Gemini Rue

Good atmosphere and great storytelling. Puzzles are on the easier side and usually straightforward, but controls are a bit wonky which can lead to a bit of frustration. Gunplay scenes add nothing to the gameplay. Fun game if you are a fan of similar titles (BaSS comes to mind), but not a very good introduction as a first point and click.

This game is a lot like a novella. The story has a clear beginning, middle, and end, and the plot unfolds little by little, the way it should with a good sci-fi mystery. It isn't terribly long in terms of gameplay, and the graphics are quite old-school (but that's why you come to GOG, right?). I liked the characters, and the voice acting was very good. It was an immersive experience, and quite entertaining for the one day it took to play through.

My first impression was: Nice atmosphere. The first screens looked nice, but then there wasn't much more to come except some nice voice acting. The world is pretty small, the story average, graphic bugs appear once in a while. What I'm actually missing was something to make the game feel like the project didn't run out of money half way. The OST is really nice but mostly you just hear the rain or nothing at all. No cut scenes to make it feel like a movie (which all the old classics had). The controls are sometimes just annoying. The quests are either very obvious or don't make much sense like: That one thing can't be clicked at multiple occasions, but if you go down to the end of the hall-way on the right floor you can -- although that thing does look just like the others. It just seems random. Compared to other adventures for this price it just doesn't feel complete. There are definitely a few better ones.

I love rain. I love it in games, I love it in real life. So this game had some instant appeal for me. Once I was actually playing the game, however, that appeal started to fade quickly. The nonstop gravely-voiced voice acting grew tiresome. Too many lines were delivered awkwardly, like the voice director was absent. And you'll forgive me for speaking some Japanese, but the way every voice actor butchers the gang's name (bouryoku-dan) made me roll my eyes. The combat seemed like kind of an interesting addition, at first. Actually putting it to use, however, is a chore. And about half-way through the game, the game decides to throw even more combat mechanics at you. Nooo thank you. The game's designers seem to think that clicking one's mouse is the ultimate in gameplay. Want to get something done? Click, click, click, click, click, click.....and maybe a few more clicks for good measure. I played this game on my laptop, and it's made in AGS. AGS has yet to support 1366x768 (aka "that one resolution that many laptops use as their native resolution") in full-screen. So I play the game in a window, after setting that up in AGS's clunky configuration program. So far, no big deal....but when you couple that with how small the interactable areas are in the game, then anything but careful, deliberate mouse placement often resulted in clicks outside the game window. Annoying, especially when that brings up another window. And even when the small clickable areas aren't an issue, it often takes multiple clicks to get through a door....the hot spot areas are tiny. So, let's see....the story wasn't particularly compelling to me, I dislike the voice acting from the outset, I found many game mechanic annoying or aggravating....but I like the rainy atmosphere. Oh, and when I load a saved game (including the autosaves), the right half of the window was 'undefined video buffer contents.' Every time. You're charging money for this?

Gemini Rue really comes up with a great story that makes you think about what makes us who we are ... experience? The soul? The story relly got me and I enjoyed every minute playing this game. You might think that the graphic might be a point on the negative side because of its fake low resolution. I think in this specific context it adds to the dark athmosphere and get your fantasy up to create what cannot be shown. The standard point&click gameplay is extended by some shooting minigame, but there's no deep strategy in this, like so save ammo or something. This game is absolutely no shooter and this minigame is just raising the tesion of the athmosphere quite nicely. So why no 5 stars? As point&click game it has to compare against Simon the Socerer, Monkey Island and those 5 star games. For that I think the game is rather short and the riddles are easy e.g. compared to Monkey Island. But it is definitely a great game and worht every penny.