On one side this game has one of the best settings you'd want for a game: B-rate plot, cyberpunk and vampires. But the elephant in the room is the dialogues and especially the voice acting. The lines are cheesy as hell, yet they'd still could pull this off with decent amount of over the top acting, but... the actors are typical for what you'd expect for a 90s budget title (especially the main character). You know this 'perfect' mix between 'oh, I should try really hard', 'what the hell I'm even doing here?' and low quality recording. I'd still recommend to try it, since it's pretty cheap.
You should play this game, especially if you enjoyed their previous title (Kathy Rain). I'd still say that Kathy is a more complete experience, but this one is solid. The puzzles are simple but fun. There I think only one which is hard to figure correctly (the code) yet you can kinda brute-force it from the data you have anyways. I'm not the one who thinks that every adventure game should be a visual novel without any challenge whatsoever. The ending is kinda rushed in my opinion. There's a certain dramatic event after which you'd think: "Oh, here it goes!" yet the game ends quite abruptly after this. I'd hope it'd be a bit longer. They did a nice job expanding the ending of Kathy Rain in the director's cut, maybe they'll do the same for this title? Hope so.
(Played it on Mac M1 with Porting Kit. Works fine, stable fps. Two freezes throughout the game, so don't forget to save). Finally I beat it! The visuals, the overall style is just fantastic. I'm going to give it 5 for that only. For me it overcomes the flaws this game has. I'd always prefer beautiful artistic pre-renders over 3d. One of the most beautiful and classy games I've played. The story is a good balance. It has some silly elements, yet with the right amount of mystery and dark themes. It's a dark story not trying to go all the way 'realistic'. And thanks god for that — I am damn tired of all these trauma dumps and hysterical TV series style reenactment in a lot of modern games which is supposed to 'deepen the characters'. I don't get all the hate about the puzzles. I mean, the lockpicks are evil indeed, but other than that they are beatable. There are however some more easy fixable problems which make the puzzles more annoying than they could be. The bucket puzzle: it is itself is pretty cliched, can be solved in a sec, but I had to reach for the walkthrough for that because... I couldn't find the zone where I can empty that damn bucket! Usually that happens because there's another active zone next to the active zone, and you just don't realize there's something else there to click on. The scalpel near the toolbox - another 'great' example of that problem. It's funny how defunded Chicago police seem to be. They barely have enough officers for the crime scenes, and no people at all to watch the cameras in the security room. There are no paper cups or even sugar at the coffee machine and Victoria has to drive her own car for work.
This game reminds me of my beloved VTM Bloodlines by its setting and also of some old character-rich rpg (NWN2? DA?) And it’s a point-click adventure. Weird, huh? There are a few things I usually dislike about wadjet titles (although all of their adventures worth playing I must say): - Oldschool point-and-click where you have to do a bunch of actions on each item on each screen to eventually find a way to interact properly - Whiny, angry and constantly pissed off main character which is hard to associate with :-P - Sometimes pixel art is too pixel. This one actually solves all of this. The interaction is much more optimized, the graphics are masterfully drawn and the main hero does allow some roleplaying. Plus there is a lot of non-linearity since, well… no spoilers here, but you can have different allies in different situations. P.s. I’d love to have a second part, too bad it probably won’t ever happen…
Surprisingly well executed. Good looking visuals, and you can quite easily beat it without a guide. The interface is simple and self-explanatory. The music, the style and the idea itself are epic. I believe I haven't encountered a single bug during the game. The dialogues and the so called 'humour', oh my... If you enjoy 'too bad it's cringe' stuff - this might be for you. A few worthy excerpts: "this office desk was owned by sergeant McDesk", "a fishy flyer (it's fishy because it smells of fish!)". The funniest part is that there are a couple of moments where it's meant to be a bad joke by scenario, but since all of them are equally bad, you can hardly notice the difference. All characters (except the computer girl) are worthless assholes. On one side it can be good fuel for the plot on the other - I got tired of them pretty quickly. Anyway it's a nice little game. I'd recommend it for point-n-click fans.
Version 1.3 is still buggy on mac. The art style and music are great. The concept is fantastic, the story and dialogues are somewhat ok but kinda lack in depth. Also no mouse support. At first I thought it will be a problem but actually it's not as "point-and-click" as the tags say but rather a puzzle game. I think I'd still recommend it since there are not a lot of cyberpunk-ish adventures.
I've played this one just after finishing other dev's game, "whispers of a machine". The latter is obviously more polished and has better interface and graphics, but honestly I like this one's story better. It all spins around some weird events happening in a small town where you will be investigating your family secrets. The main complaint is that the puzzles are sometimes too hard to figure out without a guide, but overall it's beatable. If you are into adventures I would recommend to beat "whispers of a machine" first, and if you like it you should definitely check this one out.
In short: if you liked Wadjet games (like Gemini Rue) storytelling but was frustrated by the look or the exhausting interface, this could be for you. The story is on a high level, the game is polished and all dialogues and hero remarks are voiced. The interface is good, almost as good as it possibly could be in a point-and-click. And there are no good old "find a pixel" or "combine everything in your inventory" tricks. Also you can "fast-transfer" between locations by double clicking. Finally, an adventure which respects your time! The game also gave me some Syberia vibes, small provincial town in a middle of nowhere, old rusty tech everywhere, going back and forth talking to strange but charismatic habitants... I think still there are several things which could be improved: custom augmentations are rarely used and these uses are unobvious. I had to look for a guide to find out that I need to use my new aug twice. And the final decisions are too "binary" i.e. I could thing of a few options to resolve the situation little better (like do one thing and don't do another) but the game didn't give me a choice. Still it's 5/5. Nicely drawn and voiced adventure.
It's a great quest previously unknown to me. Considering the fact that most of the old quest puzzles are crap I was surprised that it's mostly logical and most of the information (including notes, diaries and logs) is actually critical to the solving and helps you a lot if you read it carefully. The interface is also good enough and you can save-load any time in the game and there is a nice map in the corner which tracks your location. The music is depressing enough (I sense some weird Yamaha DX vibes) and the overall darker and solid atmosphere is different from common at that time cartoonish comedy attitude. The sci-fi background to the game is pretty solid, I think that oldschool sci-fi fans might be interested in this game. So overall it's 5/5, I can recommend.
