I played all of the newer choice based Telltale Games. Their strength being mostly the story and not the gameplay because basically the gameplay consists of making dialogue choices. I also never played the original Borderlands (or either of the sequels) so I did not know anything about the franchise the game is based on. I have to say that imo this is by far the best choice based Telltale Game (therefore I am excluding real adventure games like Sam & Max) of all - including The Walking Dead. This one has it all: humour, action, emotions and an epic story. Not two (of five) episodes are alike but they are fitting perfectly. It also has several unexpected twists, great characters, good music/soundtrack, fitting animations AND it even offers more gameplay than the other Telltale Games. It has great QTEs and even some choices that will affect the look of the game in some parts. The game also is not that short. To finish all 5 episodes you'll need about 11 hours in total. To make it clear: like with the other choice based Telltale games you still are able to simply watch the story most of the time but this feels like a bit more and the story is just epic. So why only 4 stars? Because of the missing languages here on GOG. The game was updated on Steam months ago to support subtitles for additional languages. This did not happen here on GOG. When I asked Telltale games directly they simply said that they don't have plans to update the game at all. So take this missing star as a reflection of Telltale not treating GOG customers like they do treat Steam customers and as a reflection of GOG not demanding what is offered on Steam as well. If I had to rate only the game it would get the full 5 stars. Just buy it and if English is not you native tongue don't forget to write Telltale and demand additional languages here on GOG. Maybe if they receive several requests they might change their mind.
When I bought this game I knew nothing about it so at first I thought this might be a cute little indie adventure with some nice puzzles and a child hero in some fantasy word. I was so wrong. The devs managed to tell a story of a child in a with the view of a child but at the same time they mix the story (as well as the locations) with pretty much hardcore grown up and gory stuff. This mix is quite crazy and scary and at sometime you as the player are feeling the same way the main character is feeling: you don't know anymore what is real and what is not. Never before was I torn this much between "oh, what a cute little game" and "oh, my god is this sick and brutal". The only game with this kind of atmosphere I could think of remotely would be Sanitarium. But Sanitarium only delivers the "crazy" part and not the "cute child" part. The mix in this game is what makes it that extraordinary regarding the narrative part of the game. I won't tell anything about the story at all because everything would be a spoiler. But be warned: the game icludes crazy, brutal and gory scenes as much as psychothrill. The story itself might confuse pretty much and to tell the truth I am not sure I have understood everything. But the fun about storys which don't explain everything is that they stick in your head far after you have finished the game and they give you a reason to replay the game at another time. The game is so full of metaphors that there is a good chance you might have missed one. The gameplay itself also for me was a near perfect experience. The inventory never contains too much stuff and all the puzzles are perfectly logical. I did not use a walkthrough once but still had some challenging moments an played about 10 hours. There are some mini games in the game too but in case you don't like them you can as well simply skip them. The artstyle is fitting the game and the sound effects are supporting the atmosphere perfectly.
After playing Epiphany (and all of its predecessors before) I had to tell me this again and again. It's only a game and the characters are not real. The reason I had to do this was because the writing in the series is so spot on that it's easy to forget this fact. I really started feeling with the characters and loving the dialogues as much as I loved the story which was getting bigger and bigger. In the end everything fit together and I doubt that there was ever a better adventure series - at least I haven't played one better than this. The gameplay is a bit different from usual adventures. You don't have to combine that much items but you still will have to think logical to solve some of the puzzles. Most of the time you will have to combine and search for clues like a real detective. The puzzles are never unlocical and it's possible to solve them without a walkthrough (even though I used one a few times because I was too curious how the story will go on). The VO imo is absoluteley gorgeous - same goes for the soundtrack and the graphics (still low res but it was meant to be this way). This is the end of the Blackwell series and what an end this is. You think you know how this could end? Think again! But then again the end is absoluteley fitting to this series. But I have to admit I really cried a lot over this because at this moment I almost have forgotten that it's just a game and this is the greatest compliment a game can get. Buy this and buy all the predecessors as well if you are into adventure games and well written and likeable characters. Don't let the low res graphics distract you - these games (and especially this one) are pure gold. Thank you Dave Gilbert for this amazing ride and goodbye Joey and Rosa!
Never before have I played a so called bullet hell shoot em up. All I knew from shoot em ups are the ones like 1942 and co from the 80s. I bought Crimzon Clover because of the many good and very good reviews of the game and I really don't regret it. Being a newbie to the genre I first tried the lowest level of the game and after a short while I really thought that the devs (and prople who play such games) must be crazy because I could not really see the screen anymore - two much bullets and explosions. Then I realized that the dangerous bullets have a brighter colour and are pretty slow and all those explosions and stars around me are a sort of distraction. So I started to focus and started to use my second and third fire button and slowly I gout used to the game . Yes, the game has a normal firemode and two special fire modes: one for locking on targets and another one which can only be used if you have collected enough stars to fill a special bar. Depending on how high this bar is filled you can either drop a sort of smart bomb, get super fire or even crazy mega super fire (at that momet I though the whole screen exploded at once). The game is pure fun, crazy like hell and the soundtrack is great. The game also gives the possibility to use your widescreen Monitor turned 90degrees so you really can fly vertical. I tried it and it felt like ... well - it's hard to describe. But this game has more to offer than pure fun. Of course the main goal in such a game would not be to finish it but to get highscores. In order to learn from your mistakes or just because you want it you have the possibility to record your gameplay AND save it. After that you can play or fast forward it in two steps. Since there is so much going on on the screen this could be the only way for you to see what it was that you blasted in 1000 pieces ;) There is however a big downside to this game. Once you have startet it's a time killer and it's really addictive. Buy it right now.
I really love this game. Its mechanism (you can magnetize objects pos. or neg. shown in different colours) is quite easy but the puzzles sometimes are very hard especially at the end of the game. It takes some time to manage it and to complete the game but it is very much fun because you'll try so many different things and you will probably fail repeatedly. So it is quite an achievement if you finally manage one of the harder puzzles and realizes how simple the solution really is. My thinking often was TOO complicated and the things I tried were quite extreme but the fun in the game is that you CAN try them. Sometimes there are multiple solutions to a riddle which makes the game even more fun. People often compare this to Portal or Portal 2 and a little bit it feels the same way. Magnetism however is a thing we all know from reality and Portals are not - so there was a difference in the feel of the game for me. The story of the game however is set in the far future and changes later in the game quite a bit so it gets more and more unrealistic and I have to say that the story is not good and not well written at all. It feels like bits and pieces put together. Because of the fact that there are dangers involved later in the game (and you only have you non deadly mag gun) influences the puzzles in the game. There are now time specific action sequences in which you can die - I really hated those and they did not really fit into the game so far. Controls are easy to use and rebindable but remember that you have to edit a ini file if you want to rebind your mouse buttons. If you want to play a really good puzzle game with an easy to use mechanic but with different (but always logical) puzzles and a quite unusual setting then this is your game. Please don't buy this game because you are so interested in the story because this is the weakest part of the game. It is a great puzzler and the devs were really good in using the mechanics to create quite challenging puzzles.
