Not really a review, I am just asking if this is a remake of Bioshock or System Shock 2? The story sounds very familiar.....
The trailer says it all, it is as if someone made a cartoon of old Yakov Smirnoff jokes. Playing this game at my friend's place was enough for me. Yet another game that has done everything to make sure that it will never be played by any native Russian speakers. I mean sure, that market is only 150-200 million people, but how well did that policy work for Syberia 3? Unless, of course, there is some giant market for Russophobia among gamers, in which case the designers really nailed it. I would give this game more stars for effort, but I don't think we should condone inflammatory games about caricature Russians, or caricature French or caricature Africans or even caricature Americans. This kind of narrative design just cheapens games as a medium. We have already spent the last 25 years trying to prove that games are not just kids toys and this game is not helping our case.
This game is broken, plain and simple. Sure this title has a few more additions like giving certain monsters the ability to cast specific spells from an actual list. And the graphics are nicer. And there are a few issues that I could overlook like having no more creature upgrades and, in general, having less individual army units then Heroes 2. But there are two problems that take out any resemblance of strategy or tactics out of this game. The first one being that heroes are now playable units during the fights. This may seem awesome, but this means that whoever goes first and whoever has the most archers can and will kill the other player's hero in the first or second turn (even the computer does it). And when your hero dies you can no longer cast magic as well as give your units those awesome stat bonuses. There is no realistic way to protect yourself from it and in all likelihood your hero will die in any serious fight. Try strategizing around that! The second game breaking mechanic is that neutral enemy units now have an ability to move around on the map after the player's turn. This is easily countered by making sure to stop your army just outside of their range. But what that also means is that you can now use small armies made up of literally 1 soldier to lure out a horde of dragons guarding a gold mine or an artifact and capture the mine/collect resources/pick up the artifacts without ever having to fight an enemy. This completely throws the game's resource management out of whack.
If, like me, you are intrigued by this game's concept and expect this to be another excellent game from the creators of Deponia then please turn and run the other way. Daedalic is a publisher and the creators of Deponia have not even looked at this game. I am not going to spend my time telling you all the horrible things I would rather do to myself rather than play this game because it does not deserve it. What this game is, is "bland shit 101" there is almost nothing funny or original about it and that is simply unacceptable in a quest game that positions itself as a comedy. The creators thought it would be funny to fill their game with references to old Lucas Arts games, in some cases they stole entire puzzles from Monkey Island, but what they forgot about is putting their own original content in the 90% of the rest of the game. They never explain how their version of the "Groundhog day effect" works and they manage to break even the few rules that they do set at the end of the game. The problem here is that whoever wrote the script for this game was either highly unmotivated, or, what is even more probable, devoid of any talent. I am sorry, but games like these simply can not be sustained by mediocre or even normal writing, the writing has to either be great or downright brilliant and if that level of writing is inaccessible then please stick to making first person shooters or platformers.
