Obscuritas makes lofty claims of advanced technology to create a custom-tailored horror experience. How it would do this, I can only imagine, sadly, since the game crashes for me whenever I try to go through literally the first door. This is an unplayable mess. Even without CTD issues, the game lacks any semblance of polish, and looks like a school project. The first five minutes or so is a "cutscene" where you literally look at the back of a girl's head while she reads a letter. Then, we get a credit sequence where we literally just watch a train go through a countryside that could have been on a N64 game. Why couldn't the narration have taken place during this same credit sequence? Clearly zero thought was put into this. I am perfectly ready to forgive inferior graphics in an indie game, even a few bugs. But what little I was able to play is just laughably inept. If you do wind up playing this, I hope you pay a nickel for it because that's about all it's worth unless these ridiculous stability issues get fixed. Don't forget to hold down the shift button while holding still and watch your character run in place! Press the jump button to hop six inches off the floor--pay attention to your character's shadow, now. She achieves this jump without bending her knees or moving her legs at all! Amazing! This game gets one star, but really deserves zero stars. It isn't even finished. And GOG, you let this embarrassment on your site? For shame. At least it's better than Steam where this thing has tons of fraudulent positive reviews.
Where can I start? Let me start by admitting that I have never, ever beaten the final boss. That said, I have logged hours and hours on this game. I just can't get enough! As great fan of D&D since the 90s, I have never found a game that was as true to the real experience of playing the actual game on pen-and-paper. The complete list of character options, the TURN BASED gameplay, the ruthless difficulty... I love Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, but always wondered, "Why did they all have to be played in real-time?" The turn-based combat scratches that peculiar itch when I really wish I was playing D&D with friends, but alas, it isn't Sunday, Monday, Wednesday or Saturday, so I need to wait. Another thing I wonder is when video games stopped treating me like an adulut. ToEE has something NWN could have used: consequences. Hard decisions. Real, nail-biting suspense when your fate is in the hands of the dice, and if things go sour before your next turn you'll have to roll a new character. On the downside, there are bugs. Lots of bugs. And a lot of unfair slights. For example, don't ever take any exotic weapon proficiencies, nor Weapon Focus: Dwarven Waraxe. Because you'll never find magic Dwarven Waraxes. Not even masterwork ones you can enchant. It seems weird giving 3 stars to a game I've spent so much time with. It could have been the perfect game, if it had received more care and time before being rushed to release.
The fact that I am literally typing this review with a soiled tissue in hand attests to the emotional impact To the Moon. It's funny, touching, melancholy and brave all at once, and it is a testament to the strength of interactive media for telling stories. Only some minor flaws make me hesitate to give it that fifth star; namely some awkward interface and control features, and annoying sprites that look like you should be able to walk over them but instead you bump into them... These things slowed me down somewhat but as I said they were small details and did not lessen the weight of the story, which is unique, honest and truly brilliant. I also appreciated some comic-relief jokes poking fun at the 16-bit genre, and even some references to modern pop- and pulp-culture which are unusual in this kind of game. I just played through it in less than an afternoon, with only one water break to replenish the fluids lost through my eyes and nose. The length is just perfect, and most players should be able clear it one sitting; the price is about the same as a movie ticket, and the game about twice as long as a typical movie, so I say it's a good value! It should be noted there is virtually NO challenge involved--To the Moon is about 1% game and 99% storytelling. Puzzles are a negligible aspect, and there are a couple arcade-style sequences but they are of extremely low difficulty and are used more for comic effect. Instead of a typical gaming experience you should approach this game prepared to ride along in a finely crafted story. I believe interactive media is the future of storytelling, and games of this caliber affirm that belief.
I'm not sure which parts are included in the original game and which are only in the director's cut; I only played the director's cut. I was immediately immersed while playing as Nicole--I found the story engaging and the puzzles challenging. There was a good balance of puzzle solving and dialogue scenes that kept me interested in both. Then, enter George Stobbart. George ambles around Paris for a good long time, meeting all sorts of quirky and loveable characters... and that's about it. I came to a realization shortly after flying to Ireland that each scene left me less and less motivated to continue. The story, while interesting, contained either too little suspense or too little action. I will praise Broken Sword for the writing, the funny dialogue and the endless supply of oddball characters. Unfortunately, I need more than just conversations with likeable people to keep me intrigued. With the sudden disappearance of any and all puzzles after I took control of Stobbart, what started as an effervescent delight steadily lost its fizz, until I altogether lost interest in finishing.
Recently after becoming a member here I picked up Sanitarium not knowing much about it. And boy, am I glad I did! Where to start? In opposite fashion to the game, I'll start at the surface and work deeper. (You'll get it if you beat the game.) The graphics are good. The visuals are beautiful when they need to be, disturbing when they need to be--actually, they're usually both at once. Personally, I think too much graphical detail in a point-n'-click can distract from the story and dialogue, but Sanitarium walks the line with near-perfection. The real artistry of this game is that all the visuals tie in directly with the story--often literally but more often than not figuratively. Together with an appropriately unnerving soundtrack, the result is an experience which engrosses and invests you in an emotionally complex story that goes from terrifying to weird to sad to beautiful to... weird again... and then to... well, just play the game; you'll see what I mean. All this would be lost if it wasn't for unique puzzles, perfectly calibrated to the abilities of the average adventure gamer (I only used a walk-through twice). The majority of the puzzles were just hard enough to make cheer out loud and pat myself on the back when I figured them out, with a few that were difficult enough to keep me stumped for a long time (Ok, I'll admit, I used the walk-through three times). The dream-like logic of these five bizarre worlds allows the game to explain away some of the odd combinations of items which many puzzle-based games use. Most important to me in a game, Sanitarium tells a good story; but not only that, it tells it in an incredibly unique and effective way. Any game that can get such a strong emotional reaction from me gets four stars easy. The fifth star is for exciting my intellect with puzzles that made me feel good about myself.
The Legend of Grimrock tells the story of four captive heroes, banished to the depths of a dungeon from which they must escape... or perish. But even if they manage to get out, where will they go? They're fugitives, and can't return home--a perfect metaphor for the old-school gamers who want this game to recapture the glory days of dungeon crawling. I played Eye of the Beholder as a youngster, and was lured to Grimrock by promises of a new adventure with an old-school heart. Now, I'm not saying it's a dud because it isn't Eye of the Beholder--but after reading page after page of rave 5-star reviews (There are seriously over a hundred of them,) I am convinced that this game uses some glamer spell to convince older gamers that they're actually playing their childhood favorite for the first time again. Somehow I passed my Will save, and my disappointment was bitter indeed. The class system was intriguing enough--though I woefully miss the presence of a healing class--having two warriors in my party gave me a chance to explore two different builds, and found them each pretty satisfying. I actually found myself wishing I had a second rogue so I could see what some of the other skill progressions were like. The system for spellcasting is actually intensely gratifying: Your mage has a grid of runes and you select the correct combination for the desired spell. It's time-intensive and rewards you for accurately remembering the spells under pressure. This is the kind of innovation I was promised, and sadly one of the few I actually found. And the problem is that your character only learns spells when you do--sounds cool, but you learn spells by picking up scrolls which are a fixed locations throughout the dungeon. So be sure to put a few ranks in fire magic at level 1 if you don't want your wizard to stand around with his hands in his pockets during EVERY fight on the first couple floors. "Hey, good luck with the weird slug monster, guys. I'd have a smoke while you take care of that, but I can't even light up because I learned ice magic like a dumbass." Speaking of fights, they're terrible. During the first bleak moments after their internment in this terrible cave, I found myself, as many more generous reviewers put it, "Instantly immersed." I bonded and empathized with these four complete strangers, and truly wondered if they would ever see home again. But by the time of my billionth encounter with the spear-wielding skeletons who eat Chuck Norris and poop out the Juggernaut, circle strafing till I could see the wood grain of my desk through where the D and S keys used to be, I was only worried about myself--I was actually afraid I'd die of boredom before my two warriors became gray skulls, and my clothy and archer were forced to swing with their little arms in order to survive. The way the game forces you ration healing supplies is challenging and pretty fun--except for the spider level, where you WILL need to consume at least *at least* one antidote potion per arduous encounter to get both your warriors alive to the next. I've heard gamers talk about "grinding," but I didn't realize they meant the grinding of my teeth. Once he uses up that last anti-poison root, hands go back into the mage robe pockets, since ole Mudrolor the Wise spent all his mana like a fiend, spamming the one ice spell he knows in a desperate attempt to bring the misery of combat to a slightly quicker end. The only respite from the wildly difficult, invariably repetitive combat is the puzzle solving, which ranges from mildly boring to mind-numbingly boring. At one point you actually open a door by winning a staring contest with a statue. He never blinks, he just gets up and leaves to go do something more interesting. And then there's my favorite, and apparently the designers' as well: can you find the pull-chain? "Uh, I dunno, is it this one next to the door? Well, jee wiz!" Look, it's a decent dungeon crawl, if you don't mind a majority of uninspired, easy puzzles (okay, a handful of them gave me a hard time,). The main downfall is that the combat is a perfect storm of awkward controls, boring repetition and relentless difficulty. I realize this is a lengthy review, but I wanted to thoroughly explain why I disagree with the hype surrounding this game. Plus, I figured this article would be so buried under stacks of undeserved praise for this game that no one will probably ever read it. I think I see about a dozen new 5-star reviews posted in the time it took me to type this.
