Black Mirror 3

Since I liked previous two titles in the series, I liked this one too, mainly because of the familiar setting, characters, theme and wonderfully drawn locations. I also liked the innovative aspects: Darren's increasing sarcasm and cynicism, his americanness in a secluded english village, the two-characters gameplay towards the end, the expanded lore... However, this could have been much, much better given it is the series' conclusion. The puzzles were very easy for the most parts, the minigames too, except some that almost bugged the heck out of me. The atmosphere, even though quite dark right from the beginning, just didn't work for me. I lacked the suspense buildup. It was just dark and mysetrious start to finish, very little development in these terms, and towards the end, where the darkness, mystery and action should have been at its peeks, it just all went into "spiritual technicalities" which almost completely ruined the atmosphere. Many plot sub-lines remained open without as much as a hint at what might happen (i.e. bad storytelling). In terms of the the overture was incredibly simplistic and cliché. This, combined with the aforementioned climax fail spoiled the sense of story closure. And, one more thing. Using the motifs of the church dibbling into the supernatural and sending its agents etc. is really overused, the team could have spared us this... In sum, nice trip back to Black Mirror, but quite poor as a conclusion to the series.

Story: 3/5 Worldbuilding: 4/5 Art Design: 5/5 Graphics: 4/5 Sound: 4/5 Gameplay: 3/5

The game for the most part is well written and quite consistent story-wise. But. But the puzzles are annoying. And some of them are just PITA. Luckily you can skip some of them. There are also some points I'd have never think of gameplaywise. After all - if you played the second game in the series, the third one is worth playing as well.

In spite of still being a good game, I felt it failed in maintaining the level of Black Mirror 2. Although it borrows heavily on BM2, (which is normal since BM2 was a "to be continued") some aspects just got lost along the way (not so witty, some not-so-logical-way-of solving a puzzle, boring mini games) and I felt the story dragged a lot and spun always around the same thing, which eventually became somewhat tiresome. An interesting aspect was being able to control two characters near the end, brought some fresh air into play. Still a good game though, the "problem" was that BM2 was really good and makes this one fall short by comparison. Took me around 16,5 hours to conclude the game.

Where the second title starts to be interesting after the first half of the game, the last chapter is the opposite. It starts very good then it becomes an hot-spot search. There is also a super annoying maze at the end.