I was hesitant to get this game until it was deeply discounted since the reviews were all bad. But the reviews are a little misleading and there's one thing that I found 50% of the way through that I wish I had known earlier. I like Frogwares' other Sherlock games a lot. PRO: - If you skip all the garbage action scenes (there's a skip button!) the game is basically fine as an adventure game - There is a FIRST PERSON mode, which transforms the experience. The game world comes much more alive somehow. I play on all settings maxed and the world looks great in First Person. But kind of meh in 3rd. - The overall presentation is still good; decent voice acting & production values CON: - The action elements are garbage. You can't make an Uncharted game if you don't have an Uncharted budget. Just skip them and the game is OK. There's a Aztec level bois!!! Skip button. - The cases are pretty weak overall. The first ~3 I thought were interesting but they seem to become more cinematic as you get to the end. - The character models are horrible. No one looks British, lip-sync is wonky, Sherlock's outfits are ridiculous. The disguise system makes it even worse. - Of all the garbage mini games I thought the lock picking was actually pretty interesting. But skipped it anyway. Just skip all the action scenes and the game is decent and reminds you of the old Sherlock.
So great to randomly see this on GOG. There are plenty of "you're an AI moving around cameras" games but this one is the best. If we had Observation + Tacoma we'd have the best space walking simulator. PROs: - Insane graphics (and made with Unity!) most of this game looks like a life action movie. Whenever you see people you get uncanny valley, but otherwise it has this great CCTV effect - Voice acting and music set the atmosphere - Game doesn't help you navigate. You need to learn the station a little bit - Short enough to do fast but not short enough to be short - You need to navigate in 360 degrees and its mostly fine - I love puzzles where you need to find codes or write stuff down CONs: - Same puzzles over and over - Unoriginal story - The notes left around the station don't have any cool revelations - It's linear but it's telling a story
I'm deducting 2 stars because the game at its core has major issues. But I added 3 stars for the amazing artwork. Minor spoilers below Pros: - Story is OK. It's cyberpunk-y and insane. Fits the game - A lot of techy and geeky, real world references. - 50%+ of the inventory is never used. You pick up a lot of junk and that's kind of refreshing - Some of the game's locations are clever - Artwork is in the top pixel art ever. There are some fantastic detailed cutscenes - Game is pretty LONG! Cons: - The MAJOR problem with the game is writing. Item and world descriptions are not enough to help you understand WTF is going on. If the game were rewritten to include more clever language to help players advance, it would likely fix a lot of the plot and puzzle problems. For example: you find a "locker" that is "flat and magnetically sealed" but then you use a wrench to open it. Why can't there be some description somewhere that hints that a wrench-like tool opens the locker? - Second main flaw is the puzzle design. Many many puzzles are just craziness. For example: poison someone's food, to get a guy to take out the trash, to literally make another guy look away for 1 second so you can put something in a certain place while he's not looking. - Game is text-only. So you have AAA visuals and AAA music but no voices/narration? - Finally while it's awesome that there are many locations some just look out of place, almost as if there was a second game that was never made so those assets were flipped for this game. - Many bad adventure game tropes are present including pixel hunting and finding fuses for things. The pixel hunting is what drove me to use a walkthrough at some point.
This looks like the developers finished the art assets before they even had a full game outline. This is basically Bioshock without any action. I played a few hours and stopped at the first "Chase" sequence. PROS: Exceptional artwork if your device can handle it Really big areas. Game feels like one long sequence without loading Voice acting is OK CONS: - very weak story mostly told through scraps of paper - world is sterile and uninteractive - collectables are just scraps of paper
I played Syberia 1 and 2 and got this one despite the crap reviews. And I played <60 minutes and deleted it after. So - this is a review based on a very short impatient play time. Good- ? The first mini-game puzzle was well made I thought. Bad - ? 1. I don't remember anything about the other games. Why don't they remind players? What is the character's motivation? Where is she and why? (also Who is she?) 2. You see a little boy with a 60 yr old's voice. You see a 60 yr old with a 15 yr old's voice. It's like every voice is wrong. Takes you right out of the game. 3. very annoying movement and UI - this is a 2d game in a 3d engine. Stick to one! 4. the lighting appears to be fully baked instead of a mix. So you go into rooms that's COMPLETELY black and every character is dark. 5. The first main room is circular but it's so difficult to understand depth because of the camera. I'm searching for tiny black doorways! 6. Can't appear to skip dialogue, UI has little topic loading animations. Subtitles scroll in a tiny box instead of appear like every normal subtitle ever (by small readable chunks) Summary: this literally looks like one of those Kickstarter games that raised $5m but was a scam so you get some asset flip garbage.
Summary: this is the only game in my 30 yrs of playing that I finished and immediately started again and 100% enjoying. Experience is planescape torment without combat + oxenfree without characters. Very mature themes and really good. Positive: - Presentation (art, sound, voice) is 100%. This isn't just Baldur's game reskinned - the art direction is deep and thoughtful - Story design / narration - this isn't just a dialogue tree game with 2 characters. The main character's thoughts (and skill points) are actually secondary characters and Kim is kind of the foundation/root. So in a traditional top down RPG you have central character and several minor characters, who support the story. If you don't have a minor character in your party you don't get their input/actions. In DE if you don't have a certain skill level you don't get that skill's input. So changing your build changes the game significantly. - There's literally no combat, it's replaced with dialogues. My first character had 2hp. - The main character is awesomely designed Negatives: - Kind of hard to explain this but the main plot is a critical path. It does not change, and your role is to unfold the plot via your character build. So you can be a really bad detective and still finish - this is by design but I think that's the only major weakness of the game. - the first 2-3 hours of the game, players need more hand holding.
Summary: i'm negative about this game because it's a totally wasted potential. 100% disappointed. This is literally, they autogenerated a big map in UE4 and spent 1 week adding notes taken from wikipedia pages about paranormal events in Russia. Layer in some TurboSquid models and animations and one voice recording session. Overall this is crap - the developers i think set out to make a Stalker type game and came out with a UE4 tech demo. Positives - artwork is great! the opening part had my full attention and excitement for 5 minutes! - the autosave system is nice Negatives: - if this game had some sort of tutorial scene, some kind of set up, anything... - you are thrown into a huge map with little guidance and the gameplay is walking from hotspot to hotspot to get some piece of paper with some cryptic crap on it. That's the whole game - there are random monsters on the map with AI from 1992
Summary: Decent, pretty exploration game you can finish in a long evening. Positives: - everything is voiced - artwork is great. This is the first exploration game where they nailed /some/ 3D characters - if this game were longer than 3-4 hours, i would not have made it - the dialogue tree system is refreshing - overall the feeling of the game is really cool; is the main character going crazy? was he always crazy? i liked that negatives: - Story is so predictably obvious in some places and completely under developed in others. And the underdeveloped parts seem more important than the completely obvious, cliche parts - the main character is a loser - there's a journal system that isn't used at all - the only character that's always on screen is terribly animated when she talks.
Positives: - art direction is great - i love lighting the plenty lanterns, candles, etc - fully voiced dialogues - included hint system is helpful negatives: - i've played all these puzzles before - cliche boring story - tedious progress --- disclaimer - i played through about half of this, stopped and deleted it. really boring, no payoff
