FMV usually sucks. Weird logic puzzles, bad acting, boring. But GK2 is different. 1 The puzzles feel like real adventure game puzzles. Yes, there is an occasional moment where you better use a walkthrough, but these moments are rare. 2 The acting is not bad, actually it's pretty good. The characters themselves reach from awesome to horrible. But the acting is always good! 3 The story is great! There went a lot of work into it, many of the history is absolutely solid. Except for the werewolf parts of course! If you are not only an adventure friend but also a German history buff you will enjoy this game even more. 4 The characters. Gabriel is not bad, but he is no Tim Curry. In the end it is a totally diffent Knight character. Grace reaches from fantastic (in her first scene) to horrible btch (after that) to again great (later in the game). The supporting cast is fun to interact with, especially the Lady in the Ludwig museum. No, in Germany no one in a museum is such a dick :) But my, I love her! There is a German dub, and it's so ridiculous that it's fantastic comedy material. They tried to shadowmask the language barriers with hard to understand German dialects, it's awesome! But the better way is to play it in English. If you speak English and German you have the best experience possible! You can read (well written) articles and signs that the main actors don't understand, so you always know a little more than them. You can skip the video sequences (for example getting in the car and driving away or walking up the stairs, or walking in the next room), thanks to the hard drive installation it's a pretty fluid experience, I don't want to imagine how that must have felt with 6 CDs. Also you can't die very often, it's pretty rare. Non the less, I advise to save often, you can skip a video but something was supposed to happen, and you missed it, so at least you can go back. If I had a top ten of adventure games, this game would be in it! Highly recommended!
The devs disabled the cheat codes. So if you were looking forward to enable them, look elsewhere. Bummer, some missions were much more fun with cheats. Well, money down the drain, back to the good old CD-version.
God, this review bombing here... You can still download the "Game of the century"-Edition, if you do prefer it. It's still there (I played it actually a few moments ago), and it works flawlessly. And the game itself is so much fun! The super powers you get in the Matrix are so OP, it's a power fantasy come true! Just amazing, there are a bunch of super hero games out there, but not one comes even close to the simplicity and cozy feeling of jumping over buildings or running with super speed through the streets, leaving nothing but destruction behind you. I love it! Also: What other game let's you decide if you want to cure cancer OR end world hunger?
First off, this game is good! Even though it might not seem like it when I have so many cons listed. Pro: - Overall good puzzles - Good voice acting in the German version (except for the guy in the museum, he talks weird) - Fantastic musical score, like always in the Monkey Island games Con: - For skipping of dialogue you need your keyboard. - The graphics, oh my, look like an online flash game. Nice animations can't make up for that. The game looks sterile thanks to lack of detail in the background or the characters, it's tough after playing 1 and 2 (DOS VGA versions) directly before this one. - Moon logic sometimes sneaks into the puzzle design (but there is a good hint option in case you get stuck). - There is no logic in the controls, sometimes "use" is left mouse button, sometimes it's the right one. - Apropos controls: the lack of verbs/icons makes puzzles often pretty simple. Just click on it, the game will know what to do. - There are only eight save slots (nine if you count the autosave), you can't name them. - The beginning, it does not pick up where 2 ended even though it was advertised as such. You could play this after part 3 without a problem. - The ending, there are two as far as I can tell, and none of them is really satisfying. I give it four stars because the spirit of Monkey Island is strong with this one. It's entertaining and funny. And if you have no problem with the graphics it can also be very atmospheric. I wish the next part would have the style of Thimbleweed Park. I would sell my soul for that! Because in the end, Monkey Island is, in my personal humble opinion, the pinnacle of adventure games.
The story of this game is great for a Mad Max game. It starts slow, and near the end it becomes a roller coaster ride with a fitting showdown. So far so awesome! But then you have your usual open world grinding, if you want the best of the best at the end for your car you have to grind A LOT! And that is where this game falls apart. Sadly. Doing the same stuff hundreds of times gets on my nerves. I had much fun with most of the missions, the strongholds and camps are entertaining, I liked taking out convoys, and then I had times where I only wanted to end this game quickly because I was so bored of the grind in between. Fighting the same three dudes over two pieces of scrap over and over and over, god, why did the developers do this?? So I don't know what to tell you. You have no problem with wasting your time to get a good story out of it in the end? Than you can play this. If you don't want to waste your time on endless grind, watch a longplay on youtube for the story. Oh, and by the way: I read a lot about that one story mission race, it would be an insane increase of the difficulty curve. Fear not, that's overblown. Concentrate on the main villain, five thundercaps should do it. If you don't come of to a good start in the race, just start it again. At my fourth try I managed to shoot him enough and blew him up, mission won. I was actually worried after reading about it, but like I said, it's not that tough.
I needed about 50 hours to complete the game. I'm not a pro, and in the beginning my plan was to play it as far as I can, have a good time, and then move on. And I died over and over, wondering how anybody can beat the first pyramid, not to mention the next two. But slow and steady I bought more and more skills, starting with the gold pickup optimization, moving on to health and defence and so on. When I beat my first pyramid after about 30 hours or so, I was so proud. Should I stop? No, I wanted to keep going. And in another 20 hours I had maxed out my skill tree, I flew through the levels, nothing could stop me, and I made it and beat the final boss without sweating. If I can do it as an average player, then you can too! As an honourable mention I want to praise the movement and the gun play. It's both top notch, it feels just perfect. So if you don't mind dying over and over, and keep repeating the same rooms, with slightly different enemies all the time, you will have a blast! But if you never liked Rogue Likes or Rogue Lites, stay away. This game won't convince you otherwise. I for myself had a fantastic time.
Pros: - It's so nice after so many huge generic open worlds (Assassin's Creed for example) to walk through small hub worlds where everything is handcrafted and makes sense. - Nice graphics for a game of that time - good controls with mouse and keyboard - you always know what you have to do next, you don't get lost - on easy difficulty it's even for non combat experienced players like me manageable - good voice acting (English version) - exploration is fun and interesting Cons: - Minor bugs here and there, but nothing game breaking - sound is sometimes to quiet, be it voice acting or sound effects - a few times the voice actors changed in one dialogue which was very weird - rewards for exploration are nothing special most of the time I did every quest, I found all the treasure, and it took me about 30 hours on easy, I took my time exploring every inch of the maps. I was surprised by Venetica, and I must say that I really enjoyed playing it!
In short: It depends if you have played this game when it came out: If yes, then you might enjoy the better controls. If not, don't bother. I did not play the game on release, I read much about the controls and decided to skip it. When Monkey Island 4 came out with the same controls, I had to play it because it was Monkey Island, what could I do? And even though I liked the game, having no mouse support really really sucked. So now I decided to give Grim Fandango a chance, it's having mouse support after all, but I just don't have fun. There are too many problems. For one, there are the screens. I want to compare it to Alone in the Dark or Resident Evil, you can manage it, but it can be distracting. The inventory is zoomed in so that you can't see an item entirely, and since there are no descriptions unless you click examine, it takes time to check everything. Also inventory management takes forever since you always have only one item on screen, and you are clicking left and right constantly to cycle through everything. The puzzles, oh my god, range from absolutely easy to insane moon logic. And that was the moment (about five hours in) I realized this game is not for people like me. It's for people who enjoyed it when it came out, and just want to revisit old memories, and in that case add 2 more stars. But there is something positive to be said: The story is interesting, and the voice acting (English) is superb! But that's not enough. Sadly it's leagues below masterpieces like Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones IV or Monkey Island.
