This is overall an excellent game, a simple (but by no means easy) puzzle game. You start building a metro network on a very small map, over time the map will grow and you'll be granted access to more lines, extra carriages and extra trains. The difficulty ramps up very quickly and it doesn't take very long at all to lose or win a game, making it well suited for short play sessions. Yet I don't see myself playing this a lot. For one thing the control scheme is kind of odd. When I want to remove a line from a station I have to pull next to it on the desired line, move the cursor over the station and drag the line away from the station. This process isn't very well explained and I for one had my rails running all over the place before I mastered it. The game's guesses for how you want your lines are kind of odd and there are many times where for example I don't want a tunnel (maybe even two!) but the game forces me to use one anyway due to how the lines are drawn. This in fact made me fail one of the missions at one point where I was supposed to use no more than one tunnel, but had an unused tunnel for a few seconds due to how the game guessed I wanted to build. Finally, the goals of the game aren't very clear at all. To see the goals and what goals you have completed you need to go into a separate window from the mission selection screen. There you can see the goals for the current level and a little tick saying if you've made it. There is no indication when fulfilling or failing a goal while in the mission, and I couldn't even find a way to list them without going back to the mission selection screen. This last reason, the goals, is probably the main reason I won't play this game a lot since missions is really what motivates me to do puzzles like this at all.
Apparently the dialogue-based combats in this game do follow some kind of pattern, but to me they felt very cryptic. The worst part is that when you fail them your character dies, you'll get thrown back to the start of the game, have to watch a short intro again and then load from your latest save file (don't panic! there are autosaves). The clue and inventory system don't feel as well made as in other Wadjet games, they're the same design but less functional it might help to keep a notepad next to you when playing.
If it wasn't for the controller scheme and some minor issues this would be a really solid 5/5. The artwork is fantastic, it's well made, has a very cyberpunk feel to it and is consistent from start to finish. Voice acting is good too, not what I'll remember the game for but still very good. I won't say anything about the contents of the story, but it's very well written and only gets better as you progress through the game. The way you're taught the game mechanics too is integrated very seamlessly into the overarching story to the point that they're barely noticeable. As to be expected with a game such as this it builds up to a crescendo that will leave few disappointed. As previously mentioned, the game is not without it's flaws however. Keep in mind that I played the mac version. Let's start with the interaction control scheme. You walk with the left mouse button (slowly, and you can't run) and interact with the right button. When interacting you have eye/hand/mouth/leg as basic interaction options as well as your inventory for using items. The basic interaction options are way too granulated in my opinion, a lot of the times several of the options do exactly the same thing and it's a little annoying to have to go through a sub menu to do the most basic kinds of interactions such as opening doors. With some doors you can double-click the walk button to walk up and open them, but for some reason this doesn't work with all of them. The puzzles, for the most part, are very good and intuitive. You'll get stumped, but you'll solve almost all of them if you just think things through. Sometimes however the game really insists that you do things it's way, even if other solutions should work as well. For example there are several movements where 20 different doors are possible but only one will actually work, for this reason I really disliked many of the apartment puzzles. These are all nitpicks however, they only become a problem because there're so many of them.
It's a charming game, the main game mechanic is clever and unique. The interface is pretty well done, there's lots of different types of objectives and it's always clear what you need to do or collect. If you enjoy collectathon-type games you might like this. The main problems I have with this game, and why I'm dropping it after three hours, are: - The silent film clips are charming in the begining, but get old very quickly and seems they can't be skipped. - Most of the quest mechanics involve walking (sometimes pretty far) around and finding the right doll to use for a task, learning which dolls are which are integral to learning the game. - Most of the mini-quests are about doing the same thing over and over (these are voluntary completionist tasks though, most people won't do all of them or maybe ignore them completely). The quests themselves are OK. As previously mentioned most of them are about finding the right doll and performing their special action at a certain place, but some I'd say are almost impossible without using the built-in hints and when you're using the hints it's a lot like just following a manual in my opinion. I'd say you should get this if you enjoy goofy humour, collect-a-thons and don't mind walking around a lot. There's definitely some people who would really enjoy this game, but it's also really not for everyone.
I got the Blackwell Bundle on discount, figured it was a lot of games at a very low price. The trailer really doesn't do it justice, I bought the game because it looked OK and I was in the mood for a point and click adventure but it really is one of the better ones. It has everything you can ask for. Great voice acting, interesting story, interesting characters (the main two at least), pretty nice graphics (only problem is that they're 640x480) and the puzzles are clever but not crazy impossible as in some of these games. I'll admit I had to look up a walkthrough twice in the game, but you really don't have to. It's one of those point and clicks where once you find the answer you feel stupid for not finding it out right away rather than thinking "How was I supposed to figure THAT out?!". Very rewarding.
This game has great potential, but part of the execution makes it unplayable (for me). First of all there's little to no tutorial. Nowhere does it tell you what key to press to put down beans (used to transform the blob) and once you've figured that out it doesn't tell you how to switch beans (tab in my control scheme). This might work on console where you have less than 10 buttons and room to experiment, but it works less well when you've got over 100 keyboard keys. No where does it tell me I can throw beans either, I had to find out through a walkthrough. Finally, in the later levels when you've got a lot of beans to select from you need to press two direction keys at once, again something that's fine if you've got a D-pad but not on a keyboard. I also feel control of the boy has been sacrificed to make room for the animation (which are fantastically fluid and beautiful). This results in the boy moving very slowly making even the easiest puzzles very frustrating. The extremely clever concept of the game and the beauty of the design makes me really want to love this game, but I just can't bring myself to play it anymore than I have (almost 25% through the game) due to these issues.
