This game really does worship the movie - which is great for fans of the movie as I am, but there's a caveat. This game takes place concurrently with the original movie - which makes the story a little weird. Deckard's story is going on at the same time and sometimes the player comes into a glancing contact with that. It's fun but it also makes the events in the movie and the game seem to lack gravity. After all the replicants here seem blissfully unaware of Roy Batty's efforts for example despite appearing in many of the same locations as the replicants here. Then the locations and even some characters are from the movie while others are fabricated or altered which is jarring. The game basically recreates all the movie scenes for the player, again subtly altering their meaning in both. And finally your character - McCoy - well, his script is more like something out of a Monkey Island game. Too many wisecracks that fall flat. I guess this could all have been improved if they'd spent longer in the game establishing the characters and story - as it is, this is probably a 6 hour game for the first play through. Much less if you choose to replay and there is some replayability on offer - the game isn't 100% scripted and it is possible to get the end having missed parts. In terms of the gameplay, by todays standards it's basically a pixel hunt game - move the cursor around the screen looking for it to turn green and then click. There's no inventory management, no real need to read/listen to the clues collected or deduce anything. Even the dialogue is selected automatically unless the user changes mode which gives the illusion of interactivy - ultimately the player still just selects the approriate dialogue options. So it's really a story progression game only which is fine if you're a fan of blade runner and want to re-run the movie with a slightly different story. It's not terrible, but it doesn't stand with the great adventure games of the past.
This is an attempt at playing a Tom Clancy movie - not one of the good ones, one of the straight to video ones. It tries hard to create an end of the Cold War scenario and it's fine - just nothing special storywise. As a game, its not bad really - it's just shallow. There's very little replayability. There are a few different outcomes but they're pretty easy to see and are more like failed endings as opposed to genuine alternative endings. Gameplay is a lot of pseudo puzzler stuff. It doesn't totally hold your hand for the puzzles so at least the player does some of the work, but it is very light puzzling really. A number of CIA tools are introduced but some are only used in one particular moment, while others seem to offer a lot of options for use throughout the game but actually only one use-case is ever presented. Almost like they planned a bigger game, or a sequel that never happened. The whole thing can be done in a day cold - maybe an afternoon if you don't miss things and avoid an insta-death. Yes this is a 90s era adventure so there are some decisions that will result in insta-death if you didn't grasp what the game wanted. Save regularly! Its an FMV heavy game and for the most part the acting is well done. I did feel towards the end the payoff was a bit rushed and once the main protaganist was revealed it wasnt a big shock, but the game didn't let the player put the final pieces together to identify the final opponent. I did find on my machine the audio wasn't quite synched to video which made the sound related puzzles a little annoying to get through. That may just be my end though and even with that it was about a half second delay, so not too major. That's it really. If you like Clancy style cold war stuff, procedural adventures like police quest, this is probably worth a look as a beer and pretzels romp down memory lane. If you want fast action, or deep puzzling and logical deduction, this isn't it.
