This game is absolutely nothing one haven't seen before, and I think it's been done better in just about all of them, including quite a few games back in the 90s. Most of the opening is basically an incredibly bland character that's just talking and talking and talking. Bad way of starting a game; people will want to play a game, or at least see some properly mood-setting scenes. To add insult to injury, the guy's starting off by saying "I'll just cut to the chase" before doing the exact opposite of that. After that bit, we finally get an actual cut-scene that turns out to be the start of a kind of story that isn't even trying to be the least bit original. The funniest moment would be the fact that the oh-so-overused Damsel in Distress - after having being told to trust absolutely no-one - conveniently spills everything to a complete stranger that just ran over her with a car. And then, finally, the gameplay. The game is of course about "use things" and "use things on other things". Is it really too much to ask for some actual puzzles thrown in for the sake of variety? Oh, and also there's pixel-hunting; a gameplay staple I honestly thought we'd seen the last of once the 21st century got into gear. I guess that since they were throwing in all the other clichés, they'd be cruel to leave that one out.
As others have mentioned, this is not much of a game. It is instead an interactive story... But it's a different story, and it will gently move you a lot; like a butterfly punching you in the gut. The design, the story, and particularly the music will help achieve something you don't see every day. True, I cannot guarantee you will like it - people's tastes are different and all - but I will recommend that you at least try it.
Now, I will admit, it feels like the slowness of the game is deliberate, both to give it a more relaxed atmosphere (and the atmosphere is really good) as well as it probably being the only way to make some of the mechanics workable. But even so, the gameplay just ended up being boring to me. I've played tons of platformers with the same awkward jumping, same sluggish controls, and by now, I require something really, really, -really- special to want to go through what is mostly an outdated way of doing platform mechanics, mechanics that doesn't get better from there being somewhat too far between the checkpoint.
The game itself had promise. I liked the aesthetics, the story seemed fine, there was a reasonable amount of exploration, the photograph sidequest just the right amount of distracting. Voice acting better than average, sound effects and music perfectly OK. But there were one half-major and one fully major issue. The half-major issue was that no matter how much I tried tweaking the graphical settings, there would constantly be glitches in the menu screen. I have no idea what I should do to fix it, and I'm possibly "spoiled" by console gaming, but I'm not one of those people that enjoys having to spend about 30% of my gametime trying to make things stop flickering in and out of graphical existence. And then there's the fact that this game most definitely was made for a console. The PC controls are awkward, and I was longing for a gamepad. Then I suddenly realised that my X360 controller will most likely be able to be plugged into my modern computer and be playable with. Well, the first part was true, and I got it hooked up and the necessary software updates done, and I was opening the options menu to configure... And the game doesn't support gamepads. At all. Yes, I am aware that it's possible to "fool" a computer into thinking your gamepad is like a keyboard, but seriously, I just grew sick of an otherwise good game not even trying to meet me halfway on this, and haven't played it since.
