Blade Runner

It was the first game I ever owned on a PC and played it entering 3 or 4 times. It was incredible !

A pretty fun short point and click. i did get lost but with how the game works thats not suprising. Fun for a day or 2 off

As a huge admirer of the original film, I was disappointed in this game, which is largely Blade Runner fan service built on the concept that the in-game script is taking place while Rick Deckard is living out all the events of the Blade Runner film offscreen. The game goes wrong because it's built on a story that's supposed to be independent of the film's story while staying far too close it - insurgent replicants looking to extend their 4 year lifespan. This creates several problems. First, the premise that there are two very similar story lines taking place in parallel is really ridiculous. Second, because the original movie was so incredibly good and possibly because of licensing issues the game can't just be an outright copy of the film, but neither did the game's authors attempt something entirely unique. The result is a watery imitation of the film, with the only real appeal being the momentary fascination of controlling some happenings in the familiar setting of the Blade Runner universe. I stress "happenings" because that is pretty much how this game unfolds -- it contains some of the action of the film, but without the emotional content. At some point I hit an interesting plot twist that plays on the long running "are Blade Runners replicants or not" debate, but shortly after that the game started to drag, so I gave it up, because it just wasn't engaging enough to keep going. The lack of emotional involvement is not only the result of flaccid storytelling, it's also a result of the lousy characterization. The player character is a rookie blade runner, but frankly, he's a big pussy, and just not credible, rookie or not. His voice even sounds like a disaffected 17 year old. It's really hard to connect to him, because Deckard, the chief example of a Blade Runner, is actually a complex and tormented adult man instead of a whiny kid. Then again, maybe that was a deliberate choice to try to reel in a target teen audience for the original game release. The voice acting in general isn't the best. There's a major NPC who is supposed to be a super bad-ass blade runner, but instead of coming across as cold and tough, her dialogue and voicing make her sound like a tired old hooker with a three-pack-a-day habit. Although she avoids the nagging immaturity of the protagonist, she's ultimately one dimensional, containing nothing of Deckard's depth or inner conflict. The game play is pretty typical for a pixel click adventure. You have to reach certain progress points to unlock other locations, and you'll frequently go back and forth to key locations to continue to the next steps in the adventure. The only real complaint here is that there are some repetitive scene transition animations that can't be skipped, and these begin to grind after a while, but it's not that big of a deal. Given the limitations in computing power back in 1997, the game does look surprisingly good at times, and the visual design is sometimes a nearly shot-for-shot replay of the film. This is great as a brief curiosity, but without a really awesome story and compelling characters to drive it forward, it's just not enough. For me, the game ended up being more of a flawed and limited BR simulator than anything else. I think the game creators did the best they could, but they were working with a premise that was doomed to fail for someone like me, who thinks the movie is a masterpiece. Once the novelty of being able to use an ESPER or give a VK test to someone wears off, and believe me that doesn't take long, all that's left is a pretty cheap copy of the film without its complexity or philosophical punch, and without any really exceptional gameplay or original story to offer up instead. In fairness, maybe had I continued with the game all these shortcomings would've been satisfactorily addressed, but it would have taken an amazing turnaround to make up for the hours of disappointment that I experienced up to the point that I stopped.

This was a frustrating experience. The game wants you to make choices, and those choices have pretty big effects on the game. The dialog system isn't designed with this in mind, though. The keyword list you get says almost nothing about what will actually come out of your character's mouth when you click it. Towards the end of the game, there are a huge amount of screens that are almost completely useless. Huge dramatic moments are put in these screens without any regard for staging. The climax occurred with two characters offscreen, and the other two standing way off in the distance, with about 20 pixels each. The ways they cram every recognizable element from the film into the game, without the game teeechnically being the same story, becomes silly. Lots of running around trying to find the next trigger to get the story to advance. That's mostly par for the course for these types of games. Another "feature", however, is that characters that you need to talk to will only randomly appear in certain places. So you might think that you've looked everywhere for the next trigger, because you literally have - it's just that you weren't lucky enough to have the game allow you to find what you were looking for. That's ridiculously bad. I would not recommend playing this game, but watching a Let's Play of someone who knows what they're doing. They will know what not to miss (and there's a lot to miss in the game), and know what those mysterious dialog options actually mean.

No more words needed.