Posted on: March 23, 2021

DarrenOwens

Jeux: 113 Avis: 2

An enjoyable detective story

'Whispers of a machine' is a point-and-click game with an RPG-ish twist. As you progress through the game, the protagonist Vera develops a personality based on your choices in dialogue and gameplay, and that personality affects what special abilities she gains. The story masterfully mixes a dry Nordic detective and personal drama of the main hero. Set in post-apocalyptic future where computer technology is shunned it poses questions about current state of our world. There are a few twists along the way, some more obvious to me than others. Same can be said about gameplay and puzzles -- enjoyable, straight-faced with little to no moon logic. In my playthrough I was only stumped a few times, mostly because of object-hunting. I enjoyed the game's responses to 'almost right' solutions -- they are commended and more information is given to push the player in the right direction. The personality mechanic does not change a classic point-and-click gameplay much, and at times seems like a Buzzfeed test with clear outcome for your input, but it is still a nice innovation. Characters react differently to different personalities, and as the game progresses, puzzles have very different solutions for each personality. One other thing that I felt strongly about the game is that it is touching on many hot topics of today. It features comments on environment, equality, religion, etc. The game is unashamedly progressive in its views, so that might ruffle some feathers. What bugged me is that even as I agree on many things said it still feels both shallow and heavy-handed at times. The comments are given once and not really explored any further. And that, in fact, is what I felt as I watched the end credits. 'Whispers of a machine' does a lot of things right, and touches on many fascinating topics, but it left me wanting a deeper dive into most of them. It is still a solid adventure game that I would recommend playing through. After all, it is quite short, too. 4.5/5

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Posted on: April 19, 2021

Ahmn

Possesseur vérifié

Jeux: 278 Avis: 111

Good game but not the personality system

I liked the puzzles, story, setting, music and environments. Length is good. Not too long, not too short. The things that stand out is the world itself. It's nice to see such a different take on a science fiction story. Rather than high tech it's semi-crumbled and for good reasons. Puzzles are great too. For me the biggest flaw was the personality system. It's mostly (entirely?) based on dialogue options. I wouldn't mind, except that it's so obvious which option is connected to a certain trait. For intelligence, use the smart line. For charisma, use the leader line. For strength or whatever the third one was, use the cool reply. It feels like the character is 3 entirely different persons at once and it breaks the immersion and flattens the main character. I think they could have done it better. Like lets say you enter a crime scene, find someone hurt and you call the ambulance before you pick up a certain item - maybe it could give a + on kindness or whatever. Just choosing between three different dialogue options feels a bit like it does more harm than good. It gives some variability at the expense of other things. Almost a 4.

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Posted on: March 23, 2024

castarco

Possesseur vérifié

Jeux: 188 Avis: 3

Good story, short, subpar graphic art

I'll be brief with my critique. - The story is pretty good, although too short for my taste. - The ambient music is OK, but far from memorable (I'd already forgot how it sounds, and it's been just 30 minutes since I finished it). - I'd say that its most disapointing aspect is its graphic art. I'm not talking about the low resolution, but to other aspects that indicate clear lack of polish: - plenty of noise artifacts in surfaces that should be "plain" - the excessive posterisation applied to the game characters to reduce the color palette looks like a quick job made without much care. - bad "animations". It can be seen when the train arrives to the station, or when characters are walking (they seem to slide instead of walk; same applies to the changes in size due to perspective, they are not performed nicely). Other than that, I really don't like not being able to save my game at a specific point so I can continue from there later. Having to play the whole game again to explore other branches is quite unappealing.

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Posted on: July 30, 2020

m000

Possesseur vérifié

Jeux: 575 Avis: 10

Satisfying retro sci-fi adventure

Retro-style adventures need some extra spice to not come out as dry and formulaic. Whispers of a Machine has that spice, in the form of Vera's augmentations. The augmentations mechanics works really well and sets the game apart from other retro-adventures that are limited to the tried-and-tested approach of controlling multiple characters (Blackwell, I'm looking at you). Moreover, they give a fair amount of replayability to the game. Yes, it is true that the game is kind of short. But I don't think that takes away from the game. It's better to have a short and tight game, rather than one padded with extra puzzles, just to extend the gameplay time. Having said that, try to buy the game on a discount, so you won't feel cheated in the end :).

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Posted on: January 30, 2021

RobertZFord

Possesseur vérifié

Jeux: Avis: 10

Very well done

Fantastic game, and incredible representative of its genre. It has a solid story, and tastefully challenging puzzles. Some might consider it short (I finished it start to finish in about two evenings) but I feel like it told the story it needed to and didn't overstay its welcome at all. Throw in three distinct play styles with different results, and it has plenty of replay value. All in all, well worth the money if you're even mildly interested in this style.

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