I've enjoyed some of the developer's other games (Technobabylon, Unavowed, the Blackwell series) but by their standards this is very thin soup. An insipid main character, a lame religious cult, no engaging emotional situations or interesting moral dilemmas, uninspired scenario and scriptwriting, formulaic gophering puzzles. Sci-fi can say interesting things about the present, but not in this case. The scenario reverses reality. American society has been destroyed in a nuclear bombardment (that is somehow failed to counter) and a permanent pandemic is raging, with a government maintaining control by controlling supply of remediatory medicine (which they call "vaccine"). I suppose that part could have been interesting, but why is the government doing this? Well, the dictator reasons, the original bombings were by jealous Chinese and Russian states, who wanted to take America's material resources. If people recovered from the disease, America would thrive again, and the Chinese and Russians would just bomb again. This scenario obviously bears no relation to reality, and tells us nothing about the path by which an American authoritarian regime might ascend or how it would reason. Nor do the political factions chosen, who are styled after the French ancien regime and the Jacobin left, with the moral apparently being that dictators are bad (which is true but hardly very insightful). So we're dealing with a gritty dystopia which is really an escapist scenario in which no internal fissions in America's society are identified, America is absolved of its own behaviour (bombing countries to control their resources) which is projected onto its official enemies, and the political dilemmas posed are those of 18th century France, understood through the lens of a late 20th century liberalism that is not interrogated at all. It's an almost systematic evasion of the realities an interesting sci-fi would be exploring.
Honestly, I felt with the graphic update it lost most of its charm.
Good, but not great. Probably a 3.5 for me really. Plot, script, acting is good enough though not amazing - doesn't compare to Gabriel Knight, Beast Within. At least one plot continuity issue (what happens to the demon after its host dies ...). Generally I enjoyed the gameplay, and I like interactive movies. Though the plot wasn't original, the delivery of new discoveries over the several chapters was well done. In one or two points, I missed the existence of a whole room because you had to move your cursor right over the very edge of the screen - next to the edge wasn't good enough. Still a bit sore about that! Sometimes the mirror death scenes don't load - I missed one (watched it on YouTube later and it was pretty gross, so hah, maybe that was a good thing!). I didn't really enjoy the last chapter - still basically the same gameplay but much more time-pressured, and if you mess something up you have to watch the same gory death scenes over and over ... If you don't use the hints and/or a walkthrough you're a glutton for punishment. And there wasn't much of a post-game ending, which was disappointing (probably because the characterisation was a bit thin all the way through - again compare Beast Within).
Well written, emotionally engaging, great characters, good music and acting, all as expected from Wadjet Games. Decent puzzles too. The earliest games in the series were good, but were a bit short and felt a bit slight - they were over just as you felt you were getting into them. The last two games in the series don't feel like that. But in the end I wasn't that sold on the ending - what happened felt a bit arbitrary, and could have been handled better.
... when I was too knackered to do anything else, but beyond that, meh.
I think I enjoyed this installment more than the previous ones - more satisfying as a complete narrative. The music was particularly good too, and some good puzzles.
DIdn't mind it. Perhaps less interesting than the previous games in the series in terms of plot and characters. Why is Joey such a git?
Well-written and well-acted. A bit short, and puzzles involve a bit too much persistently pushing the same dialogue trees over and over. But overall pretty good, I'll play the sequels.
Good story, quite sad and romantic - but the main characters are just there to do a job and though humane, retain some detachment and are sometimes critical, which makes things interesting and introduces some humour. Won't take long, so a good way to spend a couple of evenings if you're feeling tired and need a bit of an escape. No real challenge to the gameplay if that's what you're looking for.
