Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is ones of the first games that Dave Gilbert produced and published. As such, it is notably less polished than his later work. Even so, it's a good AGS point-and-click. It focuses on the personal drama of a small cast of characters in a few rooms in New York City, and makes a decent story and some good puzzles out of it. Of particular note is the dialogue-based "Rabbinic combat" that is featured in a few places, as well as the first to use the Wadjet-eye-only internet search system for puzzle and story advancement. If you liked Wadjet Eye's other games, then the Shivah is a good way to kill an afternoon. Just one afternoon, mind you - the game is only about 3 hours long. Maybe 4-5 if you replay it to get different endings.
What you get out of this game is heavily dependent on your expectations. If you think you're getting an action-adventure, think again. This game is primarily a RTS game, specifically one of those rare ground-level RTS games like Sacrifice, or Citizen Kabuto. Commanding an army of various Metal creatures, the gist of the game is to destroy your enemy's Stage (base) after fighting off their groupies and stars (units) and stealing their fans (resources). It's a little tricky to get used to if you haven't done this kind of game before, but it's quite fun once you get the hang of using Rally points and your ability to fly to coordinate your army effectively. The single-player mode, as is true for most RTS games, is there mostly to teach you how to play so you can do random maps or multiplayer. The MP community is small, but devoted, so don't worry about finding other players. The main storyline is short, but fun, with plenty of Doublefine's quirky humor backed by a grand performance by Jack Black (among others), and there's plenty of collectible nonsense and sidequests, if you're into that kind of thing. Oh, and did I mention the Metal? The scenery in this game is just plain amazing. So is the music. I've rarely seen any game that was so thoroughly committed to showing a specific aesthetic, and done it so well. So, absolutely, yes, buy this. 10 bucks is a bargain. Raise your head up high, put your fist up in the air, make Metal LOUDER THAN HELL!
As you may have observed from reading the description blurb, this game has a pretty strong environmentalist slant. Whatever your position on climate change and appropriate responses to it might be, consider yourself warned that this game will thoroughly hammer its green morals into you. With that said, it's not a bad game in and of itself. The story is okay (merely okay), voice acting and music is so-so, and the puzzles can be tricky but never infuriatingly so. The one thing that might throw off some experienced gamers is that there are many occasions where attempting the same dialogue choice twice will get you different results - threw me for a loop every time. I also experienced a number of bugs: sometimes the left-click interaction menu will freeze on the screen, necessitating that I hit ESC to enter and leave the menu. Once I made the mistake of moving to talk to someone and then opening the interaction menu elsewhere on the screen - I was unable to move my mouse pointer anywhere or click on anything, and the ESC key did nothing. Also, I lost the ability to save midway through the game, and no amount of clicking on save menu icons actually did anything. Overall, I'd say that among the various games Daedalus has on offer, A New Beginning is probably their weakest. I'd recommend The Whispered World, Chains of Satinav, or Deponia over this.
