Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

The story is great, and the characters super deep. The UI didn't age all that well, forcing you to figure out which of the 3 perfectly reasonable action buttons for a particular situation does what you want. I tested it on Linux with wine, and it crashes quite often. But I was already used to saving very often in Sierra games. Since it's wrapped with ScummVM I don't see why they didn't include a native Linux binary, it's essentially free...

I decided to buy this (again) as many rave that this is one of the gems of the old sierra days, and I have to disagree I'm afraid. First of all lets talk about the good. The story is fantastic, the settings are also really good and you get a sense and feeling that you are in New Orleans. Also the voice acting is pretty decent. But I'm afraid that's where it ends for me. Now the not so good. The games main protagonist is a sex starved, slimy creep and some of the dialogue between him and the female characters in the game make me shudder at how much of a slime ball this guy really is, in short he is one of the most unlikable characters I have played in a point & click adventure game. You can still be a playah with out the slime bag motif. I said something similar in respects to the protagonist for the 20th Anniversary edition. To me playing a likable character in a point & click game is very important, or at least a tolerable one, Gabriel is just not likable at all. I unfortunately could not force myself to play beyond day 3, as day 4 started I found myself more and more going through the motions, rather than enjoying the game and being engrossed in it's superb story, which this game does have. I tried playing this back in the day when it was a new title many moons ago, and I guess over time your brain forgets the real reason why you did not finish it back then either. If you can get past the protagonist and some of the odd ball and out of left field puzzles it might be an enjoyable game. Just not my cup of tea I guess.

Just a wonderful classic adventure game. I'd like to recommend this to anyone that hasn't played it, but the sound quality is terrible and cannot be fixed. It truly spoils the experience. Constant clicking and popping during speech leaves the player either having to turn off all speech or simply endure it, and the speech is half of the appeal in this title. Until they bother to fix it, just avoid it or watch a longplay.

I picked this up because I enjoyed Broken Sword 1 and thought it would be similar. Unfortunately, the graphics are so low resolution it was causing eye strain. After getting frustrated I consulted a guide and discovered I'd missed several items hiding as a pixel in the background. First I had to use the "look" icon, then the "open" icon, then the "take" icon, on a pixel. Don't buy this. Get the newer version. Your eyes will thank you.

For the time, this ws some super high quality story telling & a solid engine. However, it continued with the pixel-hunting trend & the "just try everything with everything" brute force approach of the genre. Also, the well-worn "good hearted womanizer" hero & "spunky, streetwise, acid tongued" assistant were old & repulsive even then.