Technobabylon

If you played the previous WE games you will like this: good story, puzzles and voices. The story takes things from The Matrix and Person of Interest, and the short lived Almost Human so if you like the themes of those series/movies you'll find similar stuff here.

I would like to say that Technobabylon is yet another great point'n'click from Wadjet Eye Games, but it has too flawed puzzle design and quite a few narrative issues to make me do so. The story is a yet another cliche'd dystopian cyber-punk fantasy with intellectually impotent theme of the man's consciousness explained through the lens of the materialistic reductionism. Not saying that it's a flaw within itself, but it's lazely done. After the first two story acts, I already knew the message and how it will end (two different endings which consequences are the same) - despite giving an impression that the writers were going somewhere with it, it doesn't expand beyond what S. Lem's works exploiting the theme decades ago. As it goes, the story is covered with too many logical gaps, inconsequences and straightforward shameless plot devices, I was getting more and more annoyed with every next scene. A fine example is the initial theme of non-stop security surveillance and it affect on both the gameplay and the narrative - Regis hates being watched and messes with the Central all the time, destroying cameras. Our female protagonist needs to get rid of the camera in a waiting room, etc. For the gameplay-puzzle sake, this was abandoned in the restaurant bomber investigation, where conveniently there were absolutely no cameras at all - they're removed from the world building equation all together, so a point on the adventure game's checklist could be checked out - an old fashioned investigation puzzle. Gameplay breaks the narrative's integrity. Other times, it's the narrative who breaks logics of the gameplay - the fake drama at the very end, where Regis decides to sacrifice himself where there's absolutely no reason for him to do - conveniently their surroundings are ignored. The puzzles themselves are pretty basic and mostly involve "use X on Y" and rarely present any real challenge. It's not a bad game, it gave me enough point'n'click fix to recommend it. It's decent.

Old-school, nice story, easy interface, nice story, nice puzzles, nice story... what else can I add. Second best Wadget eye in my book (first being primordia)

After playing a couple of Wadget Eye's post-apocalyptic adventure games (Primordia and Shardlight), this was an interesting change of pace. There's still a dystopia for sure - but this one is gleaming with technology and insidious polish - not to mention a flourishing human society complete with cheeky AI. I've always enjoyed this studio's characters, but this game probably features my favorites if only because they bucked my expectations or managed to surprise me more than a couple times. If you like classic point-and-click adventures and a good detective story, this isn't one to miss. Nothing too crazy, but some scenes or themes might be disturbing to young or sensitive players.

Something ominous is going on in the city-state of Newton. A mindjacker copies the minds of experts from widely differing fields and kills them. Newton's central AI assigns the case to Regis, an aging detective with scientific past, and Lao, an ever-sarcastic young tech wiz. Mysteries pile up. Someone starts to blackmail Regis. Central maintains that something Regis and Lao saw couldn't happen. And why on Earth would anyone want to assassinate Mandala, an unimportant unemployed VR addict? If you want your cyberpunk point & click adventures to excel in storytelling, you've just found the right game for you. If you play them for the puzzles, read on, but I practically beg you anyway: give Technobabylon a chance! It certainly deserves one. + Fantastic storytelling. Toward the end, I was on the edge of my chair, even though it's a P&C adventure - a game you play at your own pace! And I still get goosebumps whenever I think of the game's finale. + Real cyberpunk substance there, not just an action-filled story on a futuristic stage set. + Pixel graphics done right, giving the art a hand-drawn feel. + The game's divided into self-contained chapters with limited maps and doesn't flood your inventory, eliminating the usual adventure "use something you forgot you'd collected on the other side of Earth ages ago" problem. - Some of the puzzles are just bad design (and some very nice - but that should be a given in P&C games). Thanks to the previous point, it never stalls you for too long, but it's still the reason why I can't give Technobabylon five stars with clear conscience - even though I'd so much love to! + Polished. Minimum quirks, no bugs. + More than just the sum of its parts. The story, graphics, and music create a wonderful atmosphere that elevates the experience. Verdict: Do you like cyberpunk? Do you like stories and ideas that keep you returning to them in your mind long after you've finished the game? You. Should. Play. Technobabylon.