Dracula 3 is one of the best detective games you can find. It really awesome how it melds history and fantasy to really make you feel like what you're playing is plausible--until the conclusion, I suppose :-P It reminds me a bit of the second two Gabriel Knight games which were similarly elaborate in their lore. The puzzles are a good and hard. There are only two I didnt' care for, the portion of the final puzzle involving the torches, which got me stuck enough that I finally had to look it up. and the question and answer portion at the very end of the game which was a bit of a let down to the buildup. The rest are great and all of them feel like part of the plot. Nothing feels like a puzzle for a puzzle's sake, except possibly the one about organizing the kennings, but that was obviously optional. But even better than the puzzles is the way you are taken through the plot by methodical detective work. I never felt like I was doing busywork everything was just what I wanted to look into at the time. It's really hard to do that in a game of this length which usually fowls things up with pointless fetch quests and unrelated subplots. The other two games in this set, Dracula 1 and 2 have absolutely nothing to do with 3 in terms of plot or gameplay. They are sequels to Bram Stoker's novel and in Dracula 3 Bram Stoker's novel is just a book that exists in the world, not something that really happened. Also, Dracula 1 and 2 aren't very good. There are worse games certainly, but you won't have missed anything if you skip them, and I recommend you do. Also, it's worth noting that if you have newer windows you'll have to download some extra files to get dracula working. You can find them online.
Oxenfree is rather misbilled as an adventure game. There are no puzzles and you have little agency in the way you explore the plot in the way a detective game like Sherlock Holmes allows you. As you move through the game, your companions chatter in the background and in the foreground both among themselves and directly to you. Word bubbles appear over your head--not necessarily in direct response to a question. These give you input and allow you to steer the course of the conversation, but if you don't feel particularly strongly about something, you don't have to say anything at all. You may say that this sounds similar to Telltale Games like A Wolf Among Us. And it is the next evolution of that system. But in those you were very much the star of the conversation as everything was directed at you. Here you aren't necessary. The conversation is part of the atmosphere and it makes everything so much realer. It also helps that the dialogue is very well written and the characters fully realized. Whatever inadequacies there are in the plot do not extend to the script. This script changes and is molded by your responses and the designers really want you to play through this game multiple times, with at least one ending not possible on your first playthrough. I'm not sure if I will play through it again however. Before the finale, I knew I could wander around collecting a few things I missed, but I couldn't bring myself to traipse all the way back across the island again. It's so punishingly slow and convulted. And that thought, augmented by the knowledge I'll have to fiddle with the radio, keep me from exploring every nook and cranny. Besides I'm happy with the ending I got and perhaps seeing every possiblity would reveal just how the game works and just where its limitations lie. It's possible the conversations aren't as dynamic as I imagine, and I don't wouldn't want to break the spell.
But the game sure was beautiful and fun. It's sort of a picture book where you have to use context clues to figure out which picture comes next.
Omigosh. It's the most tedious gameplay I've ever seen. There are more graphically impressive 3 D games that have no loading screens at all these days. This game has the most excrutiating loading screens I've ever seen. There's a section toward the end where you must solve a maze in two worlds. You turn a few gears run halfway across the map, load into a new planet to turn a few more gears and load it up again over and over and over again. It's like a small torture. And given the fact that there are no particularly new puzzles in this thing, I guarantee that just waiting to move forward will be all I will remember about this thing when I think back on it in a year. There are a few good things. The second world is impressively designed from an artistic standpoint. And I like the soundtrack. But there are more bad things too, like the plot that is told in the most boring way possible. Or the fact that the fourth world has nothing to do in it.
