If you have played the other chapters you know how good these Visual Novels are but this one managed to hit me in a different way. All I say is get ready because it's this good!
I planned to play this game way back when it released but we all know by now how bugged it was when it released. Then there were the issues with different versions of Windows and newer hardware but now it's as easy as clicking play. As for the game, I'm honestly surprised because even though I have been playing games from before the time this game released there are some QOL features you just get used to and feel hard to get back to some older games. There are some some things in which it didn't age well, like the stealth, or how to use disciplines but honestly, this game is so immersive you can easily overlook these complains. Characters are nicely written, ambience is good, the quests treat you like an intelligent person. Honestly, it's quite refreshing. Also, I'd like to add that I'm a fan of the tabletop Vampire RPG and for those like me this is a must play. If you are on the fence and anything I said has picked your interest, give it a shot. If you are scared of antiquated gameplay I even advise using some console commands to give yourself a bit of money and xp and easy you in for the first playthrough.
If you are remotely interested in this game, just do yourself a favor and get it, you won't regret it. With that out of the way, let's go a little deeper. Teerraformers is a mix of colony/city builder. Pretty much a 4X game without the war. I think the thing that makes this game so good is just how well everything works together. Every mechanic balances each other very well, so you can mix and match strategies and they complement each other but this while always keeping the Mars colonizing theme. Gameplay: Easy to learn, hard to master. I honestly believe this phrase is appropriate to describe the gameplay of the game. In the early scenarios you can just kind go with the flow but as you pick harder scenarios to play you do have to plan a few steps ahead. Thee game also has a very nice tutorial. Somethings you will have to grasp on your own (terraforming is kind of complicated) but nothing that some patience can't help you grasp it. Graphics: I love how the game looks. The game feels like it's all hand drawn but with a gorgeous art. This not only boosts the visuals but performance as well. Even on my mid to low range PC I can run the game at 4K resolution while doing other stuff and it runs smooth like butter. The art for the cities, the leaders, and honestly, pretty much everything look simply fantastic. Sure, art is highly subjective but for my tastes it looks great. Sound: The music is soothing and relaxing. It really gives that space exploration vibe many of us like so much. If you play this at the end of a long day of work/study I'm sure the music alone will make you feel better. Overall this game is one of the biggest surprises I've had this year. I got it on a whim and in less then 3 days I already have more then 10 hours.
I found about this game by accident but since I do enjoy card games and roguelike/like I decided to give it a change. I have to admit that at first I was mad at how hard it starts to the point of even uninstalling it but some days later I kept thinking about it and went back to it. In short, everyday I tried a few runs and while it is still hard, you start to get the hang of its mechanics and the game becomes so much fun! In the end I managed to beat it at about 13hours of playtime, just to see the ending credits for the first time but there's still much more content here. Overall, I liked this game a lot, easily one of my favorites of the year so far and I highly recommend it to people that enjoy roguelikes and want to play something on short burts.
Being this the Ch. 5 of an 8 Chapters Visual Novel I'll save the introductions and be quick. This is the first chapter of of the Answer Arc, meaning, after the first four which were building more and more towards the mystery this one, while having mysteries of its own starts giving us answers. I don't think I should even point to which kind of answers this chapter leads to because going blind was fantastic for me and I wish the same for every fan of this Visual Novel. Suffice to say that if you thought chapter 4 was a little slow (compared to the rest, at least), be prepared to be glued to the screen here. This chapter even cuts mostly of the slice of life moments and wastes no time going into the actual plot and it is amazing for it. While the first four games, especially the first two, you knew it would take a while for things to pick up, since you already have some knowledge it goes fast into captivating the player into its plot. TL;DR: Just play it/read it. It is fantastic and probably my favorite chapter so far. Length: It took me about 12h 00m to finish it.
Not a long game but I like it here because every moment of it is great! By seeing the visuals alone you can tell this game is different and when you start playing it shows even more. With a mechanic to change perspective you solve puzzles in the weird dreamlike world (more like nightmarish) while running away occasionally running away from a few enemies. The game I would say it's about 90% puzzles and 10% evading enemies. The enemies, in my perspective, serve more to build up the world than to put any sort of challenge which I do like. If I do have a complain about the game is that even the small amount of times there are enemies they were more of a nuisance than anything else. Overall this was short but very fun. If you like puzzle and atmospheric games like Limbo, Inside and Little Nightmares I think you'll like DARQ too.
I have heard about this game before and I also heard it was based on a famous book. I didn't have much expectations from it but oh boy, I had no idea it was going to be this good. As far as story goes, it is really something else. You control three characters throughout many years in a medieval time, when life was very hard and religion had a very important say in many matters. I could probably say much more here to make it more interested but in all honesty, I think going blind is the best advice I can give. I will however say that during the story you will feel probably all range of emotions, love, hate, sorrow, happiness, awe, etc. There really is something for everyone here and it is all beautifully put together. As far as game goes, it is a mix of your typical adventure game with a telltale game. It's not as easy as a telltale game but far from being convoluted and hard to figure out how to do stuff, like in a typical adventure game, which I have to say was the perfect middle ground for me. You can make many options that change little things in the story but not major events, and honestly I think it is for the better as the story truly is something else. Overall, if you want an adventure game with great plot but easier on the puzzle solving, this is it!
A cyberpunk themed game, inspired by Blade Runner, voiced by everyone’s favorite Replicant, Rutger Hauer, and developed by the talented people who made Layers of Fear. Sounds like a recipe for success, right? Unfortunately no. After having had a very good time with Layers of Fear and being a huge fan of the movie Blade Runner I was very excited to play this game but I’m sad to say that my time with Observer was a very mixed bag. It has been a long time since I played a game that did so many things right and yet failed with so many others. As the game starts you can already tell how beautiful everything is. Not only the graphics and art direction are great, but on top of that everything is filled with details. If you have ever envisioned a post apocalyptic cyberpunk future, this game has got your imagination covered. It has a decadent feel, like in Blade Runner, a greenish filter, as in The Matrix and full of technological limbs, like in Deus Ex. If I stopped by here one would think the graphics are great all throughout but there is one thing that ruins it, the gameplay. It’s funny when I think about it but I actually think the greatness achieved by the graphics are diminished by many of the Gameplay mechanics. I’ll talk a bit about the Gameplay here and soon I’ll get back to this point. The Gameplay can be roughly summarized into puzzles, exploration and stealth. No problems with these ideas, not for me, at first, but it starts being a problem when things start getting in conflict with one another. From time to time during the game you’ll have to explore an area for hints, since you play as a detective. To do so you interact with some objects but in order to actually see many of them you need to turn on two different vision modes. You can think of these as a detective mode from Batman Arkham games but the problem is that it looks horrible. Once you activate these visions pretty much the only thing you can see is the object you need to interact and that is just barely. It’s hard to even see the place you are standing. They make a gorgeous game look like crap. Another thing that, in my opinion, detracts from the graphics is how dark the game is. I do understand the darkness is necessary to create an ambience, and for the most part it does so brilliantly, but at others it was so dark I could barely see where I was going. Other thing I have to say about the graphics is the over reliance of gimmicky screen transitions. To try and make it simple to explain, at times your character will enter someone else’s mind and one there everything seems like an acid inducing trip to insanity. If you’ve played Layers of Fear you should remember that many times you would go into a room and end up in another, turn around and see something different you’ve just seen passing by. The problem in Observer is that this happens in an interval of 3 to 5 seconds. It also happens so frequently any impact this could have had its reduced to boredom. But enough of graphics or we could be here for an hour, so let’s talk about the sound. The music is good, even if predictable and the sound effects are very good. Nods to the developer for the attention to details. However we have an elephant in the room we need to talk about: the voice acting. The lead character, played by Rutger Hauer, sounds, in my opinion, horrible. It feels like the person reading the dialogue is bored or doesn’t care, or both. It’s so monotone and lifeless it pulled me out of the game every time it mattered. You can see a dead person killed in a gruesome way and your character reacts the same way you’d expected anyone to say they’ll be taking out the trash. In contrast, every other character in the game is brilliantly voiced. Some sound problematic, afraid, dangerous, crazy, sympathetic, etc and all of those are great. So either way, either our star decided to take a nap while reading the lines for the game or I didn’t get it. Regardless, I had very mixed opinions about the voice acting. Back to Gameplay, we have the exploration part. Somewhat recently, I’ve been brought attention that some developers would rather create a very small area incredibly detailed and interactive instead of an open world, and I applaud them for trying that here. Sure, there isn’t much to interact while exploring, aside occasionally talking to some tenants of the building you’re in through the door, but these interactions are very fun and areas are filled with detail. The are also some very small stealth sections. I love stealth games and here I think they work half the time. Sometimes they’re fine but at others there are that acid inducing trip I talked about before, and with that navigating around is so confusing. There are a few puzzles to solve. I think they were fine. For the most part they are easy but I have admit I’d rather have them this way than being obtuse. I almost forgot to mention but you can also use people’s computers to read e-mails and stuff like this but one thing I loved is an 8 i bit styled game. It’s simple but I truly loved it. With so many ups and downs there is one thing left to talk about, the story. I’ll just say I didn’t like. Not that it’s bad por say but it really wasn’t for me. There’s also the problem of how it was told in that for the most part you’ll be wondering what is actually happening. While Layers of Fear used the mental state of the character in order to present its story, in Observer there is so much crazyness that do much becomes incomprehensible. By the end I wasn’t engaged in the story but I just wanted to get done with it. The very end was interesting but by then it was too little too late. Overall, I had very mixed feelings about the game but for the most part I guess didn’t like it. I would still recommend it to some people but only to fans of cyberpunk settings and even so with reservations.
After hearing so much good things about Syberia and being in a mood a for a good adventure point and click game I decided to give Syberia a try. What a disappointment it is and a big one at that. Story You play as Kate Walker, a lawyer. You travel to a little town in Europe to the mission of completing a deal to buy a Toy Factory which actually makes automatons, which seem like robots but a little different as the game explains it, or tries because it doesn’t really explain it. Here we can begin pointing out one of the first of the many problems of the game, nothing is explained to you. The developers create a setting that is different from the usual, so if anything they should try to immerse you in it. One good way to do it would be to explain to you how some of these particular things are, how they work or pretty much anything interesting about it but no, better to be left in the dark, I guess. The story itself is boring and bland. Without spoiling anything while trying to settle the deal for the purchase of this factory you learn about some of the history of some characters. Bare in mind that those characters are either dead or you have not yet met them. To give the game a little credit, this is by far the best part of the game, the backstory of what happened years ago. Of course the game wouldn’t present it to you in a interesting manner, that would be asking too much, instead you are presented with a book to read. About 10 pages or more. It’s not that bad but as it is the best part of the game and the only thing that gives context to many of the stuff that you see and some puzzles one would thing they would do a better job at presenting it. With a boring scenario and story that leaves us to the characters and I’m sorry to say, they’re also just as bad. First, your main character, Kate Walker. She is alright at best. You don’t get much room to see her being relatable but at least she’s not annoying not anything. There are however some things that could make her seems better as everynow and then you get a cellphone during the game as people in your life want to talk to you, be it your boss, boyfriend, friend or mother. The problem here is that when talking to pretty much any of these people, when you think it would help to create Kate’s character, it does, but in an opposite way one would hope. Everyone gets the last word with her, it almost makes you feel sorry for her being kind of stupid and helpless and aside from her friend, every person that calls her seem boring. There are also the characters you meet which believe or not are even worse. One of the first characters you have to interact with is a retarded kid which tags along with you for while and you can guess how much depth he has… zero. This only goes on and on with every character which are boring to the extreme with the sole exception being the robot/automatron Oscar. He seems to be the only interesting and creative character of the game and lo and behold, the only interesting character in a point and click adventure game is a robot. Not your character, not anyone you meet but a robot. Music What music? It seems the game does have some music but it barely plays. Most of the time you are walking around in a complete silence with only the marvelous sound of your footsteps. Occasionally some music does play and it is beautiful but it’s so rare you barely forget there is any music for about 90% of the time you’re playing. Graphics The environments do have a nice mood to it. They look nice, of course, understanding this game is some years old but despite of that, the game does look nice. What its’t nice, however, is that every item, door, or pretty much anything you have to interact seem to be hidden behind some huge amount of crap in the front of it or some horrible camera angles that obscures anything worth noting. I do appreciate when developers take the care to not make items stand out so much they are almost shinning in contrast to the background but here they made sure to make it virtually invisible. Most items you can only probably notice when mousing over them, otherwise you would probably miss them entirely. Gameplay With all that out of the way, it leaves us to gameplay and partially continuing what I was saying about the graphics, when you can’t see anything in a point and click game, you can imagine how the gameplay is gonna be like. This is the killer for me. Everything is a pixel hunt and that only helps to make the gameplay slow. Talking about slow, how about mentioning the movement speed our main characters walks? Let me just say, it’s so slow you can probably do something else while she walks from screen to screen and to add to it, there are a ton of screen to walk around with barely anything worthwhile to do, look, or experience. It seems like it’s padding to make the game seem longer than it actually should be. In fact, it seems like every action Kate does is in slow motion, like climbing a set of stairs, for example. Depending of the stairs they seem to take about 5 to 15 seconds just so she can climb it and another 15 seconds to climb back down. Did I mention there’s a ton of backtracking in this game. Well, then get ready to have fun walking super slow back and forth and waiting for the slowest of the animations to get anywhere. Only thing left to mention is the puzzles and by god, they are among the worst I’ve seen. Most of them feel like they are completely random, especially when you are giving pretty much zero indication about how to proceed. Recently I’ve heard of the term “moon logic” and I think it is the perfect way to express my perception of the puzzles in Syberia. They have no logic one could think of unless they lived in the moon or maybe the crazy world from Alice in Wonderland. Overall I’ve played games that take a while to begin, many adventure games and visual novels suffer from that, the problem with Syberia is that it never gets anywhere. I love puzzle games when they have some thought put into them. Sometimes, you play a game in this genre but one of its aspects leaves something to be desired, a game may have some weird puzzles but a good story, bad story but with good characters, weird characters but nice music, etc. The problem with Syberia is that for me it did everything wrong.
