Nice graphics and music, but that's it. Totally frustrating, unintuitive and unprecise controls, both on gamepad and keyboard.
Another walking simulator. A little bit more interactive than Dear Esther, but not much. You are thrown into beautiful landscape but you have no idea what to do in there, no hints, no tutorial whatsoever. I started playing, after 1 hour I have walked across the whole map, found some letters, items and clues and then I got stuck. Then I found in walkthrough that when floating words appear you must position your view so that all words merge into one. The game does not tell you that and it is not obvious at all. Or, in the beginning, there are some traps in a forest. I found some, thought it is only a prop and walked on. Only walkthrough told me that these traps are important for the story and you have to find them all. And the whole game has this issue.
SPOILERS. The game is enjoyable at first, in a "guilty pleasure" way. Even with some stupid puzzles (you need a rat to get a wallet from under a sofa - WTF?). But the game gets quite repetitive in later chapters and the finale that takes place in another dimension (resembling Xen from Half-Life) is just epic fail. The final big puzzle is very retarded and you just randomly click on parts of a machine hoping to get it to work. The game is a good example of 90´s interactive movie, but if you want good story, get first Phantasmagoria instead, or rather Gabriel Knight 2
One of the best and hardest classic adventures. It is better than Under A Killing Moon in every way. The story is long, maybe too much, but it is good conspiracy story. The fun fact is, even in 2043 people still use CDs and faxes and nobody has a mobile phone:) Unfortunately, yet again there are some stupid action and timed sequences, which are just irritating. Also, I don't understand why almost every adventure game must end in an underground temple full of traps and stupid puzzles. Actors are kinda B-movie types but this just adds to the pulp atmosphere:) 3D environment is much better than in UAKM and even today looks quite fine except for ridiculous flat textures in open doors that are supposed to give you an illusion of adjoining room (3D engine is capable only of tiny maps so every room is separated).
This game was a miracle 20 years ago but according to current standards it is quite mediocre. Of course, screenshots in the magazines that covered the best maps of the game looked amazing, but the truth is there is very few full 3D maps and they are tiny (often just one little room). Half of the locations are not even 3D map, just a conversation window. Some maps are awful even for 1994 standards, even Doom looked better. But I am in a nostalgic mood and give it 4 stars.
First 3/4 of the game is a very good, funny, clever, satirical and sick (in a good way) adventure. I don´t think such game would pass these days without getting banned everywhere. You can even give a porn mag to a little girl (probably the funniest scene). And now the negatives: Some puzzles are stupidly hard and require too much pixel-hunting. I seriously doubt somebody has found the key in a fountain without walkthrough. In the last 1/4, the adventure turns into stupid combat game with awful control. Even 8-bit arcade games had more elaborated combat system. All you can do is to insanely click your mouse and hope you hit and do not get hit. The manual brags about 21 unique weapons but in fact they are two - long ranged (shotgun and nailgun) and short ranged (the other 19). I was able to finish it just because you can save your game anytime.
