Another gem from Wadjet Eye, "Shardlight" is let down only slightly by a couple of script issues. It's not *quite* as good as their best work, but if you're in the mood for an adventure game that goes well with a nice spot of tea, pick it up. Are there dead ends? No. This is in the LucasArts/Telltale (well, also Wadjet Eye) style, not Sierra. You can't get stuck. Are the puzzles logical? Yes, mostly. There are a couple that are insane, though. One becomes less insane in retrospect, once the story develops. Is there pixel-hunting? In two cases, yes. Did I have to look at a walkthrough? No. Is the writing good? Yes, mostly, although I wish it were more informed by history/how these things actually work, and it borrows a bit from comic books in a way I found jarring. The worldbuilding is top. The acting is good too, especially Abe Goldfarb, Felicia Hudson, and Shelly Shenoy. Is it funny? Only when it wants to be, but in general it's quite grim, actually. Especially in the age of COVID-19. I'm down to *one* Wadjet Eye game. Sad. I love their work.
This remaster is excellent: I love the new lighting, subtle redesigns, music cues, remixed music, and UI, and the slightly changed timing on the humour does wonders. I played these in 2007 and stuck with Telltale through "The Wolf Among Us" (you can Google my username + Mixnmojo), so revisiting them has been a joy. It's good to know the other (and superior) two seasons are coming! It takes a bitttt to find its feet (episodes 1+2 have some weak bits), but once it does, it does so with a crash and a bang. Everyone says episode 4 is where it really gets going, and I'm inclined to agree. I see a lot of people angry that they recast a black character (to have a black actor play him instead of the black guy in the original), but I think that's the right decision. Otherwise, as best as I can figure (and I've alt-tabbed between the remaster and original), they've tightened up the script a teensy bit (what the Internet is calling "censorship" because a joke about Down's Syndrome was changed) and updated a couple of jokes (like the box in the office), and it now just looks like a game released this decade as opposed to something made, low budget, in 2006. Highly recommended!
I've played these on Steam. While it's true you can't update these to get the artbook and soundtrack, you get all game content and this is amazing value; the games are $17 or so separately when on sale (at least, the second one is; the first one goes down to $14 or so). Amazing games with major replayability, and the Definitive Edition of the second one fixes the issues with Act 3.
Every so often, I feel I've quit AAA gaming, then something like this comes along and brings me right back. You're sneaking around robotic dinosaurs and punching them (or shooting them with a bow and arrow). Somehow the game often reinvents itself and keeps things fresh, not getting stale like so many open world games I've played. I didn't get to play the DLC (which is helpfully packaged here), but the main game is pheeenomenal. Think I might pick that up now, actually. As always, there are some...weird, gross reviews (not unlike the lot that flipped a table and spammed Chuchel with 1-star reviews for redesigning its main character), but don't listen to them. Great, great game from a very promising studio.
Play it. Play it now. Play it for its creativity, its tone, its music, the twists and turns, and the world's most seemingly-random slow-mo zoom in on a butt. "Metal Gear Solid" (and two of its sequels) are in my view some of the best games ever made, and this one especially that has a script which flows in a way the other games' (love them as I do) never do. A masterpiece of storytelling, design, and surprisingly thought-provoking use of the video games as storytelling medium, I can only say thank you to GOG for bringing MGS1 back.
The original Metal Gear Solid was, in a lot of ways, the first postmodern video game, happily playing with the form to tell a story in a way only a video game can (like that Psycho Mantis fight!); "Metal Gear Solid 2" took that and then ran with it to its logical conclusion. Think "Neon Genesis Evangelion" as a pulpy spy story—easily as avant-garde and philosophical. It's brilliant, thought-provoking stuff, and though occasionally bogged down by pacing issues is nonetheless essential for how prescient it is—for its take on social engineering, the flow and control of information (predicting the rise of junk data a la Facebook), and the very nature of reality and fiction. I played it over and over on PS2 and did the same with the PC version, which GOG (blessed GOG) have ported over. The only issue I have with the game is that MGS4 retcons all that's interesting about it because a lot of gamer types didn't like it. A+ game. I'm hoping we somehow see MGS3, but I don't think that was ever ported to PC. Silent Hill, GOG? :)
Man, "Technobabylon" is so good; it may have topped "Primordia" on the Best New Adventure Games list. Here's a quick list of yes and nos for fellow adventure game fanatics: 1. Does the game have any dead ends like the old Sierra games? No. 2. Is the game funny? Yes, but not always. There are some jokes, but the story is serious. 3. Does the game use a three-verb interface like Full Throttle? It's a two click system. Right click is for examine, and left click is for pick up/user. You combine objects in your inventory, etc. A beautiful game that keeps reinventing itself, set in a rich, layered, complex world and beautifully written. I am 100% for the adventure game renaissance. They're really giving LucasArts a run for their money.
Chuchel is really fun. It's a different style to Botanicula and Samorost 3, being more self-contained. It's also pretty simple and straightforward, and is just asburd and silly enough to have kept me and the two six year olds I played it with entertained throughout. One of my two has been talking about it all week! You may notice that there are traces of a controversy in the other reviews; when the game released, Chuchel, the main character, was originally black. However, Amanita updated the game post-release after legitimate complaints that the design was reminiscent of blackface, which it was. This is commendable. However, the internet had a *snit* about this, which is why some reviews (such as the second most popular one here) are unhappy, because god forbid the game not offend black people. Which it was. Anyway, pretty good game overall! Especially great with kids.
A rabbi with an existential crisis gets caught up in a crime story: hell of a pitch! But "The Shivah" is fine—it's pretty basic, as adventure games go, and the game can be done in two or three hours. You can't really hit any dead ends, and the puzzles are mostly good—only one kind of left me baffled. It's Wadjet Eye before they really found themselves, part of what I think of as their rough batch: this, the first "Blackwell" game, and "A Golden Wake". They're *enjoyable*, and this one is actually quite different. Elements of the great writing that would mark later Wadjet Eye games are there, but the plotting isn't always on-point; the characters sometimes do things I question. Abe Goldfarb is here, obviously. The music is nice. The updated art is great. It's a great afternoon in. But it's amateurish, and a start—the first breath before a lot of better things happened. (A couple of characters from later games make cameos!) I'm adding an extra star for effort, but this is squarely three stars.
I'd always wanted my adventure games funny, thinking I'd never want a more serious story in them, "Grim Fandango" being the exception. Then one day I discovered the "Blackwell" series, which was funny without being comedic 24/7 in the vein of, for example, "Day of the Tentacle." It was also pretty good (first game is fine, the rest are great-to-masterful). I started paying attention to Wadjet Eye, who I next bought "Gemini Rue" from, a masterpiece. Then, for me, "Primordia," another masterpiece. This one declunks adventure game mechanics a bit (the inventory is never overbearing), and the story is...sad, almost. Mournful. Beautiful, and elegiac. The game itself is deeply atmospheric, too. The puzzles are logical, and never throw you against a dead end like "King's Quest" would. The cast (fronted by Logan Cunningham and supported capably by the delightful Abe Goldfarb) is superb. I'm saying buy it. It's so, *so* good. I've been thinking about it since I beat it in 2017.
