For some reason or other I've wound up playing every game in this franchise to at least some degree, and this is probably the best one of the series. Essentially it's a more shooter, but no less cerebral, "Hitman." The plot's goofy at best, something about Siberia, and the main character is little more than a handy blank, but if you delight in figuring the PRECISE way to sneak past or kill some mooks to perform an objective, this'll fit the bill.
Bloober Team, it must be said, consistently does a superb job on the execution of its games. The graphics are great, the score is great, the writing is usually at least solid. And in that regard this might be their best game yet; Marianne is a really great character, and I like how the plot is closely tied to recent Polish history in a way that feels fresh and serves as an engine for the story. Unfortunately, the mechanics are day-old bread stale. The game never quite knows what use to make of the splitscreen gimmick, and honestly I wish they'd swiped a page from "Murdered: Soul Suspect," which uses a somewhat similar concept and approach to better effect. Ultimately this is just a point-and-click game with some survival horror sequences bolted onto it, and it's less scary than deeply annoying. If you're really into point-and-click, or like the story, check it out, but otherwise, pass.
I enjoyed this as far as it went, but while there's a wealth of interesting mechanics here, especially with the time-scrubbing and perspective puzzles, and both graphics and sound do an excellent job of surreal, unique visuals. Alas, the story ultimately falls flat, especially what feels like an endless meeting sequence in the middle and one level in particular straight from a 90s thriller. Hopefully there will be a follow-up that builds out on the mechanics, and a stronger script.
The tone of GNOG is utterly charming; you fiddle with ugly-cute toy heads, pressing little buttons and switches, to ultimately unlock the secrets of the heads. It's breezy and charming and if you want a game to chill to, then it's a good choice, short as it is. The two downsides are the uneven nature of the puzzles, some of which require careful observation to solve and others of which involve just poking at the puzzle until it solves itself, and the iffy controls, which can be a bit frustrating at first. Ultimately minor, though, compared to the fun you get out of it.
Much like Lucas Pope's other game "Return of the Obra Dinn," there's a tension in "Papers, Please" between what Pope wants to do and the mechanics he uses to do it. The game is basically Franz Kafka's Guess Who: You play an immigration control official in a fictional Eastern Bloc country who has to follow an increasingly detailed set of rules to find and either reject or accept various immigrants, and eventually are forced to balance the needs of your family against the fact that you're paid by the head for some reason. It presents moral conundrums and black comedy in equal measure. The problem is really in the interface. The rules extend beyond what you're issued; for example, you have to find a discrepancy in paperwork before you can interrogate somebody. This means paging through increasingly voluminous documentation, which you have to drag and drop onto a portion of the screen. This is, to at least some degree, intentional; the idea is clearly that the player feels just as trapped by the bureaucracy as the people they save or crush with the whack of a stamp. But by the same token, the political point starts to interfere with both the story and the game. It rapidly gets to the point where the game makes it impossible to see the forest for the trees, and this clearly isn't the point of the endeavor. Pope is trying, and I'd argue, succeeds, in forcing you to consider a host of political issues through gameplay, but he could be more effective. Still, it's worth playing and a brilliant example of art in video games. Just be prepared to set it aside after playing a level or two.
The basic idea of this game is to befuddle the overly elaborate plans of the murderous staff in a vast Agatha Christie-esque casino. You can travel back to the beginning of the day at any time, but can't be seen by the staff or the victims, although it's not really a stealth game. By and large the challenge is less finding the solution to stopping the crimes, which isn't usually that difficult, and more pulling it off, giving this more of the tone of a classic farce with people popping in and out of doors and wardrobes. The adorable big-headed look everybody has also contributes to the light tone, and the game does a good job of giving you what you need to solve the problems. The main issue is that it has the adventure game problem of there being ONE solution and one only, and as the problems get more complex this becomes more likely to trip you up. Definitely a lot of fun, and I hope they build on it, but a little more flexibility in the solutions would have made this a must-play.
If you're a fan of logic puzzles or murder mysteries, this is a must-buy. I enjoyed the hell out of it. The core of the game is great; name the sailor, name their method of death, and who killed them. I've got a few issues/nitpicks, though, mostly with the tension between the narrative and the game design: One, the graphical conceit doesn't really work. I get why it's there, the game is very much in line with the barely-disguised logic textbooks that used to be all PC games were, and it trims down on distractions, but it doesn't quite jibe with the more modern mechanics. I wish it were an option instead of a default. Two, the structure is a bit pushy, with a countdown on exploring the environment followed with you being locked in place to move on to the next corpse in many chapters. This makes game design sense but considering the game is built on careful observation (and taking your time), and since you don't get the very useful audio/subtitles openings played back for you after the first time, it can feel like you're being shoved through the story. Finally, the "fates answered in threes" conceit makes brute-forcing every third fate, and thus breaking the narrative, way too easy. It's clear we're supposed to follow the narrative, as the game tells us when we can conclude the fates of certain people by putting them into "focus," but as early as the opening chapter, that falls apart. In short, great game, a lot of fun, but the narrative and the game design are sometimes at odds in ways one or the other needed to be tweaked to be resolved.
