Someone on GOG wrote if you played Witcher 3, there is nothing to see here. I could not agree more! While I like medieval games and tried really hard to like KCD, there is too many issues with this game. The lack of a proper save function, as well as various glitches/bugs, I can live with that. The main issue for me is after more than 13 hours in, not enough happened to keep me interested in progressing further. The main quests are mostly dull, I fear the side quests will be yet worse. Graphics are good, music is alright but nothing spectacular.
First off, this is not really a game. It is basically just rendered images and plain english text, referred to as a visual novel. There is no voice acting nor sound effects, however there is some background music which fits the athmosphere nicely. Summer's Gone is about dating girls and more generally about pretty girls/women with certain, uhm, attributes. It seems to be mostly targeted at male adolescents. The player can occassionally make choices and they affect how the story proceeds. What's remarkable is the high quality of the renderings, and their sheer amount. It is easily thousands of images, and apparently almost everything was done by a single artist. Very impressive! Even though I'm too old for this game, I respect the excellent artwork and the decent writing. The price is very fair, I think the developer has earned some support, and I hope they will keep up the good work!
I'm a big fan of Syberia, and recommend the first two installments to any adventure fan looking for something new. The storyline and athmosphere were really unique in both games! As of now, I completed about two thirds of Syberia 4, and it took me ages to do so. Not because the game is hard, but because I had to force myself to continue the game. Syberia 4 seems to have been a very ambitious project, but somehow between all the great graphics, animations, cut scenes, music and puzzles, the authors forgot that a game has to be interesting in some way. Syberia 1 had a clear goal to find a specific person and it felt very rewarding completing the goal. The plot in Syberia 4 feels completely random to me, however, and it is hard to feel empathy for any of the characters.
A long time has passed since the masterpiece "Commandos". Desperados III does come with new innovations to this original concept, as well as great graphics and sound. The issue is just that the overall plot and dialog is absurdly bad. This could be compensated with great level design, but to me all levels felt more like work and not fun. No mission was particularly difficult or challenging, just tedious to complete. With great story telling and better level design, Desperados III could have been a new masterpiece. As it stands, I will forget about it quickly after completion.
I played most of the Sherlock Holmes games that have been released. Loved Crimes and Punishments by the same developer. This part didn't capture me though. The graphics feel very outdated in 2023, and are even somewhat sluggish running on my nvidia rtx 3060. But it is not just the graphics, the athmosphere, the music, the voice acting, nothing really works for me in this installment. German audio is missing, which is a shame because it was incredibly good in some of the previous parts. If you feel you must have this game, I recommend to wait until it is on sale.
Played this adventure game when it came out, back then the graphics+audio were mindblowing: Rendered backgrounds like in the Myst series coupled with motion video. Also the music was good if I recall correctly. Some puzzles were a bit odd, still lots of fund. A few years ago I revisited the entire trilogy and it was still fun to play!
I remember having played and getting excited about this game when it came out. For those who never played it, I think there is better alternatives from this era of 90's motion-video adventure games. For instance Phantasmagoria or the The Journeyman Project.
This part is as good as the other Monkey Island parts, in my opinion. I actually love the ending, maybe even more than the game itself. It is also fantastic they added german voice sync. This way I could play it with my kids who do not understand english.
Generally I like cinematic adventures/scripted games. But I expect such games to be 100% flawless. This game has way too many bugs as you move forward, despite having very few choices along the way. For instance enemies may not see you even though you are right in front of them! This breaks the immersion massively and spoils the experience for me. While the beginning of the game was okay, but a few hours in, about every other section I moved through had Note I'm writing this review several years after release, and the bugs have apparently still not been fixed. Overall I don't get why this game has such a high rating. Even if it were flawless, it is at best a good game for me, maybe 4/5 stars.
Outlast was great, this DLC feels somewhat uninspired though. If you played Outlast and need something fresh, in my opinion Outlast 2 is a better choice.
