Blade Runner

This was my first time playing through the game, and I was very impressed by it. It holds up really well to modern excellent point and click games like Unavowed and Whispers of the Machine. It just shines of quality in the visual design, atmosphere and gameplay. The first moment I saw the movement animations I knew this would not be your average point and click adventure game. Some of the gameplay mechanics, like when you examine photographs is unique to this game, I haven't seen that elsewhere in other adventure games. My play-through took me about 10 hours. It has multiple endings. Complaints? well, I felt the ending or conclusion was a bit rushed. Often you don't really know that you've made a game-altering choice, as even a simply thing like exploration seems to set things in motion that you did not expect or anticipate. So to get the ending or outcome you aim for, you need to make some very specific choices. I also got stuck a couple of times because I did not find that one small item on the screen. Overall though, it's an easy game to recommend to anyone who enjoys point and click adventure games. The atmosphere alone easily puts in on my personal Top 10 list of Adventure games, it's a game-world I really enjoyed being immersed in, and that matters a great deal.

I'm sure there's nothing more I could add to these fine folks' reviews, but I must say to get it! There's plenty of cheese to go around, but the game never fails to pull you in. Even the sated graphics just add to the Cyberpunkiness of the whole thing. Get it!

Is it set in the Bladerunner universe? Yes. Does it have characters from the movie? Yes. Do you play as a Bladerunner, doing detective work and trying to oust replicants? Yes. And no. It is a point-and-click game, with elements of action (shooting, mainly) and puzzle solving to gather clues. Every new game you start will have some elements randomized. Some people will now be replicants, and vice versa. You can get clues in a few different ways, and have some options on how to deal with certain situations. However, after playing the game a few times, I started to notice that it's not really by my choice that the story progressed how it did. It happened that I was still thinking about what choice I was going to make, but something happened in the game that put me on the other path anyway. Also, the randomization also means that you somethimes cannot make a certain choice. When I won this game years ago in a contest from a videogame magazine, I had not seen the original Bladerunner movie and had no idea what I was getting into. My pc at the time wasn't one of the latest models, but I was able to run the game without any problems. However, I assumed that because my pc was a bit older, the game looked like it did. The backgrounds looked good, but the characters were just plain ugly: very pixelated, and lacking definition. The animation of some movements also kinda break the immersion: when McCoy is climbing a ladder for example, he's not actually gripping and stepping on the rungs, just going through "climbing the ladder" motions. It looks weird. In the end, I'm not sure what to think of this game. It has a great atmosphere and setting for the adventurous, good voice acting, and there's replayability. But it falls flat on the lack of player choice, and ugly looking character models.

Thanks to the ScummVM team and their support for PowerPC Macs! 2004 eMac, CRT, it's a great combo...

Thank you GOG! How do you do it? I bet there is an interesting backstory to securing the rights to this one, as complex and mysterious as the movie itself. This game really does put you in the film, with intense atmosphere, music and rain! The voxel graphics give the characters a feeling of life and depth, no angular polygons here. The pre-rendered environments can look like a beautiful work of art. Although, the voxel characters can lack definition and resolution by modern standards, it does not detract from the overall look. I think it’s given the game a unique charm of its own. A good pitch of difficulty, no stroll in the park. You can’t just click through the story, you will need to do some detective work, think carefully about your approach and the bigger picture, as time progresses and events happen with or sometimes without you. You can also take a wrong turn and come to harm, but it’s rewarding to progress. The time-based, random events can give you a feeling that you might have missed something, however I think the idea is to go through the game several times to see it all. Some dexterity and skill is required, with shooting sections that add a nice extra, giving a sense of danger. Always reminded me of the of the way Snatcher mixed these genres together in a cyberpunk adventure. Another highlight of the game is the Esper tool. Inspecting and exploring photographs in pseudo-3D reminiscent of the movie, is a lot of fun and can lead to clues. Although not following the movie’s main character Deckard, this is a side story to that, and I think a brilliant example of a game based on a film (not many examples of those!), capturing many of the films environments. A lot of the game has you walk in similar footsteps to Deckard, I think to pay fan service, which is more than ok, but it does take its own and interesting path later on in the story. The Blade Runner universe really is the perfect place for an adventure.