The GAMEPLAY experience is extremely high for the series, around the top for sure. Puzzles almost always seem extremely obvious and logical in hindsight or make it worth your while to be extremely stupid and confusing. It's FAR more forgiving than an adventure game like this has any right to be. There's a few overtly cruel and pointless faux-game-overs that returning players would expect, too. The environment is so thoroughly written and voiced that just exploring through the city areas will eventually guide you to a conclusion without grinding a lot of possible item combinations. The writing and dialogue are great even if it gets a bit European flavored in spots. The jokes are (still) very dated and plenty lame but the execution is often better than the "core" Larry games. Larry (or the player) is still the butt of every joke. There isn't any political statement but there is a LOT of "old man yells at cloud" and that goes great with the man out of time premise. The characters are mostly 2D comedy stereotypes but as they progress through the story with you many of them get a lot of time to shine. There's not a lot left behind because their gag was over, everything gets reused over and over and fleshes out the relatively small environments well. CONS: It's not heavy on bugs but you absolutely need to save regularly. At one point I was terrified that I accidentally crafted an item twice around 3/4ths of the way through the game and had a separate save just in case I had to roll back a few hours. The game gets pretty empty as you finish the side character stories. As the "main plot" speeds up the characters remaining in your environment thin out and have less impact on anything. The last 2-3 girls have barely any impact on anything except as a puzzle roadblock. The dating app premise might as well not even be in the game. The point system calls back to the old score systems but there's not a lot of jokes in or around the profiles or anything.
I g ⃠t this game free f ⃠r summer sale stuff. The writing feels like a 12 year ⃠ld's fanfiction. There is c ⃠nstant unskippable n ⃠nsense animations, such as silent establishing sh ⃠ts with n ⃠ real value. The w ⃠rd c ⃠unt could EASILY be halved with ⃠ut l ⃠sing any pl ⃠t. There are c ⃠nstant rehashed explanati ⃠ns and exp ⃠siti ⃠ns t ⃠ different characters THAT ARE ALL THE PLAYER. Every character the PLAYER plays needs t ⃠ re-learn every thing (especially blatantly ⃠bvi ⃠us things). Part 5 thr ⃠ws in arbitrary techn ⃠babble (where they d ⃠n't settle f ⃠r 'it's magic' and 'nobody knows') that when they realize they needed an ending. A few characters are interesting and well written. M ⃠st are awful. S ⃠me ⃠f them (big bads) are basically named extras with l ⃠ng unskippable scenes and rehashed redundant dial ⃠gue. At least ⃠ne character is named ⃠NLY by the UI (bef ⃠re being met) and p ⃠ssibly never again? Pros: The voice acting is pretty good throughout, the areas are really interesting and are reused well. Runs better than some Telltale stories. Cons: Middle school pad-the-word-count forget-perspective-midway-through. The most difficult Choice is to continue playing. ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ ⃠ Do not buy.
This is a game I played and replayed for endless hours. The gameplay is simplistic, but elegant. I don't remember any tutorial, but as you play (and get wrecked by the brutal AI) it's easy enough pick up the nuances as you go. Every gang has tons of character and the art is fun and weird and totally unique. The multiplayer (I hope it's not still IPX?) is fantastic too, it plays sort of like a board game but the pacing gets to be a bit slow in the endgame. Think (utterly bizarre) e-mail chess rather than party game. It's addicting and really doesn't lose anything through the probably thousands of games I played through.
When I first played this game I could not believe such a well-assembled game could come together like it did. The interface and graphics are flawless. The gameplay is easy to pick up and like some of the Theme games, it makes you want to spend more time on some levels than you need. The characters and setting are set up so well just through use that it doesn't NEED any exposition or story, I just wish it was longer.
