First, the good: -The puzzles were by and large reasonable and entertaining. -Nostalgia 90's graphics -Decent voice acting -Each character is played in their own limited environment, which was a successful way to limit the traditional problem of "wandering around forever to figure out what's there before you actually play the game." The bad: -As others noted, its pretty buggy. I didn't encounter anything game breaking, but it did break immersion. -As others noted, the game really requires using a walkthrough to complete. Not because the puzzles are hard, but because there's game mechanics that are never explained in-game that dictate if you can complete the game. Example: That book you start with in your inventory? Don't ever look at it to see what it is, or you can't win. The ugly: The worst part of this game is that as much as it pitches itself as having "adult themes," it's really juvenile in its writing. It tries to be edgy, but only accomplishes a shallow pulling together of overused tropes. The characters never get a chance to feel relatable, and the redemption arc of each is so rushed as to feel forced and unbelievable. The story plays like an outline to be filled out later with actual depth and development, but never is. Throughout playing this game, I just found myself bored and disconnected, occasionally rolling my eyes at the cartoonish chaotic-evil villainy of AM, who also happens to be the only character with consistent, understandable motivation and personality.
The graphics, controls, and puzzle are nice. But the characters are just unrelatable, not very good people so you can never get behind their motivations. The ending is also weird and doesn't seem in harmony with the rest of the characters attitude throughout the game. This is a shorter review, but there wasn't much substance in this game to really review.
I was curious about this game. Somehow growing up a 90's adventure kid, I never knew about Grim Fandango. And yet everyone loved it and reviewed it as one of the greatest of all time. So I figured I'd give it a go. Well, as the title says, I was underwhelmed. -The entire game is based around the Hispanic "Dia de los muertos" mythology. Which would be fine if they ever took a moment to explain it. But they don't. So half the game's setting, references, hints, and clues are completely lost on a non-Hispanic player. Luckily, Pixar has since released "Coco," which somewhat caught me up to speed. -Graphics are really poor. I was surprised for a 1998 game, just how bad they were. I guess they were somewhat caught up in the late-90's craze of trying to do blocky 3-d characters, and it just looks bad. -Character motivations make no sense. The entire story revolves around the fact the main character (Manny) falls in love with a girl he met for a grand total of 20 minutes. I looked like they may unfold that story a bit, perhaps they knew each other in a previous life? But no resolution is every provided. He's irresistibly in love only because the plot needs him to be. Looking at the villains, the game goes so far as to even make a joke at the end that their motivations make no sense, and all their evil schemes serve no purpose whatsoever other than as plot devices. -The puzzles are some of the most obtuse/ridiculous I've ever seen in an adventure game. Early in the game, you have to use a stapler. The stapler is never shown on screen. It is never mentioned in conversation. Even when you try to give the item to the person who ultimately has the stapler, you have to be standing in the right spot for it to work. Otherwise it doesn't. What the heck? And puzzles like this were constant. Okay, I still gave this 2 stars. The good: -Voice Acting was awesome. -Game was well-paced and laid out. -Glottis is very loveable. But it's not enough. Score: C-
I'm a total adventure game buff who can't get enough of these 90s games. So I was excited to finally get to knock off my list the illustrious "Sam and Max", famous for being a genre-defining game. I... was significantly disappointed. The game itself probably took me a month to finish because it was so dull, I rarely had the drive to pick it back up and make some more progress. There's virtually no story here-- You start with "Find the Bigfoot," and then you do a bunch of mindless tasks, until you find the Bigfoot. The entire appeal of the game is supposed to be around its humor, but it was severely lacking. This game's definition of humor is, "A bunch of jerks being jerks." Almost every single character in this game was a bad person, making them unrelatable and cringeworthy. Puzzles definitely skewed more towards the "Moon Logic" end of the spectrum. My favorite was when Sam identified an object as, "That is a completely useless object." that was actually critical to the game. Can't recommend this game. Glad its done with.
Okay. Here's the game. Firstly, don't make the mistake I did and select "1-player game." in the menu options. You're supposed to select "campaign" to get any explanation of what the heck the game is. Then, here is your game. Select your "Hero." Click "explore region." Click 'e' to end turn. Click Okay. Repeat. If you find something exploring, select Attack! Click F10 to quick battle (the computer gives you nicer results than if you do it yourself, and you'll save yourself days of work.) And repeat. Hundreds and hundreds of times. If you finish exporing the region you're in, move to the one next to you, and do it again. This game gets two stars because it looks pretty, the UI controls are easy to pick up, and it was a nice distraction until I realized the game wasn't going anywhere. Lost about 8 hours to this clickbait.
This entire game: Hold down your left mouse button. Make slight mouse adjustments to move around the screen. And that's the next 2 hours of your life, depending on how long you last before you give up bored. There's a little variety in that between levels, you can invest your winnings into upgrading your ship. The end result is you shoot blue dots instead of red dots. Yay. On and On, Level after level. Just... shooting anything that moves. Or more accurately, watching anything that moves get shot, because holding down a button can hardly be described as "shooting." I'm at a loss to explain how this game has such high reviews. Order a pizza. Watch a movie. Play Tic Tac To with yourself. Go do something better with your life.
In Shadowrun: Dragonfall, you are a Shadowrunner that has moved to the Flux State of Berlin to help your buddy with a job. Except, no one tells you what a Shadowrunner is. In fact, in the course of the entire game, it never explains the thing the entire game is named after, beyond, "Someone who runs in the shadows." Well that's sure helpful. As best I can tell, it just means "mercenary." People pay you to kill people. [Oh, and don't learn Shadowrunner etiquette. Because despite your character being a Shadowrunner, and the name of the game being Shadowrun, the skill is *never once* used in the game.] They also never explain what a "Flux State" is. Basically it means there is no government. Except when there is to wrap up convenient plot holes. Anyway, the game starts with an quick job that turns complicated when one of your team dies from a failed attempt at computer hacking. Apparently in this universe, people take user interfacing very seriously. You then enter into your first combat situation, without any tutorial from the game on how to fight. Or any manual, because the game literally doesn't have one. But you eventually figure it out because, well, otherwise you die, so you get lots of practice until you trial-and-error your way into the next scene. One of the first things you learn about combat is that in this game, *you* are the storm trooper. While your enemies are blasting you away, your accuracy lies somewhere around 20%. Good luck. With that all having been said, this game, with all its flaws, was surprisingly enjoyable. It takes a few hours to figure out what the heck is going on, but after that learning curve, it's a somewhat charming, if not linear, storyline the captures the interest. The characters are mostly a bunch of selfish adolescent jerks, so not very relatable, but have enough background to be engaging. They did a good job of making it plot-driven, so I kept coming back to find out what happened next in the story.
I got this game because I love adventure games, and you can't beat free. However, I had low expectations going in. I was pleasantly surprised. The game was really fun, with fun puzzles, likeable characters, a consistent story, and intuitive controls. As others have said, there are a couple puzzles that border the nonsensical, but its not any worse than any other 90s adventure game. Except maybe the pine cone... Anyway, if you like adventure games, you get more than your money's worth with this one. Definitely recommend.
In my review of the first game in this series, I panned it for being a bad game with terrible puzzles and story line. I entered this game with low expectations. Boy was I surprised. They fixed everything that was wrong in the previous game. Each screen serves a purpose. The puzzles largely make sense. Your actions are driven by the plot. The game controls were easy to use. I enjoyed playing this game. However, I can't give it 5 stars, because it didn't seem like something special. The graphics are fine for its time, but nothing stand-out. The voice acting was below-average. None of the characters are that memorable. The story wasn't particularly deep. A good, enjoyable game. But not one of the greats.
First, let me answer the questions you really have, so you don't have to waste hours looking everywhere else. 1. Should I play Chains of Satinav First? Yes. This game proceeds from the story of the first heavily enough that you'll be missing out on some of the depth of this story if you skip it. Honestly, the prequel is pretty dull, but it makes this game better. 2. My game keeps crashing! What do I do? Your problem is that your computer doesn't have enough memory. Oh sure, you may have more RAM than the system requirements lists. But this game doesn't respect its system requirements list one whit. To get this game to work, I had to manually set my page file to a minimum of 12 GB [see google for tutorial], and turn on texture compression in the game options. Only with both settings did my game work, one on its own wasn't enough. And texture compression is a two-edged sword. The higher the compression, the more horrific the performance of the game becomes. I survived with "low" to get through the game. Onto the game itself. Production values: Excellent. Music. Controls. Graphics. A+, excluding the bugginess I mentioned above. Voice Acting: They were quite clever how they handled this. It's the same voice actors from the first game, but they have a smaller role, and are in an entirely different atmosphere, which makes the incessant whininess of the first game unnoticeable int his sequel. The new characters all have excellent voice actors. Puzzles: Fun and manageable. Nothing moon logic, I enjoyed working my way through them. Story: Well constructed, solid, but probably the weak point of the game. B+. Yet, despite this pull-out-all-the-stops effort... This game was just missing something for me. It felt like I was playing a game on a computer. It didn't feel like I was whisked away to another world on my own adventure, like the true greats do. I don't know what that missing "it" factor is in this game, but it doesn't have it. Otherwise, great game.
