, but presumably earlier than the expected sequence because nothing was there - but when later stuck I eventually went back there and the evidence was now magically in place, presumably having been triggered by a certain conversation/sequence. Why not have the have it there but alternatively later enable a conversation about it? Painful - but thankfully there isn't much of that.

I gotta be honest, and maybe it's strictly 'nostalgia' speaking, but this is my favorite FMV type game. I first played this on Win95 when I was about 12 years old or so. The plot is fantastic, the controls are pretty easy to get used to(much improved from the 1st game with the cursor changing mechanics). While the acting isn't exactly 'top notch'(notice Gabe's head tilt EVERYTIME he says something), it's still very entertaining for a game that came out at that time. If you can somehow get your hands on the book based on this game, do so(it isn't cheap anymore >.< ). My ONLY complaint is that Mosely isn't in this game, unlike the 1st and 3rd installments.