Posted on: October 7, 2019
pearnon
Games: 205 Reviews: 50
Just plain unfunny
(Note: This review concerns the original version, which I acquired before it got updated to the 25th anniversary one, and which you apparently still get when buying this.) Point & Click adventures are near and dear to my heart as a genre, but this one simply doesn't cut the mustard. The protagonist is obnoxious, unlikeable and borderline mean-spirited, and not even in dark humor kind of way, which just about kills a greater part of the joy one might get in playing. The story is riddled with long conversations of absolutely unfunny dialogue that makes your eyes roll at how hard it tries to be witty and oh-so-jadedly breaking the fourth wall, as if a game programmer asked his teenage son who likes Terry Pratchett to write the script. The puzzles are fine, with a couple of real clever ones (in the game's wacky wizardry context, of course), and the more obtuse one here and there, but way too many feel way too random, such as [SPOILER] getting a wallpaper catalogue as a completely impromptu reward for your good roll of the dice at a table of role-players, with no indication whatsoever that you might gain something out of it and not even a hint of any type of catalogue or book to be had in that situation [end SPOILER}. I'm fine with whimsiness, oddball logic and lateral thinking, but stuff like this is just poorly thought-out. I experienced two graphical glitches, one of which forced me to restart, which is frankly unacceptable for such an old game that is considered to run "excellently" on SCUMMVM. There was also some fiddling necessary for the subtitles and voiceovers to match, but the voice acting sounded too grating to be worth the effort, no matter how slight. In the end, this is just not a good game. And, by the sound of it, the anniversary edition killed even its detailed pixelated charm, so just don't bother.
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