Fahrenheit was the very first Quantic Dream game I ever played. It was a critical darling and people talked it up so much as if it was the Longest Journey. Longest Journey it is not. In every genre, there's a key nobody-likes-this-crap design that seems to be pervasive despite its unwanted presence. For example, in an FPS, it's a sewer level. In a platformer, it's either your fire or ice level. In story-driven games, it's Mayans. Or Aztecs. Or Incans. Or whatever other ancient Central/South American civilization was out there. It's not to say any of those cultures aren't fascinating, but rather no game that has featured them (that I can recall) has used them to tell a good story. Any time they start showing up, it all falls to pieces. Such as it is with Fahrenheit. I'm not going to spoil anything with specifics, but know that this is a key plot element and know that knowing this cannot prepare you for what is to come. I haven't ruined a thing, I promise you. You cannot even dream of what is waiting for you at the end of this tunnel. Hint: it's not the chocolate factory. That being said, there is indeed a lot of interesting and fun things to be had in the first two-thirds of this game. There's a certain atmosphere that kicks off with a random murder in a diner bathroom at the start of the game and new players will be interested in finding out what happens next. What follows is a sort of Lovecraftian spiral, but before you get all excited, dear cultist, trust me that despite how good it all is and how fascinating and well-paced it is, there's no pay off. It falls apart and does so in spectacular fashion. I thought perhaps maybe Quantic Dream just misfired. Heavy Rain didn't work out either. Beyond Two Souls? Forget about it. If you've ever attempted to create something, be it art or fiction or poetry or whatever and stopped somewhere in the middle, that is how Quantic Dream makes games.
Nostalgia makes me love this game way more than I should. Dynamix adventures were trying something new when the Sierra's AGI-descended games were still on top of the market. As evidenced by the screenshots, this was a weird time of early photo digitizing (like the original Mean Streets), but coupled with hand-crafted art, Rise of the Dragon mashes them together with little subtlety. We weren't quite at full-motion video and the "multimedia" revolution yet, so at best, photos animate with two or three frames when people are talking. Still, at the time it was the most cinematic you could get and Rise of the Dragon took a look at Blade Runner and tried something a little darker than your typical AGI game. The game itself is a fairly-standard first-person point'n'click adventure game, chock full of game-ending puzzles that were acceptable back then. The story is typical grim sci-fi fare with a little touch of the supernatural, but the overall atmosphere is great in that sort of "in the future, people wear sunglasses all the time" kind of way. Now my copy way back in the day had a few hilarious bugs and I don't know if they're still present in this release, but other than that, nothing broke the game... except some of the puzzles... and the action sequences. As I mentioned above, there are some game-ending (not game-breaking) bits in Rise of the Dragon that can make you tear your hair out and well, these action sequences. As a (famous) example of the former, without spoiling, I'll just say "claim ticket". Save often, my friends! As for the action sequences, there was a weird era in Sierra's history where every game they were releasing required an action sequence, whether or not it was fun to play. In my memory, the action sequences in Rise of the Triad were awful and not worth the effort. Thankfully, if this is still the case, you can skip them (as I did) and just get on with it. As old PNC game, Rise of the Dragon won't demand a lot of your time. Try it!
I backed this on Kickstarter and have it on Steam. But is it good? From a technical standpoint, yes and no - Stasis is sort of an ugly baby; it's going to get lots of love and its ugliness won't take away from its identity, but it's still gonna be ugly. I'm exaggerating, of course - the game features absolutely beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds with an occasional perspective problem (depth of field effects would greatly reduce this), but some elements are a bit clunky. Most importantly, pathfinding is a little off sometimes - while generally pretty good from most angles, there are odd times where you click somewhere and John, our hero, gets stuck or decides to take the most scenic route possible. Animations are a little jarring sometimes, as well. Some of the action sequences are oddly animated or off-pace. Unless the animation is baked into the background (which typically looks great - fans, creatures, etc), character models often remind me of gummi bears. Other than that, this is a roots-style game - no button to highlight hotspots, lots of adventure game logic, etc. Storywise, Stasis is interesting. At its base, you wake up from cryosleep and this isn't the ship you remember being aboard. Everything is chaotic and bloody and your family is nowhere to be found. Start clicking to unravel the mystery. My issue here is the game has a huge dependency on "finding logs" and getting the story that way. When you strip away all the substantial log entries, you realize you've only talked to two people and actually 'played' for half an hour of your hour-long session. I don't regret backing Stais; I would have played it eventually. For what it is, it does its job admirably and nothing mentioned above breaks the game. A little more time in the oven would have been nice, but in the end, it's worth playing and worth supporting these gents so they can knock one out of the park. Nobody does it their first time out, but these chaps came pretty close. Good job!
Kudos to GOG for finally picking up U7. Quite possibly one of the greatest games ever made if only because you can break it in so many ways and not a single person who played the game ever really complained about it. That's how immersive this truly open-world game was. I'm not sure if the GOG version is compatible with Exult, but anyone wishing for an up-to-date experience might want to check out the Exult project which is an ongoing emulator to run U7 on modern systems. That being said, the DOSBox version works just fine as well.
