Deponia

I wouldn't call myself a point-and-click connoisseur, but having played a few, I think I have a handle on what makes good ones good. Deponia is... alright. A serviceable and somewhat amusing point-and-click. The storyline fairly obvious and straightfoward, and you can see it in the trailers: generic, whacky manchild engages in hijinks, irritates everyone around him, yet somehow gets the girl (sort of) and saves the day (sort of). It's set on a junk world, which makes that a bit of a change of pace, but other than that, there's really nothing here you haven't seen before. Where it really falls down in my opinion is in the execution of its puzzles. I was able to handle everything okay until the beginning of the second act, the attempt to wake goal up. Here, we run into the "moon logic" of Deponia, which means you have only the faintest grasp as to what the game wants you to do. Deponia is pretty okay when it keeps the puzzle space small and constrained, so that there's only a handful of items and a handful of things to try them on, but as it gets larger and larger, you just have to start trying everything on everything, and this gets tedious. The final results are often highly amusing, but it's still tedious to get there. This means you inevitably reach for a guide, and this really spoils some of the more well-constructed puzzles that would have been interesting to puzzle out on your own. Since you NEED a guide to handle the whacky moon logic of the rest of the game, you end up just checking it when confronted with a more interesting puzzle and realizing, after you've seen the solution, that it's actually a neat puzzle. The moon logic of Deponia actually fits the setting. It would just benefit a lot from more constrained puzzle spaces (solving a half dozen puzzles in the village was a nightmare) or a hint mechanic that let you find out what you wanted without spoiling the whole game. All in all, it's.. fine. But there are better point-and-click games.

A sort of comeback for point-and-click adventure, though ultimately not as fun as some of Telltale's offerings. It looks good and there's lots of puzzles, with no death or ways to permanently get stuck (ie no missing key items early in the game) so you can just keep trying everything until you figure it out. The puzzle logic is straight up terrible though. Some are fine, some I had to look up a guide and went, "What? Seriously, they expected you to come up with that?!" This first game had a decent overall plot and humour, and IMO it might have been better extending it and just ending the story here. Rufus is a selfish, unlikable ass, but in this first part it doesn't go too far, is played for laughs, and he does actually have some justification for it at the start (stuck on crapsack planet, father ditched him and is also a selfish ass). He also starts to grow up and develop an actual conscience near the end, which makes it all the more jarring in the 2nd and 3rd parts where he fully reverts and crosses the line to outright cruelty (they try to handwave it late in the third part, but it's hard to swallow). On its own this first part has its faults but isn't bad overall, the problem is the game doesn't end here and, IMO, goes downhill in the next games. Taken on its own I'd rate this first part 3/5. If you can get this part on sale for $1 or 2 it's worthwhile. The trilogy as a whole I'd rate 2/5, and simply cannot recommend it over classic adventure games or Telltale's entries .

This game has a brilliant story which is totally worth experiencing. One must know that the story is only whole together with two subsequent chapters, "Chaos on Deponia" and "Goodbye Deponia". But, apparantly, this is not a bad thing! The story is breathtaking and just making you take the next game, and the next one, and even the "Deponia Doomsday" epilogue part. I can't actually judge the puzzle part, for I'm not really into puzzles. This one seemed quite challenging and interesting to me. Also, Rufuse's commentary on all subjects is just beautiful -- I replayed the game especially to hear all his lines. If you're not into puzzles just like me, all complex puzzles can be skipped, and particularly difficult point-and-click solutions can be found in various walkthroughs all over the Internet. Overall rating: 10 asshole Rufuses out of 10.

Deponia has great presentation: the art design is very appealing, the animation is good, the environments and characters are colorful and show a lot of attention to detail, and the music is pleasant. The voice acting is also mostly OK for an indie title. The puzzles are also good for a point-and-click adventure game; while most aren't very innovative and are pretty straightforward - not too obtuse and don't take too long to break through - they're built around creative ideas and (mostly) unorthodox items, which makes for a more interesting interaction. HOWEVER, the major and constant problem with the game is the main character (Rufus). He's completely and utterly unbearable. He's supposed to be the cliche' goofy-whacky-loveable type, very clumsy and incompetent yet high-inspiring, but he's not written as loveable at all, in fact he's downright loathsome. There's not a single redeeming quality to him - he's mean, rude, abusive, inconsiderate, destructive and has complete disregard to others' lives and property, and a complete idiot filled with unjustified self-importance. He drugs his girlfriend so he can steal from her store, floods a friend's house to trick him and kidnaps an injured unconscious woman to use as a bargaining card. Incompetent, crazy or mean-spirited characters can be made loveable by being clever or funny (Guybrush Threepwood, Sam & Max), but Rufus is neither, making it very hard to relate to him or care about him. The voice actor does a fine job but he's just so poorly written and the humor is so flat, I eventually couldn't listen to Rufus's remarks any longer so I had to just skip all of his dialogue/monologue lines, which are 80% of the audio content. That's a real shame because this is otherwise a good point-and-click adventure game with a very appealing setting and art style. If you can somehow get past this issue you might find Deponia an interesting game; as for me I won't buy the following chapters.

Point and click adventure games live or die based on 3 primary aspects: World, puzzles and protagonist. This game (series) gets 2/3 of those mostly right. I haven't finished the 3rd game (nor do I intend to). The world of Depnonia is basically a giant garbage heap. This gives the artists the freedom to draw lots of bizzare locations cluttered with all sorts of wonderful junk and eccentric people. The art is gorgeous and the personality of the world comes to life with each new screen and interaction with the populace. I found myself staring at various locales just taking in the sights. The puzzles are mostly ok. Some of them can be rather obtuse, but that's true of all point and clicks. I don't feel they ever got as bad as some of the worst in Discworld. There are some that involve minigames, but the game lets you skip those entirely if you get too frustrated, which is a good option to have (never needed to use that feature). There is, however, a game breaking bug in one of the puzzles. The player character completely dissapears and the game locks up. The developer's claim to have fixed it, but ultimately the solution was to go to their website and download a new save file. Hmm. Not ideal. The protagonist is where the game falters. Rufus is completely unlikable. He's a total egotistical asshole. He frequently lies, steals, cheats and abuses everyone including his friends and the girl he (supposedly) fell in love with. He physically and mentally abuses her. He drops her, he lies to her, he tricks her, he actively chooses sub par medical supplies when trying to help her. He's just a jerk. I think he was designed intentionally annoying, but intentionally annoying is still annoying. I couldn't get behind him at all which is an issue because as the protagonist you spend the most time with him and every object you interact with he comments on and, eventually, he stopped being even kind of funny. (hint: he doesn't get better in the sequels)