Moebius: Empire Rising

Considering that this game was already funded by fans through kickstarter, 30$ is complete ripoff for this stub-of-a-game. Instead of a whole game, this feels more like episodic chapter one. Game is quite short and the shortness is made more apparent by how easy the "puzzles" in this game are. Developers have tried to lenghten the game by the player not being able to pick up necessary items before you have already found the hotspot you're going to need the item on. This results in runing back and forth between different scenes, because you just couldn't pick up the pen untill you know you're gonna need it. Story is inconclusive and leaves most of the questions unanswered. On technical side, graphics would be passable, not good but passable, if not for the god-awful animation. Cognition's cel-shading style was original and hid the worst flaws of the games graphics, but in Moebius's "realistic" style, the graphics look bad even for an indie game. On the plus side, most of the dialogue is well written and interesting, Rectors powers are interesting and original, voice acting is good, apart from some over-the-top "foreign" accents, and the setting is interesting. Moebius is NOT a bad game. But they're trying to sell this for full price, when in reality this feel only like chapter one. For 30$, don't waste your money in this. When this is sometimes going on sale for under 10$, then you will get content for your money.

I wrote a long and (I like to think) thoughtful review that was too long for GOG. Silly GOG! I'll summarize up this game very simply: + Concept is intriguing! + Backgrounds are very pretty. + Music is excellent (as is customary for a Jane Jensen game) - The puzzles sometimes feel unnecessary, and all are way too easy, holding your hand through the whole thing. (Modern adventure game syndrome) - The characters look silly, act silly, aren't especially believeable and often downright annoying. Voice acting does not remedy any of this. - The pace and responsiveness of the game is poor. Very poor. Prepare to groan a bit inside from way too slow animations and cutscenes. - The ending comes abrupt and feels like the end of a part two to a part three that was lost on the way to delivery.

Good: decent story based on very original ideas; good mix between historical facts and fiction; beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds; great music. Bad: hideous, Sims-like, character models locked into convoluted unhuman animations; very simplistic puzzles; pretty stupid and boring characters; absolutely linear gameplay. In general, this game is not a complete failure, but it is very mediocre and low-budget. Cannot recommend it to anyone, despite being a huge fan of Jane Jensen's work for many years. Play it at your own risk. ***

First, the superficial stuff- the character models are ugly, and poorly animated. Its so bad its practically distracting. The puzzles are pretty straightforward, and some are kind of interesting (they attempt to puzzleify Sherlock style intuition/glances), but they often highlight, rather than hide, the games limited budget. Need a bottle of wine? Fly from DC to New York so you can visit the only bar in the entire game. During the game, you travel the world but spend all the time in apartments- nothing is done with the exotic locales. And finally the story (minor spoilers from here on)- the conceit of the story is interesting if somewhat silly, patterns in history cause certain key figure to repeat in history. Unfortunately it is used to little effect, the main plot threads involve helping a politician find a good wife, and the conceit does nothing to move it along. The story lacks the hidden history feeling that the Gabriel Knight games cultivated so well, or even the intrigue of Gray Matter.