Overall an excellent adventure, with great voice acting and good puzzles. Despite the blocky graphics, the experience is quite immersive. Do note that this is one of the adventures that require a lot of attention from the player. Hints have been scattered everywhere: cutscenes, background NPCs, items you wouldn't expect. A walkthrough will come handy if you play the game with a limited time budget, but just make sure to only consult it when stuck. Otherwise you will be losing much of the plot, as every walkthrough I found just lists the actions to be done with no explanation about the logic behind the actions. My main annoyances with Gabriel Knight are related to its interface/presentation. First, while overall I didn't mind at all the blocky graphics, the developers have overestimated in more than one cases how much information they can convey. This turns what would otherwise be a reasonable course of action into a pixel hunt with no clues. Then, I don't see why there are no alternatives for some actions. E.g. why do I need to "pick up" the newspaper to read it, and "operating" or "examining" it won't do? This felt like a remnant from text-based adventures. Finally, the interface does feel a bit archaic even for its time. There are no keyboard shortcuts (e.g. press w to select walk), so you have to either frantically right-click to cycle through actions, or manually select each action. Also there is no "double click to walk fast", so you spend a lot of time watching Gabriel dragging his feet across the screen. I personally enjoyed this original version of Gabriel Knight a lot, but if you prefer a more polished experience, maybe you are better off with the remastered version.
It took me a few years to finally play Thimbleweed Park. Finishing it, I'm left completely flabbergasted. This is a lovingly made polished adventure game, a true heir to the LucasArts classics. Interesting characters, great dialogue, fantastic references to old classics and 80's culture. And the puzzles were spot on: not straightforward to pull off, but not impossible to figure out. An instant classic! I should also mentioned how I loved that there are no achievements in the GOG version. Quality playtime instead of goose hunting for imaginary trophies.
Gibbous shines because of the outstanding artwork. The LucasArts influence is emanating through the game. Only the graphics are up-to-date with today's standards. Just stunning! The soundtrack is also pretty rad. This went unnoticed for me during gameplay. But when I paused the game to do some some household chores, I started noticing how detailed the soundtrack composition was. Regarding the gameplay, the story is pretty much linear, and most puzzles are straightforward to get. This could be a turndown, depending on what you're looking for. It worked fine with me, as I managed to finish it in around 10 hours. The writing could also be a bit tighter. It felt that there were minor gaps in the story telling here and there. But nothing too distracting. Overall, the flow of the story was very good. As a final note, do save often if you're after achievement completion. Somehow, achievements stopped working for me after pausing the game for a long period. I had to exit the game and load to get them working again. Highly recommended if you're looking for a LucasArts-like kick!
I really wanted to like Banished, as a more laid-back city-building sim. But after sinking 10+ hours in it, I can't take it any more. 1. "Build a city with any layout you want with almost no restriction on when, what, and where you build." This is an outright lie. Your starting location is a fixed random location. There may be nice locations in your random map, but no! You have to start from that uninhabitable mountain-enclosed corner. Also you can't build everywhere. Mountains are practically useless, and the mountain terrain maps unplayable. 2. You are micromanaging all the time. E.g. change farmers to foresters/woodcutters every autumn, and back to farmers every spring. But you are not allowed to actually force builders to build where you want them. And you can't reassign houses so that workers live close to their workplace. 3. Worker AI is crap. "Priority" command doesn't work. I had 4 builders trying to finish a Trader's Post that needed 8 more stone + building work. Nothing else being built. It took them something like 3 years to get the stone + 1 for the work. 4. Many buildings are useless. E.g. mines and quarries won't ever yield enough resources to warrant their use. You didn't spawn close to a stone-rich location? Bummer. You're doomed from the start. 5. On the other hand, consumption of resources is rapid. You need something like 5 miners + 1 blacksmith working fulltime in order to not run out of tools for a population of 25. Similar for the tailor. 6. The Trader's Post is presented as the way to build up your city. It isn't. It's effectiveness is extremely dependent on its location. I built one on the main river, but got no trade from it at all. So again, bad spawn location? Bummer. You're doomed. All-in-all, worst game purchase for a fair long. But more than the money spent, I regret the playtime that could have been used on something more enjoyable that actually works. And I'm really puzzled how this game could ever get its present 4.4/5.
A classic that has aged pretty decently. The first scene with the tree talking mumbo-jumbo about mother earth got me worried that Kyrandia would be in the same writing style as Loom. Fortunately it wasn't, as Kyrandia has a good amount of humorous dialogue. There are also several funny death scenes, so if you're playing for the first time, make sure to save often. I also enjoyed the music very much. It was very soothing without becoming monotonous or boring. The puzzles were good through most of the game. I liked the caverns labyrinth with the required map-making. However, there were quite a few puzzles that either required brute-forcing, or making wild guesses, especially in the castle part. This was acceptable in early 90s games but 30 years later it's a turnoff. Fortunately, the game includes a hintbook in the extras, so you won't be left scratching your head when the solution is to just brute-force.
Retro-style adventures need some extra spice to not come out as dry and formulaic. Whispers of a Machine has that spice, in the form of Vera's augmentations. The augmentations mechanics works really well and sets the game apart from other retro-adventures that are limited to the tried-and-tested approach of controlling multiple characters (Blackwell, I'm looking at you). Moreover, they give a fair amount of replayability to the game. Yes, it is true that the game is kind of short. But I don't think that takes away from the game. It's better to have a short and tight game, rather than one padded with extra puzzles, just to extend the gameplay time. Having said that, try to buy the game on a discount, so you won't feel cheated in the end :).
I was sceptical about the lo-fi graphics, but in the end they weren't much of an issue. The great soundtrack helps a lot in building a menacing atmosphere without needing much visual detail. An interesting side-effect of the lo-fi graphics is that the game can be comfortably played with a controller from a distance, without having to squint your eyes. I did enjoy that. My biggest gripes with the game were that: (a) The puzzles are simple. If you are not a newcomer to the genre and you pay a minimum attention to the text, you should have zero issues finishing the game, (b) The game ends rather abruptly and provides no closure. You need to purchase Season 2 to see the end of the story.
See all those 5 star reviews? Those extra stars are nostalgia points. If you're on your first play of the game, you'll find that Sam & Max is pretty average. Not bad or not enjoyable. But average. Can't really compare it e.g. with the first Monkey Island games. I dare to say that even Maniac Mansion (6 years older) had better puzzles. The main issue with Sam & Max is that the scripting still feels a bit rough. First, I found myself in multiple occassions having guessed correctly what I need to do, but being unable to find the correct way to do it. The hintbook does help you out from these silly situations. But is it really necessary to have to consult the hintbook in order to spot an elevator door? Or why should it be so hard to ask Max to shut the door he's holding open? Sometimes Sam & Max kind of gave me the feeling I'm playing a text adventure and I'm fighting against the text parser's limitations. Second, there are no hints on when it is the right time to use Max to solve a puzzle. I'm not sure if LucasArts just expected players to be familiar with some of Max's traits from the comic-book series, so invoking him comes naturally. But for me it usually boiled down to having tried everything else and failed. All-in-all, Sam & Max is funny and humorous, with some decent puzzles. But definitely not LucasArts finest piece of work.
I've played through the game. The first couple of hours of gameplay were actually quite nice. The aesthetics are pretty good. That's where the two stars come from. But after that point, the game was an endless dissapointment. - Grinding: As soon as you get a fairly big caravan so you can stock enough merchandise, any strategic/planning element goes away. You just go around, waiting for city merchants to replenish their cash so they can buy your stock. - Character perks are meh: The character skills you acquire after leveling up don't add any depth to the gameplay. Your main incentive to level up is better main stats, and increased caravan size. - Battles don't make sense: The outcome of the battle is determined mostly by the level of the opponents. Also your opponents are stupid, so there's little satisfaction in beating them. You still need to play them in order to get discounts from merchants–i.e. you trade one kind of grind for a less annoying one. - Lazy artwork: Even the only strong point of the game is lazily implemented. The game could make use of a few extra NPC portraits so there is less repetition. If that's too much to ask for, the developers could have at least looked up some additional names so we don't have the same 12 names repeated over and over. Finally, the dice in the battle are shown as regular 6-side dice, while they're actually 16-side dice (4 colours x 4 values for each colour). - Missions get worse and worse: Initial missions seem a bit interesting and make some sense. But the final missions are pure grind. They're just there to get you an extra 30' of gameplay before you are greeted with a cold "The End". - 0 replay value: The story is linear. I can't think of any reason that I'd make a second playthrough. At its core, this is an average C64-era game with a modern UI. A 6yo may enjoy the ambiance and maybe find some challenge in the gameplay. Older gamers definitely have better options. Only buy this on deep discount.
This was my first time playing Loom. I remember reading the raving reviews back when it was first released, and I can say I'm kind of disappointed. I've played quite a few LucasArts adventures, and this was the least enjoyable for me. The artwork is really well-made and enjoyable despite its age. On the other hand, the MIDI rendition of Tchaikovsky's music (which was a highlight of the original release) sounds rather dull by today's standards. On the gameplay side, the puzzles are fairly straightforward. The magic system is interesting, but in retrospect it seems that it's main purpose is to masquerade the lack of complexity in the puzzles. Or maybe it proved inadequate for developing more sophisticated puzzles (?). Finally, the humor is less cheeky than other LucasArts adventures. So while not a terrible game, I wouldn't recommend buying it full-price, especially given its short length. Some notes on the GOG version: - Do yourself a favour and print the book of patterns from the goodies before starting. The game is really meant to be played with you taking notes on it. - The Audio Drama mentioned in the manual is missing. A bit disappointing. - The bonus scene mentioned in the manual will appear even in standard difficulty. No need to do a replay in expert mode. - EGA version is not included. EGA version seems to render some in-game dialogs with LucasArts-style close-ups. For this, it would be nice to have.
