I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

I've wanted to play this for a long time,. but right from the beginning, I was disappointed. Sure, there are some interesting elements but the puzzles are illogical, dead-ends multiple and voice acting pretty unimpressive. Not my cup of tea, even though I usually enjoy classics.

Based on a short story by famous sci-fi author Harlan Ellison, the game-based version is greatly expanded and most certainly for the better. Kudos to both CyberDreams and the Dreamers Guild for cobbling together such an impressive feat; considering MS-DOS gaming was pretty much on its last legs by the end of 1995; as most developers were migrating to the rising behemoth which was Windows 95. The story, setting, characters, plot, dialogue- heck, the writing in general is top-notch and remains engaging throughout your playthrough. While no BioForge, the developers were imaginative enough to overcome the limitations of the DOS-based graphics with sheer artistic imagination. The later areas; such as the cyberverse and virtual reality venues- are especially impressive. The same can be said with the voice-acting performance. Even the secondary and tertiary characters deliver their lines with a competent smoothness. Despite all this praise, No Mouth is NOT beginner-friendly... While there is no trace at all of "moon-logic" puzzling (we're looking at you, Discworld), the player still has to be VERY careful with each and every decision their character makes. Telltale has nothing on No Mouth. Saving is your friend. Save fast and save often. Even for veterans who cut their teeth on challenging titles such as "Shadow of the Comet" as well as "The Koshan Conspiracy", there's still going to be a lot of trial-and-error. Be patient, experiment and keep a batch of alt save states.

I bought this when it was knew, had the mouse pad for years. Tried playing the game then but I just got stumped and went on to play other things instead. Picked this up on GOG a while back thinking I'd give it another chance, especially since I liked Disco Elysium so much. But I just don't like this. Yeah, it's old but so am I. OTOH, as was endemic in this gaming genre I just can't figure out what I'm supposed to do half of the time. Minor spoiler, the player is told that the first protagonist's goal is to kill himself. About five minutes into it I figured that out. Boom, that guy's adventure was over. Five minutes. But looking online, there were tons of other things written for him to do. Non-intuitive things. Especially when I replayed it and killed myself again a different way. Still way easy, and checking online I see I missed a ton of other stuff for him to do. Tried the second protagonist. I needed the walkthrough periodically, but played that storyline out. Remarkably unsatisfying. Third protagonist. Tried without looking anything up. Got stuck, found out that by doing something completely intuitive and in-characfer I had committed an error and couldn't complete his story. I give up.

• Pros: o Atmosféra / Atmosphere (pesada/heavy). o Criativo / Creative (adicionaram bastante pro conto original/they add alot to the original short-story). o Designe de Fase / Level Design (complicado em alguns pontos mas no geral é bom/complicated in some parts, but overall is good). o Direção de Arte / Artwork (bom pra passar aquele aspecto grandioso e de aventura/good to give that aspect of grandiosity and adventure). o Enredo / Plot (profunda/deep). o Escolhas / Choices (variado/variety). o Gore (realista e "divertido"/realistic and "fun"). o História / Story. o Horror (sentimos o desespero/we feel the dispair). o Mecânicas / Mechanics (bem usadas/exploited; o livro de dicas/the book of hints) o Narrativa / Narrative. o Personagens / Characters (Nimdok, Benny S2) o Quebra cabeças / Puzzles (maioria é justo/majority is pretty fair). o Violência / Violence (detalhada/detailed). o Vozes / Voices (Harlan Ellison) • Cons: o Bugs (principalmente na ordem das tarefas/mainly on the tasks order) o Dificuldade / Difficulty (faz você abusar do sistema de save/makes u abuse of save system). o Gráficos / Graphics (coisas importantes recebem pouco destaque/important things aren’t highlighted enough). o Quebra cabeças / Puzzles (minoria é complicada/minority is complicated).

I've been looking forward to this one!