Cognition: Game of the Year Edition

A pretty good detective story, evoking a feel similar to some of british or scandinavian crime/mystery mini series (like The Killing or Prime Suspect). The special gimmick of the game is the main characters psychic abilities, that lets her dive into her own and others memories - including the "memories" of places, which is pretty usefull when investigating crime scenes and so on. For the most part, I enjoyed the game. The story is engaging, the puzzles balanced and for the most part they fit the special investegator theme, and the best parts (mostly involving reasearch on Erica's computer) really made me feel like I was doing *real* investigation. Unfortunately, the game isn't entirely free of "moon logic". Aparently Erica needs to steal from her colleages and random places around town, in order for her to do seemingly basic and everyday tasks like listening to an audio recording. Also, at another time Erica leaves in the middle of an interrogation to randomly drive around town and have a session with her phycic counselor, before returning to the interrogation room where suspect has apparently just been sitting for half a day... I like the art-style, especially the hand drawn "visual novel" style cutscenes. The characters are 3D rendered, and it takes a bit of getting used to the way they stand out from the beautiful backgrounds, but for the most part the visuals achieve what they are meant to. I like the voice acting and the music, and in total I liked the game. For me, the good parts outweigh the bad ones, and I am exited to play the remaining episodes. The game

I really loved this game. I'm a big fan of adventure games like Gabriel Knight, Gemini Rue, Still Life and I feel like this game fits in with these games perfectly. All with having a beautiful style all to it's own. It does have a few little bugs, nothing game-breaking though. The support for this game is phenomenal for an indie company. If you want to try the game out first, there is a demo available. Great music, great art, logical puzzles that don't have you looking up walkthroughs. Seriously, if you are a fan of adventure/detective games, give this a shot. Support more companies that release good stuff, like this.

Considering that we know exactly what the budget of this game is based on its Kickstarter, Phoenix Online seems to have pulled off the miraculous. If you are a fan of games with deep storylines and great characters, do not hesitate in buying this game. The unfortunate downside is that technically, it is not brilliant. I'm not saying that the game is broken, far from it, it is just very frustrating at times when there a slight technical glitches that a little extra money could have fixed. But they are not game changers, nor do they detract from the game. I would urge anyone to buy this game and prepare to be swallowed up.

You are Erica Reed a detective dealing with loss, a serial killer and who has 'powers' to see pieces of the past. The way this is added to tradtional point & click adventure format gives a clever little innovation in both it's puzzles and story telling. Up until Episode 4 I thought this was the best narative to an adventure story I've ever come across. The first episode is introducing you to the characters and several mystery plots that you will investigate to find the truth. Persist with the game after a good but not great first episode because it gets better. The second and third episodes really fleshes out the story with a plot full of twists and turns that completely immerse you. The peak being episode 3. The final episode is a let down partly down to '2 boss puzzles' that are overly tough for my liking but also because the story goes all over the place while not really progressing the plot. Honestly I can't play a game like this without a gameboomers walkthrough running in the background and I suggest for all but the most hardcore puzzlers to do the same if you actually want to enjoy it. It isn't for the squimish, some of the gore is maybe a tad unnecessary and unrealistic even for a serial killer. Another downside is excessive running/walking between scenes when you're solving a puzzle, ie there's no fast travel in some places. But these are small complaints. Still the depth of the characters, the story arch and the twists and turns are up there with the best I've come across in an adventure game and it's worth these

Disappointing game. Visually, it's pretty bizzare - the character animations range from ok to awful, and the reset of the art isn't much better. I thought the voice acting was fine but the script... again, some of it was good and some of it pretty bad. Gameplay wise, it's straightforward enough, although I kept forgetting to try powers for the first episode and most of the second, making it harder and more frustrating. It also really annoyed me trying to skip dialog - sometimes you could, and sometimes you had to sit through it. The story itself was interesting enough and the way the different plots wove together worked for me. That's one thing the art had in its favour - some of the story is extremely dark, but it never felt like true horror. Although the game was originally episodic, it would have been more convenient of the Game of the Year Edition combined them all into a single coherant game instead of breaking off into bits of episodes.