There is little to like in Richard & Alice. I felt like playing another adventure "game," and this one ended up representing everything I hate about the genre.The graphics and animation are terrible, the characters are expressionless (literally; you only get the one image of them. In a genre where everything relies on your connection with the characters, this is inexcusable), the "puzzles" are meaningless game length padding, and the story was uninteresting. There's also a glitch. My character was frozen at one point and I had to load an autosave. I'm torn on the adventure genre. I like my games to be games, but there are incredible adventure "games" out there (Phoenix Wright, To The Moon). This game is not worth paying for at all, and therefore I can't give it more than one star.
I wish there were a better word for "To The Moon's" medium. I don't consider it a video game. The actual "game" parts were actually really bad. The controls are terrible, and I pretty much rolled my eyes every time I had to take control of my character. Also, it seems To The Moon's length was artificially inflated to provide more gameplay segments. Regardless, when viewed as a briefly interactive indie movie, "To The Moon" is incredible. The music is beautiful and fits perfectly. You will be punched in the heart guts at the title screen alone. The graphic style and art direction are also great. I docked a star for the poor gameplay, and spots of cutesy or ham-fisted "meta" dialogue that briefly detracted from the otherwise moving story. So set aside 5 hours, and find time to watch this as you would a movie (it would make a fantastic and inexpensive date night). Hopefully some day we can see this picked up as an indie movie.
