Best part is when John Scorn kicks open the vaginal trailer door with dual lightsaber-shooting AK-47's and yells "It's Scornin' time!" But seriously, this is a different kind of game. More of an experience. Every frame of this game is like an H.R.Giger painting, and that's an incredible achievement. Surprisingly, except for a few Engine stutters, it runs like a dream on my aging RX580. You will feel in awe and increasingly disgusted as you progress. There's an interesting choice you can make in Act 1 that I wish happened more throughout the game. Just...another solution for a puzzle. One negative is the "lights" puzzles. They are an order of magnitude higher in difficulty than any other thing. I highly recommend using a walkthrough for just that part, I could discern no easy way to figure them out. Some complain about the combat, and it is indeed pretty clunky/slow, but I feel it's appropriate for the game. I mean, just look down at your body in the game and you can see you are all sorts of (increasingly) f'd up. Could also use a basic photo mode to tweak all the gorgeous screencaps too.
Old school point-and-click isometric. I like the nods to Alien, Aliens, and Dead Space. Nice backgrounds, although being so dark sometimes I couldn't see my character when I entered the room. I think I only needed a walkthrough for a couple of parts, otherwise most solutions were pretty straightforward.(or you just kept clicking everything with everything) The atmosphere of dread and disgust was tops. Wasn't big on the cartoony look of the people with the environment being so realistic, but I'm sure that was a limitation on graphics. Plus those parts are pretty limited. LOVED the spinal surgery part, looked nice and painful! Interface could use some enhancement, as well as...any accessible settings. And as much as it breaks the immersion, a basic tutorial on how the interface works would be welcome.
Phantom Liberty is a fantastic expansion- like Witcher 3's expansions, you can see how they improved everything, from the graphics and level design to the elaborate quests that are much more complex. It does come at a bit of a cost though, as framerate will suffer most in Dogtown. Still perfectly playable on my old RX580.(with FSR, of course)
The visuals are incredibly beautiful(no surprise they are the best of the series) with Steampunk European-style architecture locations dripping with delight.(Oscar's new form is a delight) There are even multiple options for "taking in the view" with introspection areas or even just extending the train loading sequences.(ssds be so fast now!) I was very surprised my aging RX580 handled it all on max settings with only a handful of framerate hitches. While it is kind of open-world, freedom is fairly limited but enough to soak in the atmosphere. Camerawork is an extension of what was done in Syberia 3, but much improved. It does sometimes get akward when it doesn't move the way you want, or fast enough for your character, but it is meant to be cinematic/natural. Takes some adjusting. The "points of interest" dots work fairly well, it's too bad they couldn't come up with something that seemed more natural and less artificial-looking, but that would probably end up frustrating players. While there are a few decisions that radiate, the game is meant to be a fairly straight narrative, very much like an interactive movie. The themes are reasonably mature, and while the war/persecution parallels are pretty obvious, the focus is on the emotion of the characters, which I'm glad comes across very well. Puzzle-wize, most are pretty easy, though most of the war stuff I looked up out of laziness. Steampunk mechanical puzzles are the most enjoyable, of course, so that itch gets scratched!
Very short but very well done side scroller. Great art, and the storybook element is excellent, with nice fourth-wall-breaking. I'm assuming they couldn't think of enough string-related puzzles to lengthen it, but better too short than too long. I'll admit I had to look up a couple of solutions but only because I suck at timing/platforming games.(and was impatient)
The artwork is definitely the best part of the game, and I can definitely see the Miyazaki-influenced ideas and imagery. The general story is simliar to Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, with a lone female hero trying to fight a miasma that's killing everything. But strangely, she's kind of a jerk to some people, judgemental, even attacks somebody to steal something of hers. Kind of an unusual approach, and especially the ending, which will feel like more of a letdown but is kind of reflective.(I had to look up whether I had somehow picked a "bad" ending but there's only one) Some nitpicking about slow repeated animations, and I wish they could have dialed down the narration, or ideally found a way to eliminate it completely so it would be more a piece of art with visual storytelling.
I somehow missed this game initially, even though I had played classic LucasArts and Sierra point-and-click adventures. The darker, creepy atmosphere was a great change of pace. Some great grotesque stuff without going overboard. Puzzles and interaction are fairly standard for this type of game. I'll admit to using a walkthrough occasionally just because of impatience, but I think I could have figured most of them out. I had this game on Amazon Games, but it crashed even with fixes. This GOG version runs perfectly though. Two negatives- the movement is atrocious, you right click and your character clumsily slides around the invisible barriers, often missing things and "locking" into stairs you didn't want to go to. I almost gave up on the last puzzle as it required semi-precise timed movements. The other negative is the main voice actor, he is pretty bad. It's like they went to a small community theater and picked the guy that overacted the most. Keep your hand near the ESC key so you can skip his often-repeated dialogue when you are clicking around the screen.
Was expecting something like Gone Home, and it started that way, but what really sets this apart is the absolute creativity in exploring each character's story. Completely different styles depending on the character, and they are short enough so you don't get tired of them. Just enough to tell their story. A short but extremely memorable game.
Sable suffers from lack of optimization(audio and video stuttering), control issues(negative mouse acceleration, frequent menu access problems), and some bad glitchy areas(schizo camera in tight areas, disappearing surfaces, especially on 7 Sisters floating rocks). Some of this is from bad pc porting. That said, this game has incredible style, imagination, character, detail, sound design, and lighting. There are some unrealized ideas, like a variety of bikes that offer different advantages, but the differences don't really matter at all.(there's only one timed area that a faster bike might help) They are all worth trying out just to see the amount of effort, detail, and personality that was put into each one. Each region of the map has its own style, sounds, and lighting design. The city of Eccria is huge, and was so impressive. Probably my favorite thing, which is totally missable, is a journey through a giant worm, with appropriate visuals and a series of dark journal entries. Sable reminds me of Cyberpunk 2077 on a smaller scale. Glitchy, unrealized things, ambitious, gorgeous, and ultimately worth the journey. I look forward to more from this team!
This is one of the most unique games I've ever played. At a glance it looks like an old school isometric RPG like Fallout 1/2, and it does mostly function that way, but the beauty is in the writing. There are normal stats, but there are a lot of stats that are internal/mental. You'll frequently argue with yourself mentally(and sometimes out loud to appropriate NPC effect) which can also make for interesting alternate solutions to problems.(or failures) WARNING: the subject matter can get dark, including thoughts of suicide, depression, racism, drug use, etc. It can get very political too, so you can explore having communist, liberal, facist, sexist viewpoints. While there is a LITTLE action, do not get this game if that's all you're looking for. This was one of the first games where right after I finished it, I restarted to try different options/stats. The story itself is nothing extraordinary, but it's the journey and internal exploration that makes it unique.
