I expected: a road-trip through the easter block around the fall of the Iron curtain. I got: The closest I can say, that it is a car management rougelike (?) game (?) Your uncle gave you some parts, from which you can slap together your very own Laika (based on the real life Trabant), and then you can take him through the block. I'm not sure why. I have no idea what the goal is First: real Trabants blow these Laikas out of the water. I get that this is a game, but our car seems to be ACTUALLY made out of paper - ENTIRELY Gameplay: consists of very slow driving sequences, and stops at gas stations or towns. The roads: The driving's off. It feels like it's rotating rather than turning. You can shoot your car out by tapping forward. It's also hard to comprehend the place and size of your car in the world. You're sitting at a weird angle, the strange field of view, nonfunctional rearview mirrors, and the lack of shading on your car or other objects make it easy to run into things. (voicovers'd also help: I crashed many time becasue i had to read subs) At cities + stations you can buy stuff to fix or upgrade your car and sell junk you find on the open road. + you can stay at hotels. It's all about micromanagement. Your trunk hold is very limited, so most times you'll take stuff out, reorganizie, and put everything back. Repeat. Sell trash, buy repairs, and MAYBE get an upgrade if you still have some cash (everything breaks down in your car in minutes, most of the times you wont). Though the game promises proc. generated routes, it's all for naught. There is nothing and noone of interest on the roads or in cities. everything and everyone's just brown-grey cardoard boxes. Also, you have 1 save slot, and can only save when quitting. I'm not sure if it's a bug but whenever I save and leave I start from my garage. Since I don't have goals, I guess that's okay, but still. All in all: if slowly ugrading a terrible car in limbo is your kind of tea, then this game's for you.
DOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!
Frictional games does first person horror stuff with realistic physics puzzles. That's their jam. Still, in this VERY nieche genre, it's not evident, what makes a game great. This is a very personal opinion here, which says: this is better than their best known game: Amnesia. Amnesia is a pretty well refined gothic, survival horror adventure with a great emphasis on storytelling and elegant, gothic mood. Penumbra is a very uneven, modern Lovecrafian survival horror adventure with great emphasis on isolation and cold, oppressing mood. For Wahtever reason, Amnesia Never scared the crap out of me (there was a part in Penumbra:Black Plage where I was so startled, I literally jumped). It was always tense, but the old castle and the gimmicky "sanity meter" always reminded me that I'm playing a prettty cheesy game. Penumbra on the other hand always felt demanding, suffocating, bare-bones and cold. This trilogy takes place in a contemporary, abandoned, polar research and mining facility. Out there, there's only freezing to death, so you can only go deeper and deeper. That alone makes the game way scarier for me. It is interesting to see how the game mechanics change from game to game in these 3 installations. The first one is clunky as hell. Some puzzles and sequences are very unfair, but that uncertainity only makes the game more frightening. The next game is much more refined, it is also clear when or where and how you can defend yourself against certain spooks, but that also makes it a tad bit more "mechanic", more predictable. The main story also ends here. The third game has a much larger emphasis on puzzles. I think, even thogh the first one was the free demo (amazing value there!), this one feels the most demo-ish of the three. It's also the buggiest by far. That's one thing to mention in favor of this series. Up until Requiem, these games are pretty damn stable. Amnesia is still buggy and flimsy as all hell, but these games run quite perfectly.
As other have said before, the visual design of this game is based on the works of Giger, but even moreso on that of Polish painter Beksiński. And the guy who made the art for this game seems to be a huge fan. An insanely talented and unbelievably enthusiastic fan. All screens are about to collapse under the amount of detail to be seen. When your character picks up a small object and you see an ingame closeup cutscene for about 2 seconds, that little clip has the same amount of work put into as all the big setpieces. It's absolutely mental. Compared to this, the actual plot, the gameplay, and the endings just fall a little short. - While there are fascinating characters in the story, you don't get to know them all that well. Most things just get glanced over, and the whole thing's over in about two hours. - The puzzles are usually extremely easy or don't really make sense (or include pixelhunting in a universe you have no idea what's supposed to be what). The logic puzzles are cool though, and pretty well integrated to the gameworld and gameplay. Could've been somewhat harder. - There is a good and a bad ending. You can mess up the game ten minutes in, and you can only get the bad one. The good one of the other hand differs so little, it's not rewarding at all to replay the whole game just for this. I like how it tries to play around with morality and you can eventually see some of the viewpoints of the negative characters and vice-versa, but it's not the most developed idea here. Should you play this then ? Yes! it is short and bittersweet, but don't expect anything revolutionary - even though the graphics might lead to to believe you should.
3,5/5 It's a good game. Not a great one, but very few are. It's hard but fair, the gunplay is good, and the puzzles are satisfying. It also makes you feel relative freedom to use your special abilites the way you see fit. First of all, yes, it is a bit pricey. I bought it at a sale though, so that's fine. Also, the game hints at a pretty ridiculous and over the top gameworld, yet it somehow mostly lacks humour and it is VERY narrow linear. Our gimmick-weapon does a LOT more than in Half life2 for exaple, but none of it's features are utilized to their full potential. But it takes a VERY long time to even get to it. the first few missions are just regular run'n'gun levels and they are a bore. Also, maybe it's just me, but after a while, most of the intrigue just wore off, and I had to realise that for most situations I HAVE to use certain assets - i had no legroom to play around. Making the upgrade system less than satisfying. Also, the puzzles are few, and they mostly just stops the game in it's pace, making it very uneven. All in all, a pretty good game, still miles ahead than most shooters nowadays, but as it is a mixed bag regardig its gameplay, it is also on regarding it's quality.
First of all, Full throttle is one of my all time favorites. It's a cinematic, well written and refreshingly well paced adventure with a very simple interface and mostly logical puzzles - most of which are designed to actually drive the plot onward. It's a "lite" adventure game, but a "grand" adventure itself. The gripes with the game is usually the length and the lame action minigames. Well, For me the length for this STORY is perfect. Instead of dragging it out, they decided to make it tight and compact. That is to be admired in my opinion. For those who mope about the action sequences: they're very easy and they ALL can be done in about 5 minutes if you know what you're doing. It's not even a waste of time, you're blowing it entirely out of proportion. The remaster however... could've gone better. First of all, it is kind of buggy: Some graphical glitches has been reported, the music and sound sometimes cuts out and at certain parts, seems to be out of sync with the picture, and - as it happened with a couple of other people as well - the and credit list was entirely missing in my playthrough. Furthermore, a couple of things which I was hoping for, but didn't get (these are more like missed opportunities): The whole of the soundtrack - the songs themselves aren't included. I bet it's a contractual problem, but still, it's too bad. Updated animation - when someone's whole head consists of three pixels, you can get away with more limited animation. Not so much here. The animation seemed to be almost Disney-like back than, now, the same amount of frames with better resolution is just a little choppy. Remade artwork - what we see here is practically the old artwork "traced" and "vectorized". Again, with the high definition, the lines look a bit bulky and digital. The BG's are nice, but they should've been painted more like actual paintings. That's what the of look suggested. Better 3d elements - in the old version they kinda popped off. Now, they really do.
... It run with solid 60 fps without any lag or stuttering. This game, on the other hand? Wow. Single digit framerate is the norm. At times it gets so bad, it absolutely screws up your timed events. AND since it is a telltale game, all action bits are timed events. The game is in a very sorry state as it is right now. I have no idea who the are programmers at Telltale, but they need to be replaced (seriously, the last time I met such a broken mess, that game I just could get running and when I did it deleted my saves from ANOTHER game - and that was Walking Dead Season II.)
