Still Life

Well, the gameplay feels somewhat similar to Blade Runner. The locations by themselves aren't very big and there's quite a lot of traveling between them. Luckily, you usually don't have to walk through many screens and fast travel work quite reasonably. The graphics aged a bit. Especially the characters. The backgrounds are very nice however and set a proper mood. The writing is quite good. I haven't finished the game yet, I think I'm in some 60-70% of the game and unless they really ruin the ending, the story is gonna still be a very good police thriller in two separate timelines. Nice idea. The weakest part is the actual game itself. Most of the game doesn't require much thinking - just use what's at hand, sometimes retrace your steps a bit. A relatively easy, if not too easy experience. But the minigames - man, they are completely different breed. Annoyingly hard. Sometimes because of their out-of-the game knowledge that you must have (the gingerbread recipee), sometimes because they're simply very out-of-place (the safe lock riddle compared to the code on the keycard). Worth playing for the story value.

I actually have the retail cd-rom version of this, but the DRM crippled my Vista machine. It's good to finally see a DRM free version at a great price!

Overall an enjoyable game. However, we found that the Grandfather's side of the story was much more engaging and thrilling than Vic's story. This left us somewhat unfulfilled when playing as her and itching to get back to the story of the Grandfather. Some of the puzzles made decent sense and we were able to complete them with some difficulty, which is precisely what you would want. However, some puzzles we found made absolutely no sense and ended up just pressing all we could until the solution came about. This was only for the minority of the puzzles though. It would be wrong to say that Vic's time period is not enjoyable through, it has a lot of great moments and gets you to ponder questions just as much as you would with the other time era, it may just be a matter of personal taste. In conclusion, one of the first adventure games we played and are now itching to find more, worth a play!

It's been a long time since I played Still life. I remember being anoyed at the ending, and the anoyance fading away as I realised slowly what the ending actualy meant, and understanding it was not actualy a cliffhanger. I don't want to spoil the game for those of you who haven't tried it yet. In short: a masterpiece of a game. Advice: Don't play Still life 2. It sucks.

I fell in love with Microids Syberia series when it came out. I got this last year but originally had a hard time getting into (the interface felt confusing and unintuitive.) I tried again this year and I'm glad I did-- once I got the hang of the mechanics I was sucked in by the story. Game pros: *The puzzles were interesting and had good variety *The story was really interesting and the switching to past and present narratives made it more interesting and intense *The scenes and artwork were gorgeous and have a real feel to them *The gameplay options are narrowed enough to give you a little bit of struggle without leaving to many problem-solving options to get lost in *Great voice acting Cons: *Some of the puzzles are crazy hard and don't seem to follow any sort of logic (you hear me lockpick! I'm talking bout you!!") It took several guides and hours! There's no way I would have figured that out alone *Some of the human movement was weird and unnatural but for a game at the time it was pretty good *Ending the game on a cliffhanger had to have sucked if you played the first game before the second!! *If you're an adventure game junkie, I totes recommend this one! Just be sure you have the sequel downloaded before you finish-- I'm writing a review because I'm waiting for 2 to download :/ *I recommend CjuGames on Youtube, gamersintuition.com, and uhs-hints.com for walkthroughs *It's also a must if you loved Syberia