This game is a labor of love by first-time german developers from Filmakademie Baden-Würtenberg - namely "Studio Fizbin". It's rare that a developer gets a game this right, but from absolute newcomers, this is quite a marvel. I wont write about what the game's about, rather on how it works, and what it's like. The game's as oldschool as it gets. Have you played any old-school point&click adventures? You'll fell at home. Also, as opposed to something like "The Book of Unwritten Tales", they seem to only take the "good" elements from those games, and build theirs frome those blocks (no horrific action-sequences, pixel hunting, timed events, sudden deaths, etc). On the other hand, this game offers practically nothing new. It's a very nice looking, celverly written story with an interesting world and a nice cartoony design and fun and varied puzzles. Tha said, it's not "eye-poppingly" beautiful, it's a pretty contrived story, and all these puzzles are vey familiar form older games. Still, a very solid, and confidently made game with great humor and likeable characters. While there's nothing groundbraking about it, it does what it sets out to do pretty much flawlessly. If you like the genre, this is going to be an enjoyable addition to your library. About the two negative aspects that seem to pop up: - Personally I haven't run into any technical issues myself. Maybe I have a different setup, but I encountered no bugs at all. That doesn't mean you wont either, I guess it's different for each one of us and can't be objectively dismissed. - There's nothing mysoginistic about this game. At all. That can be objectively dismissed.
The main reason I bought the collector's edition is the Artbook which supposedly comes with it. As of now, it's nowhere to be found within the goodies.
Rejoice! The high lord or urban-fantasy has graced us one again with an excepional piece of art! Hurray! But seriously, for the one's who like Dave Gilbert's work, I think this is one of his best. Not AS good as Blackwell (than again, not many games are), but comes pretty close. His strength lies in creating memorable characters and scenarios in an evironment he clearly loves, with a touch of magic. All in all, a brilliant story in a very streamlined game, which actually connects to the Blackwell series. The artwork is beautiful, the music is great, and the "choice-based" gameplay actually has some outcomes within, and doesn't feel nearly as manipulaitve as any Telltale game I played recently. Now, let's talk about some of the few problems: The most frequent criticism: the "silent protaginist". It not only makes sense in a practical level, but from the very first scene, it shows that it might make sense in a conceptual and narrative level - and it does. The protagonist, being a blank slate is part of the story. It works this way. The other characters, while mostly lovely, imaginative and well defined, tend to fall back to their "defining trait" and talk in circles about it. A bestower who happens to be an ex alcoholic? Half of his lines refer to his old drinking habits. We get it. We can move on. A fire-mage? He'll talk about fire a lot more than needed. The worst culprit is Vicki the cop, who cops like no other, and cops day and night and always and only cops like there's no tomorrow. Did I mention she's a cop? The puzzles and interface are so streamlined, I never really had to think once about solving problems. The game had a great flow, but harder tasks would've lead to greater feeling of accomplishment and a stonger connection with your character. The animation in the game is a little uneven - making the more dramatic moments a little silly looking here and there. Despite all these issues, The Unavowed is still one of the best adventures of recent times.
Hidden object games came a long way. I recall how shallow they used to be early on - for my Mom's a big fan of the genre and I witnessed the evolution of it second hand. Terrors from the deep, for exaple has an intricate - albeit not expertly told - story, aimed specifically toawrds the "mom"' demographic. Well done! This one's on the other hand... well, even the title is only third-way true. This is a tiny game, but there's no story to speak of and while it starts with a tiny >poof<, it only goes out with a whimper. The "plot" is that this little planet fell apart into puzzle pieces and you have to put it back together. You obtain these pieces on beautifully painted, little, multiscreen areas (though if everything went bang, I don't know how this works). While the art style is charming, the places are curiously devoid of life. These adorable little characters you see on the screencaps are merely bio-scenery, they tell you exactly one clue for one puzzle they sit next to, and that's all there is to them. Tha game mainly cosnist of you looking for puzzle pieces and objects to open up other areas to look for some more puzzle pieces. They tried to vary it up by you have to build machines and such, but 80% of the playthrough is still just pixel hunting. There are occasional puzzles thrown in which are very welcome, but they're also very easy (only once had I use a clue, and it only confused me). I think the developers tried to follow Amanita's design, but the world, story and characters they created are just hollow and uninteresting. Nothing feel accomplished in the end. Once you beat the game, you're greeted with a screen where all these "colorful characters" sit together (the same way the did apart in the game), and you're allowed to chose to solve all the puzzles in the game again at your leisure. I guess this might be a fun distraction for young kids on a tablet during a long roadtrip, where even Grandma can help them through the "harder" parts. That's it.
This is an overly simplistic, dumb, unoriginbal, very basic, way too short and mostly charmless game. And yet, it is at least functional. I don't know how many of you played the previous bubsy titles, but the last two ones were virtually unplayable (Bubsy for the jaguar, and especially Bubsy 3D). The first couple of Bubsy games for the 16 bit consoles were mediocre, low effort cashgrabs trying to ride current trends. This game really reminds me of them. Back then, it was the "animal mascot with MAJOR ATTITÜÜÜDE!!!" thing they tried to emulate, now it it's the " 'member this? 'member the ninetiiiieeees? (and eightiiiies?)" wave of nostalgia. Again, in typical Bubsy fashion, it comes waaay too late to the party and offers nothing new. There's nothing functionally wrong with this one, there's just absolutely no reason to play it, let alone cash out 25 dollars for it. Here are some platformers you can buy for about the same amount of money each, here on GOG: Ori and the Blind Forest, Shovel Knight, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, Cuphead, Hob, Aegis Defenders, Oddworld: New ’n’ Tasty, or even freakin' OWLBOY. Buy any one of thos insted, or if you'd be okay with an older game, then all the platformers here are cheaper than this and many of them are better than Bubsy.
A game that's been compared to monkey island more than once, but this is a beast of a very different nature. Monkey's a pont'n'click adventure. This is not. Eric the Unready is basically an illustrated text adventure. You may pont and click together sentences from the (optional) wordboxes on the left, but you can just turn those off and play zhe game entirely via typing. I guess the other reason for the comparison is the very meta, Douglas Amads-ish humor, full of modern day references, nerdiness and fourth wall breaking. but this is the part where Eric goes off the rails into unfiltered nerdcore. In most games, you have a story, which the authors light up with jokes, funny characters or geek references, But in Eric's case, this process' clearly started on the other end. I mean, there is a plot (you clumsy mcnobody, yet you must save princess), but tit takes a backseat to the jokes (the episodic nature of the story pushes things even further). This game references EVERYTHING under the sun from Trek, to Zork, wether it makes sence in the given situation or not. It's not saying that it's like a friedberg-seltzer movie. because it' really, genuinely funny at times, but the amount of winking, nudging and overall (and overwhelming) nerdiness can really get under one's skin. The gameplay's perfectly fine, the quests you do are solveable, they're usually based on pretty funny setups and - in keeping with the parody tone - you usually beat them by at least paritally failing. If I played this when I was around 12, I think I'd loved it. As a grown ass man, this makes me think of more innocent, nerdier times in gaming, but the kind of humour the game bombards me with, makes me bury my face in my palms.
I have to give them this. From the first minute this game had me inrtigued. Though there's an "intro" sequence, it's already interactive, you're being dropped in the middle of the action right away... In the middle of the adventure, so to speak. The game consists of puzzles which can usually be solved by hunt around for clues and then watching a scene play out. Simple, but kind of pixel-hunty. Exploration is mandatory then. Oh, and if you quit the game, you'll probably have to do some of it all over again, since the game only has autosave. Only after certain events occur in the plot. Let me repeat it: An exploration based game only saves when the plot advances. This is utter madness. That said, this is one of the smoothest running games I've came across. While tellate batman stutters and cuts into an uplayable mess due to terrible programming, this semi-open world game just sails on beautifully.
