This is one of those rare titles where it's not about the gameplay at all, but the experience of reliving these events with the boy remembering them. To that end, despite it being so short and really so little of a game itself, I would recommend checking this out. If you enjoy it, you will walk away after experiencing an endearing tale of friendship. If you don't, you wasted $4 and a little over an hour of your life in total. Nothing much to lose, but potentially a great memory of your own to gain.
I can not tell you this is the best game in the franchise. In fact, I would argue both other 7th Guest games are better when push comes to shove. But this is a legendary franchise, so falling short of the previous games does not make it bad. In fact, if you are a fan of puzzle games and the either the 7th Guest or 11th Hour in particular, you are doing yourself a disservice to miss this new outing. You will enjoy this, warts and all.
I would be lying if I told you this game aged well. It did not, and being a game based on Full Motion Video and the at the time relatively new CD-ROM technology, this should surprise absolutely no one. But if you can get past that, there is still a lot of charm and challenge to be had here. If you like puzzles and have a taste for the macabre, there is absolutely no good reason not to check this game out, at least if you can get your hands on the DOS version. Since the windows one is so much easier to get these days, I wish I could say the same about it. Sadly, bugs make that a lot tougher to argue.
I can not recommend this version of the game. In any way it varies from the original, the original is just plain better. And yet I have to recommend this package at the same time for the exact same reason. You see that vastly superior version of the game is included with your purchase. This version includes it as a goodies download. This should allow you to play the best version of the game hassle free. Add to this the sound track, cut scenes from the original, and even a downloadable novel to sort out that story definitively and I absolutely can and do recommend the total package... despite the main release you are expected to get it for being a cheap knockoff at best. At least if you are a fan of brainteasers, anyway. All horror story and themes aside, this game is just that: a collection of brainteaser puzzles, so if those are not your thing, stay the hell away from this one.
I make a point to play a game for a good while before I write a positive review about it. This is the kind of game that made it necessary. When you start, it's alright... a little bit dull in play, but an interesting idea to pull you forward. Before the first half is over, it starts to get pretty good... and then the sewage pipe bursts and shit flies everywhere at about the half-way point. You don't need to finish the game to see the shit-stain it becomes and remains and I don't recommend anyone try to.
Anna's Quest is the definition of a solid point and click adventure game. The story makes sense. The game runs without any real issues. The puzzles make sense and the game is even crafted to hint that you are on the right track when your idea is close but not quite right. All this combines to make for a very smooth experience. But it is not an exciting one. Rather this is the kind of game you can kick back and relax while you play. It's solid, and if you like this kind of game, you will enjoy yourself with something crafted much better then you normally get.
All I can say is I was genuinely stunned by this game. I am not normally one for roguelikes, and had I known that was what this game was, I may well have missed out. But I'm thankful to have made that mistake as I found myself absolutely loving my time with it! True, there are times it gets absolutely unfair, but understanding that even those add to the goal of more characters to play with and more stuff to run into the next time, it's surprisingly easy to chalk up those as bad runs and get excited to go again, a vibe I haven't felt since being a little kid playing arcade-style games in the 8 and 16 bit days. So glad for it.
I wish I could be kinder to this game. The story it tells is actually really good, running the gambit from dour and serious (as you are dealing with an end-of-life story) to absolutely hilarious (Dr. Watts might just be one of the best things to come out of indie games... period). And yet it's all cohesive and flows brilliantly, and looks and sounds great doing it. But at the same time the gameplay is more carried by everything else then actually what carries everything. Still all of this could have been great in it's own right despite (and maybe because) of it's own flaws if it had actually worked. On a technical level, a game ending bug killed this one before anything else could really stand up. (Trying to navigate one of the maps froze solid and loading the game from then on I basically was a ghost without the ability to respond to the map at all)
What Scorn sets out to do, it does fantastically. You are dropped in an alien world with nothing but that world to show you what is going on and what to do about it. And yet with such an obscure start it manages to tell a story about the world itself as if you are excavating it, keeping most of it's puzzles embedded within that world building as you struggle to survive a realm that left you and the civilization your character lives in behind long ago. It's alien, horrific, grotesque, and tense as hell. It's not perfect by any means, but if this sounds like your cup of tea, you will love this. However, if you only came here because you saw the rapid kill-shots of the later trailers, I'm afraid you've been deceived. This is not an action game.
Malcolm's Revenge is arguably one of the most unique point and click games I have ever played and has a lot of great ideas that work very well. Unfortunately the things it does wrong more then frustrate the things it does right to the point of ruining the experience in general. If you need to finish the trilogy, it's worth playing, but it's not a game you want to play without help, and definitely not the finale the original game deserves.
