This game is a love letter to all the annoyances of every game out there and puts them all in one package. If you are a masochist then this is pure love. dont be fooled by all the rave reviews like me and waste your money, its so bad that even watching a streamer play this is painful and not fun. annoyances: Idiot movement of the main character, walks like he has a disability, difficult to navigate with with him swooning and swaying and loping around. Movement is guided by 'styles' of movement, in other words, you cant just walk to something to investigate, you have to choose a style to interact with everything, constantly fiddling with styles in order to just do the simplest things. No save function. Like exploring and enjoying the art style, which is the only plus in the game? tuff nookie. you will die over and over and over and over and over and have to restart. That is the whole game in a nutshell. Turn a new corner... die. start over. get to that corner and go a few feet farther.. die and start over. repeat ad nauseum. Clunky interactions with npcs and items in game. Cant fast forward thru annoying tips from every npc that they repeat over and over and over. Story is dumb and .... everyone ... annoying. worst game purchase of my life. I tried to watch a stream of this game in order to just see what everyone was glowing about and it was so darn annoying. Most people in chat were signing off and saying what an annoying game. I had to leave.
Bought this on impulse due to watching a stream and thought it would be fun. It was for a couple of hours but then it just became work. Wish I had waited for a sale as it wasnt worth the price I paid for it as I will not be playing it again. Pros: lovely ambiance, easy controls. Music is immersive and you get attached to your kingdom and peoples and working your town up. Night time is eerie and terrifying when the red moon comes and lends an air of desperation to the gameplay, all good for fun. The coin drop is addicting and exploration is fun. Cons: Having to repeat from ground zero yanks the fun out of the game in short while, especially when you fail due to strange AI or rules not explained. Which brings me to the other grip, there are no rules or tutorials or any data on how to play what things do, or what stuff means. So you fumble and try to survive but die in the end. gets old fast
I was pleasantly surprised by this title. I had deliberately skipped all previews, reviews and screenshots to avoid spoilers, I just knew that it was FMV title which I am a fan. In Spycraft the FMV were so well done with many top notch and recognized actors. The level of complexity and back story was deep, in fact many times I felt lost as to what I was supposed to be doing, and how to go about it but that was ok, it only lent more credence to the game. No hand holding whatsoever. At times I could get a glimpse of how much paperwork a real 'spy' has to go thru per mission. lol The music is atmospheric and never intrusive. At times it reminded me of the music from The Omen. The UI interface in the form of a PDA is confusing at times, there is alot of reading and backstory to go thru and the game expects you to remember data and regurgitate it correctly in the form of Reports. I have not finished the game, so have no idea if my 'sleuthing' is accurate or if the game modifies the story to match your conclusions, which would be a great replay factor. I would definitly recommend this game to others who enjoy FMV games, thrillers, spy games etc. Though the intel is dated today, for its times it must have been highly accurate and enthralling.
Let me say right off that I am glad I have this game for my collection for these reasons: the art is very very well done, the animated scenes are perfect and well drawn, lovely at times. The sound track is also very good and atmospheric, the closing scene with the rock blaring is like watching an action movie. The adventuring is decent and on par for a point click adventure as well. Why the 3 stars? bah, numerous timed deaths detract from the immersion and ruin pacing. Often you are just reloading a save to try the next attempt, die, rinse repeat. Due to the sheer numbers of deaths and reloading it is also very easy to accidentally delete or overwrite a save, which I did twice. Thank god the devs instituted an autosave at most of the timed deaths so you can resort to that reload. Now to address the pixel hunting. At a few points I was totally stumped, trecking back and forth over and over only to resort to a walk thru and find out that there was a teeny tiny hotspot that I had missed. Also some of the puzzles were bizarre (needle on a displayed map im looking at you) and unless you just cycled thru inventory and mindlessly applied them to every hotspot there was no progress, so not very fun game play there. For those reasons I wont be playing this game again unless to watch the animated sequences which are beautifully drawn, and I recommend to those playing this the 1st time to have a walk thru near by in order to keep the pacing and fun of the game. but i repeat, for the reasons stated at the beginning im very very glad to have this charmer in my collection.
I really am getting sick of animated novels passing themselves off as a game. In this 'game' get ready for it to play itself, all actions that are not part of the script are nonexistent. Also get ready for this 'game' to take over you char to move it, make actions with it, explore etc. In fact, there is no REASON FOR YOU THE PLAYER TO PLAY THIS GAME it makes all the actions, all the decisions, all the exploration for itself. you are merely given the illusion of connectivity with moving the char to chosen action points whereby the game then takes over. boring, dull, bland artwork idiotic as a game. interesting as a graphic animated novel. Now just freaking label it that way instead of continuing to con customers out of money who think they are getting a point click adventure game. 2 points for music
My first impression of the game was that of bemusement. I thought the idea of playing a game from the point of view of a toddler a refreshing and unique game mechanic. They did an excellent job of portraying the world from 2 ft high and lower and all the familiar stuff of grown up land becomes giant, strange, and difficult to maneuver. That impression slowly changed as the story began to unfold via childish drawings dropped in the dark corners only a little one could reach. Those drawings told another story, a story of horror and mystery that had me in its grip. I am not ashamed to admit that a few screams passed my lips, making my family jump and holler what was going on. There are moments of pure terror in the game, a tribute to story telling ability of the game with hardly any dialogue or set up. You are just dropped into this clumsy environment and left to it. I wont spoil the game but only say there is one heart wrenching moment that had me in tears. Brilliant game, totally novel and unique gameplay and utterly horrifying story. well done... well done.
Let me just say that I almost did not finish this game. 1st time player in 2015, I had no nostalgic memories, I got it after playing the other Zork entries expecting that wonderful comedic world of crazy. This game most definitely is not in that style, in fact, the comedic bits from the previous series stand out like sore thumbs in this most serious world. They are two totally different games. My GoG version came with dos box loaded, and it played but barely. The graphics were extremely grainy and poor. I saw utube vids of extremely nice looking graphics so it can be done, im sure by tweaking dos box, but I couldnt find a way. the worst bit was the 3d mechanic of turning by using your mouse to pan left or right. the spin was too fast and even using the game option to slow it did not work. ended up having to use arrow keys to turn and limit my mouse exploration to just in the middle of the screen. aggravating! Pretty soon I was immersed in a game that harkened back to the days of Myst. A fully engrossing story played out in bits and bobs as you explored the many worlds and areas. Lots of notes, (yes, i made my own pen and paper ones) movie clips, animated environment. It was sublime. The music adds to the feeling of immersionl. The acting was great with a cameo from one of my fav char actors. The puzzles ranged from complex to just find the needed part to fit into a machine. All were captivating. The bad: hard to control that spinning, even at the end I was thrown for spins just trying to get from one part to the other. Hard hot spots to see, I had to resort to a walkthru a few times only to find out that a hotspot i clicked a million times didnt work unless you clicked in a certain teeny spot. Other times a color on the screen didnt match a walk thrus correct version. if you can get past that clunky 3d UI and be ready for some hotspot searching then this game will reward you with an experience nothing short of wonderful.
