Tag: Point & Click Adventure

Review: The Charnel House Trilogy

What do you get when you cross a surreal, nightmarish, Poe-like story with Jim Sterling’s soft yet creepy voice? You get the Charnel House Trilogy of point & click adventure games.

Genre(s): Adventure (Point & Click)

Developer: Owl Cave

Publisher: Mastertronic

Release Date: April 2015

Played: Main Story (3 Episodes)

Platforms: PC

Purchase At: Steam

Good:

  • Fabulous characterisation.

  • Phenomenal gothic horror.

  • Strong sound design.

Bad:

  • Too short, feels like a prologue.

  • Shallow gameplay.

Review

I heard of the Charnel House Trilogy from one of its voice actors, Jim Sterling, one of the video game critics I follow. I purchased the game during a very good sale and only recently got to play it.

It’s difficult to say what the Charnel House Trilogy’s plot is. It’s a grim story of loss, and obsession. It’s about pain and how difficult it is to let go and just how easy it’s to spiral when dealing with these emotions. But there’s also something sinister about it all, about the old train the characters are travelling on and its passengers. At times, it feels like a nightmare—or hell. There is a lot going on that we don’t know and ultimately don’t find out, as the trilogy is just the prologue to a larger story.

Scratching out the ex...seems right!
Scratching out the ex…seems right!

Let’s take it from the start. Alex Davenport is preparing to take a trip to Augur Peak Island, where her friend Kat, an archaeologist’s assistant, is working on some ruins. Alex is still recovering from a messy breakup, and wants to take the trip to find herself. But before she can leave she needs to get the train tickets. Thankfully, Rob, her neighbour, a mild-mannered man and close confidant, has the tickets and brings them over and offers to be there is Alex needs to talk. After he leaves and before Alex does so as well, she receives a call from the hospital. Her father just died. Alex walks to the nearest window and says goodbye, if you can call it that, before picking up her bags and walking out.

At the station she meets Dr. Harold Lang, an archaeologist heading to the same destination. To help with his boredom Alex gives him her first edition copy of the Charnel House Burial, a pulp horror novel by Louis Cassel, a writer from the same island, Augur Peak.

Everyone grieves in their own way, Alex goes Noir!
Everyone grieves in their own way, Alex goes Noir!

They board the train and that’s where the first episode ends, the other two dealing with the strange experiences they each have on board of old Gloria. I won’t talk about them as I wouldn’t want to ruin the experience.

What I will say is that the Trilogy ends with the promise of a future game that will continue where this one left off, making this a very short prologue to perhaps a greater experience. Having said so, the storytelling for the three episodes is phenomenal and when it gets creepy, it does so brilliantly. I was shivering at times with the Charnel House Trilogy, especially during the second and third episodes.

For such a short game I wouldn’t have expected deep characterisation, yet Alex surprised me with how well-rounded a character she is. She’s experienced loss, and at the start feels it again, yet she marches head on with her plans and faces every situation, even if they turn weird, creepy or downright scary, especially at the end of episode 3, when her neighbour makes another appearance. She understands what’s going better than most, and accepts the the situation. I loved her as a character.

Harold Lang on the other hand is just as good though he doesn’t so much face the situations and persevere as descend in a spiral of despair. And through conversations with the bartender, Floyd, you can tell there’s a past there with alcoholism and a partner. I would’ve liked to know more about him but I feel I learned a lot in the short time I was with him.

And perhaps that is the greatest accomplishment for The Charnel House Trilogy, how it makes you care and empathise with characters you’ve met for only a few minutes and whom you won’t likely see ever again. It draws you in and makes you part of the story, and in doing so offers a rich gothic horror experience.

Best line in the game!
Best line in the game!

Gameplay is shallow, the pointing and clicking just there to see and go from point A to point B. There are a few puzzles but they’re few, far in between and quite simple. There’s really no depth to them, but they serve as pauses in the horror storytelling. It’s clear they’re not the focus of the game, as the title seems more akin to a visual novel than an adventure game. Storytelling’s the most important thing here.

In terms of visuals, it’s another Adventure Game Studio title, with the pixelated sprite style I’ve come to call Wadjet Style. They look good but I always feel they stand in contrast of the beautiful environments, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. The character portraits are also fantastic and rich and colourful.

There's some darkness in Harold's past it seems!
There’s some darkness in Harold’s past it seems!

Sound design is one thing I love about The Charnel House Trilogy. There are of course melodies, but they’re somewhat subdued, adding just enough mood to the experience, but letting the situations themselves carry the shock and horror. The one thing that stands out is the occasional dissonant tone in the background, a grating yet eerie sound that keeps you on edge as things escalate. It’s a fantastic use of sound to help the horror. Voice acting is superb and I have to say Jim Sterling did a really good job as Rob, being both thoughtful and mild-mannered and downright creepy by the end of the game—as I expected him to be right from the start!

That is one slow-booting PC!
Where it all begins, Alex’s flat!
Jim Fucking Sterling Son being his creepy self!
You’re right about that!
Love the environments
Never give away first editon copies of anything!
The three short episodes in this adventure

Conclusion

The Charnel House Trilogy might be short, and it’s really short but it’s undoubtedly one of the finest point & click gothic horror experiences in the world. I just wish we’d had the entire story and not just this prologue.

TMA SCORE:

4/5 – Exceptional

Review: Broken Age

Double Fine’s Broken Age is an episodic point & click adventure game. In it we play as Vella and Shay, a girl seeking to escape her fate as a sacrificial maiden and a boy looking for real adventure. They both get far more than they expected.

Genre(s): Adventure (Point & Click)

Developer: Double Fine Productions

Publisher: Double Fine Productions

Release Date: January 2014 | April 2015

Played: Main Story (2 Episodes)

Platforms: PC, PS4, PS Vita, OSX, Linux, Ouya, iOS, Android.

Purchase At: Steam, GoG, Green Man Gaming

Good:

  • Beautiful visual style.

  • Interesting characters.

  • Plays with your expectations.

Bad:

  • Cutscene conversations.

  • No Fast-Travel.

  • Villains lack punch.

Review

At the start of each of Broken Age’s episodes, you get to choose whose story you’ll play first. I am a firm believer in “Ladies First” so I picked Vella. She lives in the baker town of Sugar Bunting and when we first meet her it’s the day of the Maiden’s Feast, when she and other girls in town have the honour of becoming sacrifices to appease the dreaded monster Mog Chothra. According to the elders, the Mog appear once every 14 years and if they don’t have any sacrifices, they’ll ravage the town. Her parents and sister are proud but her grandfather hates it and wishes they fight the monster instead of submitting, and that’s exactly what she does, escaping her fate and starting a journey to kill the beast.

Shay’s life is the exact opposite. He wakes up every day to his mollycoddling Mom and Dad, faces on the monitor. He doesn’t even refer to them as parents but as “Computer,” realising he’s alone in his spaceship. He’s outgrown the knitted animatronics around him as well as the different and predictable adventure ‘scenarios’ he plays every day. But when, out of boredom, he decides to go off-script and let a scenario literally derail, he meets Marek, a strange person in a wolf costume. He tells Shay that while he’s been playing around, the galaxy was at war. Wanting to help, Shay joins Marek in rescuing helpless creatures, refugees of war.

If you're planning on visiting Meriloft, pack your cloudshoes!
If you’re planning on visiting Meriloft, pack your cloudshoes!

Each of the character’s first episode plays out independently, though you can freely switch between them. At the end there’s a big revelation and their paths cross momentarily before they switch places. I won’t go into the details so as to not spoil anything though. The first episode sets the first pieces of the story in place and the second deals with truths, about the characters, the world and the story.

While it’s true their first episodes are independent, you’ll need to switch between them at times during the second episode, as information presented to one of them is useful to the other. An example is a tune Shay hears during this episode. It’s useless for him, but it’s the clue for one of Vella’s puzzles. As the episode advances, the need to switch between characters becomes commonplace and in fact the last segment’s central puzzle revolves around it.

Prima Doooooooooooooooooom!
Prima Doooooooooooooooooom!

Vella is strong and decisive, but with a devious streak that comes to play when she needs to get things done. She’s likeable and relatable, but deeply flawed, as her determination often makes her ready to do and sacrifice anything so long as it advances her goals. She’s not above lying and breaking things to get ahead, but it’s all to save the world from having to sacrifice more maidens and to save her family from the monster’s ire. Adventure game protagonists always toe the line between likeable and despicable because of the sometimes horrendous actions they take and how they hurt others, but you can never really fault Vella for what she does, as perhaps we’d all do the same in her place.

Shay on the other hand speaks to the desire of independence we’ve all held at some point in our lives. The need to prove our mettle, to show the world and ourselves that we’re capable of accomplishing everything we set our minds to. In Shay’s case, whatever harm he inflicts on others is due to pure naïveté and ignorance. In many ways he’s still a child and as he learns of the world, we learn with him, but he’s never a faceless avatar.

Shay can be very resourceful when he needs to be, just as Vella!
Shay can be very resourceful when he needs to be, just as Vella!

What I’m trying to say with all of this is that characterisation, for the protagonists, is outstanding. The characters don’t only have depth but they’re capable of growth and understanding and they come out the other end of their journey forever changed, stronger and better.

Secondary characters are just as well developed. Vella and Shay’s families are phenomenal characters, as are the priestesses of the Dead Eye God, minor characters with a surprising amount of depth and a relationship that left me smiling, as I didn’t see it coming. Whil Weaton plays a hilarious hipster lumberjack/metalworker and he’s a joy to talk to and sometimes manipulate.

The villains on the other hand lack polish. Their personalities are one-dimensional, just evil bastards with no other traits. I’m not against a purely evil character, but when everyone else has so much depth, they feel bland in comparison. Their motivation, central to the plot, is a bit weak and the explanation isn’t really satisfying, which is perhaps the most negative thing I can say about Broken Age’s story. There’s a lot going on, and the journey is terrific, but the main conflict lacks punch. The pacing is also a bit off, with the reveals and exposition rushed near the end, to raise the tension before the big climax, but without giving it the proper time to develop.

What the game and its writers did wonderfully is play with your preconceptions and expectations. When you first experience each of the protagonists’ worlds, you’ll make assumptions on genre and where the plot might go, but then the game flips those around and it keeps doing that until the credits roll. They’re subtle reveals, no exposition needed, just things happening that make you reconsider what you held as truth a few minutes before. It’s quite amazing how the game and its developers play with you as much as you play their game.

Puzzles in the game are varied. You have your typical fetch & inventory puzzles, some logic based and others based on timing. The latter are predominant in Vella’s 2nd episode. Broken Age might be the first game in a long time to make me pull out a sheet of paper and pencil to draw and make notes, as there are often so many tiny clues you need to remember to finish puzzles. It’s not something I’m used to seeing in modern adventure games and I felt happy for the challenge, to test not only my deduction skills but my memory as well. With perhaps a couple of exceptions, such as a roundabout Heimlich maneuver, there aren’t any puzzles that are too outlandish and there’s mostly a definite logic in place or a clue somewhere around you. Puzzles can be challenging but they’re never frustrating.

Some puzzles are simple, like the eggs, but that ladder on the other hand might stump you!
Some puzzles are simple, like the eggs, but that ladder on the other hand might stump you!

While puzzles are central to a point & click adventure game, I do have a couple of issues with some gameplay elements. First is the position of the inventory, located at the lower left side of the screen…right where you’re going to be moving and clicking most of the time to explore the environment. I lost count of the times I opened the inventory instead of moving to where I wanted to go. What makes it even worse is that you don’t even need to click to open the inventory but just hover over it, so it gets in the way quite frequently.

Secondly, this game could’ve used a fast-travel option. The spaceship partially addresses this with teleporters in a couple of locations, but outside the backtrack trips from one puzzle to the other will get long and tiresome, especially during the later stages of Vella’s first episode and all of Shay’s second one. A simple map would’ve done wonders to make the game a bit more fluid.

Finally, I thoroughly dislike how conversations handle in Broken Age. Unlike other titles in the genre where you can skip individual lines of dialogue—if you’re a fast reader like me—conversations in the game handle much like old-school FMV adventures. Each conversation is a cutscene so if you decide to skip ahead you’ll miss an entire discussion.

Before he answers make sure not to skip!
Before he answers make sure not to skip!

Wil Wheaton’s voice might be one I instantly recognise but the voice talent in Broken Age is outstanding. Even the tiniest and seemingly insignificant character sounds convincing, even the Maiden airheads you meet throughout the game. You can feel in their voice how convinced they are that they’re better than others by being sacrificial maidens. It’s the same with the soundtrack, there’s a piece for every location and screen and it perfectly sells the mood for the place and situation. There’s a particular chime tune at the end of the game that I found extremely memorable, even though it lasts a short time. It’s beautiful and relaxing and successfully conveys the message “This is the end.”

One of Broken Age’s most striking features is its visual design. A paper-like texture that makes it all seem straight out of a children’s pop-up book. Most of the places you explore and the people you interact with are bright and colourful, vibrant and alive and they offer a striking contrast with the villains, who are grayish and faded, with darker colours and purposes. The use of colour, much like in other forms of art, helps transmit ideas and feelings as effectively as words.

One of the many childish scnearios in Shay’s ship
Oh Curtis, we love your stools! And all your stool jokes!
Maidens dress in the mot outrageous costumes!
He can build anything…with sand.
Very solid, painfully so.
Just as the first episode, the second begins with a choice
Shay’s ship is full of his childhood mementos
One of the cleverest puzzles in the game
When you’re desperate, even the craziest plans sound reasonable
The Star Chart sets the Navigation Scarf! Yes, Scarf!
Only person I’ve ever seen sad because she didn’t get sacrificed to a giant monster!
The dreaded Mog Chothra has seen better days!

Conclusion

Broken Age is perhaps one of the best adventures games I’ve played in the past years. It has a wonderful journey, terrific characters and it offered me something many adventures have failed in the past years: a challenge!

TMA SCORE:

4.5/5 – Amazing!

Review: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition is the 2014 remake by Phoenix Online Studios and Pinkerton Road Studio of the 1993 Sierra hit. It follows the eponymous Gabriel Knight as he investigates a series of gruesome voodoo murders that tie in to his personal life in ways he really doesn’t see coming.

The Good

  • The world of Gabriel Knight in full glorious HD
  • The Star Journal
  • Remastered soundtrack
  • Altered puzzles
  • Schloss Ritter

The Bad

  • Visual glitches
  • Command wheel takes away some of the difficulty
  • Too many achievements

Gabriel Knight is a struggling novelist and owns a rundown antique bookstore. He’s seen better days and he’s desperate for a good story to turn into a novel. Thankfully, for him, his best friend is New Orleans Police Detective and he’s brought Gabriel into the voodoo murders case because of Knight’s promises to include a character based on him in the novel he’s working on. Gabriel also suffers from regular nightmares relating to these murders, which he discusses with his very unpaid assistant Grace Nakimura.

As the days go by (ten of them in total) and Gabriel gets deeper into the underground voodoo world, his life and that of the people closest to him, including distant relatives he never knew of, are put in jeopardy. The investigation also brings him closer to fulfilling his destiny, one that runs inextricably close to the people he’s investigating.

If only you could go scroll through them all!
If only you could go scroll through them all!

This is not a new game; it’s a 20-year-old one that received a major spruce-up, to help bring it to a whole new generation. Someone once asked me “Do we need this remake?” and beyond a fan saying yes because it’s one of their favourite series, I do feel that with Dosbox classics getting more and more unstable with new operating systems, a remake like this one does this series a lot of good, bringing it to a completely new generation. That being said, it’s difficult to review a game when it’s a remake of another, because if you take away the things that it has in common with the original, there isn’t much for the game to stand on by itself. But that is the nature of remakes, I suppose. So as much as I want to judge the game by itself, I can’t but draw parallels to its predecessor during my review.

Gameplay in the remake has changed in meaningful ways, some good and some mixed. The good are the journal, written in Gabe’s dad’s sketchbook, keeping track of the current events. It helps players know where they’re going in the story and provide subtle hints on what they should do next. The journal also gives you access to what I call the “Star Journal,” containing interesting facts about the original game and the work done for the remake. There are even some interviews with the original staff, conducted by Jane Jensen herself, and plenty of concept art and storyboards. The only downside is the “Star” content is location-specific, so you can’t just scroll through the entire thing. Once you cleared the game, it should’ve unlocked in the main menu at least, because many times I was focusing on solving puzzles and didn’t pay attention to it.

Close-up looks are now these fantastic pop-ups
Close-up looks are now these fantastic pop-ups

This version also allows you to skip ahead to the map instead of having to navigate through the environment to the exit, which you can still do of course and which I did plenty of times before I got used to the map button. It’s one of the game’s best new features, especially for veteran Gabriel Knight players.

Finally, interaction is through a Command Wheel. When you click a hotspot, the wheel displays all actions possible for that hotspot. In the original, you had a series of action icons you had to scroll through to find the appropriate one for a given spot, and I feel the Command Wheel lowers the difficulty of the game by immediately discarding all invalid actions for you. You no longer have to think, “Hmmm, what might be the correct action?” because that part is done for you. It’s a staple of modern adventure game design that I hoped wouldn’t make it to this game.

Player Score is back, tallying every important action or puzzle solved. You know your score’s increased every time you hear the now very familiar jingle. I missed two or three things while rushing to clear the game for this review and got 359/362 points, earning me a “Novice Schattenjäger” achievement. I might return for my full score achievement later on.

Conversations now feature 3D models. At the top you'll see the score counter!
Conversations now feature 3D models. At the top you’ll see the score counter!

Speaking of achievements, at least on the Steam version, they went overboard and now you get one achievement for every single little puzzle you solve. At first it seemed like a novelty but it started to feel almost patronizing, “There you go, you’re such a smart boy!” Some achievements, like overly complimenting Grandma Knight, are fine as they require you to go through entire conversation trees for funny effect, but Puzzle-specific achievements are too much.

On the upside, the remake changes a few puzzles and item locations, mixing things up for players of the original, and while there aren’t enough of these changes to make the experience a completely fresh one, they are quite capable of stumping you, even if only for a few seconds/minutes. I still remember how the relocation of the magnifying glass and tweezers threw me off my game, and that’s just at the start. Later on I assumed a “nothing is as it was” mentality and fared much better, finding instead that a lot is as it was. The puzzles themselves are still pretty damn good, especially when put against today’s standards. They are all logic-based, and there are plenty of hints in conversations and the environment to give your brain the jumpstart it needs to finish them. Sound logic, picking everything up like a kleptomaniac and talking to everyone you can will often yield all the results you need.

One of the first locations to have altered puzzle and item pickups!
One of the first locations to have altered puzzle and item pickups!

The plot is one of the best in adventure games, drawing from real cultural and historical sources, mixing reality and fantasy seamlessly to create a believable story. Even the supernatural elements are so well grounded in religious history that you could almost believe them. In fact, for newcomers this will be your first glimpse of Jensen’s trademark, mixing history and fantasy together brilliantly. Characterization is top notch and you care deeply for the characters, though it would’ve been nice if the game gave you more time to care about Wolfgang, especially considering his role in Gabriel’s character growth. Malia and Gabe’s romance could’ve used a bit more screen time as well, to at least disguise how obviously plot-related it is. Having said so, the romantic tension between Gabe and Grace is still fantastic.

Speaking of plot, the remake includes the Gabriel Knight graphic novel, which I urge new players not to read until they’ve cleared the game, as it reveals a bit too much about the game’s plot. As for veterans, go ahead, you’ll love it.

Now the cutscene includes the cops taking the body away!
Now the cutscene includes the cops taking the body away!

The true stars of this remake, however, are the visuals and sound. Robert Holmes has recomposed the entire soundtrack, adding more instruments and a lot more strength to an already powerful score and this is the game that will etch the melody for “When The Saints Go Marching In” into your brain for the rest of your days, much like its original did so many years ago. Voice acting is generally strong, though I still lament the loss of Mosely’s thick accent. The new GK actor certainly isn’t Tim Curry but he does a good job with the role and sounds appropriately sleazy, though on latter parts of the game his performance loses a bit of strength, especially when Gabriel is screaming in grief or rage. Same thing happens to Malia’s performance near the end, when she’s pleading with a certain ancestor spirit, there isn’t enough strength in the performance to be truly convincing. Having said so, her and Grace’s performances are the best in the game.

Schloss Ritter, I love it!
Schloss Ritter, I love it!

The updated visuals say goodbye to any of the pixel-hunting present in the original graphics, not that there was much of it to begin with. Locations have all received major overhauls and look absolutely fantastic, though my favourite, hands down, has to be Schloss Ritter, in which the developers married the castle’s looks from the original game and its sequel The Beast Within. It was a pleasure seeing the castle portrayed so beautifully.

However, there are a variety of visual glitches in the game that made me groan, such as clothing collision issues with shirts poking through coats, Gabriel being able to walk through people in the square, the game telling you the panel in front of the Gedde Tomb is closed when you can clearly see it uses the “open” model. I often experienced Gabriel walking to a hotspot and then take small steps back and forth, over and over again, as if adjusting his positions, but getting stuck until I pressed the ESC key to cancel the animation, which didn’t work every time. None of the glitches are major or game-breaking though, just annoyances.

For some close-up examination hotspots, such as Gabriel’s bookcase, the visuals are so good they look like photographs instead of 3D animation, and for all I know they could be. They are also presented to you in pop-up windows instead of using the main screen (via your typical black-screen-fade loading), allowing you to examine them and leave the close-up view seamlessly, without interrupting the rest of the gameplay, something I found myself loving and wishing more games did it as well.

I can't get enough of how good the castle looks now!
I can’t get enough of how good the castle looks now!

Plenty of sequences that used to be in the game’s engine and made you have to wait while the animations completed are now (skippable) cutscenes. A perfect example is early in the game in Lake Pontchartrain, the sequence where the police took the body away. In the 20th Anniversary Edition they’ve rolled that sequence into the Malia meeting cutscene, making it all happen quicker. In fact, some of the creepier parts of the game look even better with the new cutscenes.

One thing that I did feel was a wasted opportunity was not adding the original game to this release. Monkey Island Special Editions did it (sort of) and last year’s re-release of Flashback added the original game as well, accessible from the menu. As an anniversary edition, it would’ve been great to have the original there with the updated, to see for ourselves the before and after.

That's not a happy face, it's the shadow of the metal bar INSIDE the hole.
That’s not a happy face, it’s the shadow of the metal bar INSIDE the hole.

Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers bring the classic adventure to a whole new generation with updated visuals and music. While it doesn’t change things enough to be a fresh experience for players of the original, they will still find a really fun game. The concept art is enough to give any fan of the series a nostalgia-induced heart attack!

The Mental Attic Score: Worth Buying! I can’t wait for GK4, make it happen!

Review: Broken Sword 5

Broken Sword 5 is the latest title in Revolution Software’s award winning Broken Sword series. It once again puts Nico Collard and George Stobbart on a world-trotting adventure, this time uncovering ancient Gnostic secrets that could destroy the world as we know it.

The Good

  • Strong voice acting
  • Strong puzzle design
  • Beautiful visuals

The Bad

  • Nico segments are uninspired
  • Poorly paced plot.

Just as all other titles in the series, Broken Sword 5 wastes no time getting you into the plot. You start off in an Art Gallery. George’s company is handling the insurance and Nico is around for an article. Things get complicated when the gallery is robbed and the prize of the collection, a strange painting called “La Malediccío,” is taken, a painting a priest in the gallery condemns as being heretical.

From there the characters spend the next half of the game tracking down the painting and its owner, while giving lengthy exposition on the painting’s history and possible meanings. The plot’s pace is uneven, from a sluggish first segment almost entirely dedicated to extensive exposition to a second and faster paced second act that pushes you towards the end. The plot itself is interesting in its mix of Gnostic beliefs with the hint of the supernatural the Broken Sword series is famous for, but the storytelling itself could’ve used some polish, especially during the first act. It’s one of those stories where you realize early on that the smartest solution would be to destroy the McGuffin so no one can abuse its powers, but no, you need to keep looking for it for “reasons.”

A stiff, a priest and an art gallery. Yep, this is Broken Sword
A stiff, a priest and an art gallery. Yep, this is Broken Sword

Characterization is fantastic, from the obvious romantic/sexual tension between long-time companions Nico and George, to the different secondary characters and even the villains, though the main one could’ve used some polish, as he comes off mostly as a raving lunatic with messianic tendencies, and the secondary one, a Russian with shady ties, gets too much screen time to be honest, even if he’s a Putin clone/critique. If that was how they wanted the villains to come off, good job then, but I wasn’t impressed. Classic characters Duane and Pearl Henderson come back for a short while near the end and they’re always a pleasure, as are George’s interactions with goats. But one of my favourite characters one of the villain’s very philosophical henchman. He was surprisingly funny.

I really liked the visual and sound design. The Broken Sword series has its own style of music, the use of certain instruments and tones and melodies that, if you’ve played previous installments, will make you instantly recognize this as part of the series. I was pleased to hear the familiar and brilliant voice acting for Nico and George, something I was worried about considering how long it’s been since Broken Sword 4. The rest of the supporting cast is very good and even their fake accents (for those who have them) are convincing. The visuals pleased me beyond just being pretty, though. I loved to see them go back to the 2D (or 2.5D) environments instead of the full 3D game that was Broken Sword 4, which I always believed was a bad move for the series. Character models are amazingly fluid and their movement feels real. The way they walk, talk and interact is smooth and feels natural, something that I’ve come to realize is extremely difficult to pull off in Point & Click adventures. The environments themselves are gorgeous, pieces of art with puzzles included.

One of the secondary villains (the pointless one), he's clearly a Putin lookalike
One of the secondary villains (the pointless one), he’s clearly a Putin lookalike

Speaking of which, Broken Sword’s true strength is in its puzzle design, which range from your typical and quite straightforward inventory puzzles to others that require deeper thinking and even a bit of creativity without ever falling into Moon Logic. Even the hardest puzzle is just a brain sizzler until you figure out the clue. If you can’t figure something out, it’s because you haven’t checked everything or you’re missing an item or a conversation.

During the first half of the game, the puzzles are mostly straightforward inventory-based, though there are some very good ones, such as building a new business brand for a merchant in exchange for his help, rearranging the letters on his busted down neon sign; finding a way to blow the fuses inside a painter’s studio by manipulating the environment and other NPCs in sort of a Rube-Goldberg machine, or my favourite, dressing up as a recently deceased man to have his drunk-off-her-ass grieving widow dance with you and spill the beans on where he might have kept a few things. George is nothing if not classy.

She's capable of much more than just seducing random strangers!
She’s capable of much more than just seducing random strangers!

Puzzles on the second half of the game are outstanding. There’s one where you need to help cheer up Pearl by giving her the sights, sounds and smells of a Christian Pilgrimage, so you have to use tools and scaffolding to play “Ave Maria,” while finding a way to illuminate the room’s centerpiece and add a bit of fragrance to it and while sights and smells I could figure out immediately, the sound part kicked my butt for a while. It was one of those good puzzles that make me quit and then come back with a fresh perspective. Then again, I’m really tone deaf so that puzzle might have been my kryptonite. Immediately after are a set of decoding puzzles that I found to be extraordinary, as you need to use clues you have and extrapolate them to find the answer. I thoroughly enjoyed that one.

You spend most of the game playing as George, and his segments have some of the best and most complex puzzles, while sadly, Nico’s segments insist on using her as man-bait. We all know Nico is attractive and has a lot of sex appeal, but it’s sad to see Revolution just have her rely on that when we know she’s just as capable as George when it comes to puzzle solving and inventiveness; though it’s fair to say that by Broken Sword 5, George can give MacGyver (dear lord I feel old for making that comparison) a run for his money.

Drunk grieving widow whose feelings you need to abuse? Check
Drunk grieving widow whose feelings you need to abuse? Check

Broken sword 5 is a fantastic conclusion to the series, giving us an outstanding adventure that finishes off George and Nico’s personal arcs. I hope we see more of this series, but if we don’t this was a fantastic goodbye.

The Mental Attic Score: Worth Buying. It has some pacing issues but you’ll enjoy every minute of the game.

The Blackwell Epiphany – Review

The Blackwell Epiphany is the last entry in Wadjet Eye’s Blackwell series of supernatural Point & Click adventure games starring Medium Rosangella Blackwell and her ghostly companion Joey Malone. In this last entry, the stakes are higher, the suspense is greater and things come full circle in one of the best saga endings in the history of adventure gaming. Continue reading The Blackwell Epiphany – Review

The Last Door Collector’s Edition – Review

The Last Door: Collector’s Edition is a point & click adventure thriller set in Victorian Times, developed by the Spanish studio The Game Kitchen and published by Phoenix Online Publishing. Under the tagline “Low-res Graphics, High Suspense,” the Last Door tells the story of Jeremiah Devitt and his investigation into the sudden death of one of his oldest friends. Continue reading The Last Door Collector’s Edition – Review

Phoenix Online Studios – Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition

Welcome to another issue of Attic Diving, where we interview interesting people to help us jump into their Mental Attics to see what we find!

Today’s guests are once again Phoenix Online Studios, this time about the Gabriel Knight remake, currently in development and due to release later this year.

I want to thank Phoenix Online Studios’ Katie Hallahan, PR Head, for once again taking time to reply to these questions of mine.

Enjoy!

How excited were you when you knew you were going to be working on a remake for Gabriel Knight?

Extremely! It’s one of the favorite classic series for a lot of us on the team, we’re all psyched to be working on it. It’s definitely one of those things where we have to pinch ourselves sometimes.

How far along is Gabriel Knight 20thAnniversary Edition?

Still in alpha. The whole game is playable, technically, but there’s plenty more to be added. We’re still adding animations, updating some art, and so forth.

Is it a direct remake or will it have new features? (Story elements, puzzles, etc.)

It is mostly a direct remake, though a few small adjustments or additions have been made here and there. Nothing major, though, the plot and flow of the game are still the same.

New conversation window has a similar style to the original
New conversation window has a similar style to the original

Gabriel Knight had a classic interface, with multiple, and very specific cursors. Is that something you’re keeping in GK20?

Some streamlining has happened with the interface.

What about the “Total Score”, will it be in the game? Sins of the Fathers and its sequels had a Scoring system, and getting the high score meant finding everything worth finding and interacting.

Yes! There will still be a scoring system; as some of those puzzles have changed, the total will be different from the original, but you can still shoot for getting a perfect score!

Will you be re-casting all voices for the game or using the originals? If the former, I’d like to vote for Raleigh Holmes as Grace.

Using the same voice cast wasn’t really an option, for a number of reasons, so the roles have all been recast. Who’s playing who hasn’t been announced yet, but the recordings were done with Bay Area Sound, the same studio who did Moebius and does all the Telltale Games, including the Walking Dead. They’re great and have a very talented pool of actors!

The new environments look fantastic, but keep the spirit of the original
The new environments look fantastic, but keep the spirit of the original

Are there any plans to re-make the rest of the series?

Not at this time. As Jane’s said recently, the real hope is that this remake will do well and, fingers crossed, pave the way for her to be able to make a new GK game! She has two ideas for what GK4 would be about. I’ve heard and read about both of them, and it really would be fantastic. Here’s hoping!

Will you update Gabriel and New Orleans to the 21st century, or will it remain in the 1990s?

It will still be set in 1993, with all the old, familiar trappings thereof!

A part of me wanted to see Gracie with an iPad
A part of me wanted to see Gracie with an iPad

(This is for the whole team, if possible) If you could remake any game, which would it be?

We had a variety of responses! For myself, I’d love to remake The Black Cauldron, which was my first Sierra game and first adventure game, but rather than follow the Disney movie’s plot, I’d want to stick to the book series it was based on, The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander. That game got me into both those books and adventure games, and I would love to see it done justice!

“Tough question! It is hard for me to pick just one game. I am thinking Shadowgate an old point and click adventure on the nes and early PC. Actraiser for the SNES or Ultima 6 The False Prophet.”

“It’s not the most adventure game-studio response I could think of, but my ideal remake project would be Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Despite the game’s excellent world building and allowance of a great variety of play styles, it was obviously rushed to retail and suffered from a litany of bugs and half-formed design decisions. Would love to take this thing from the assets up and polish it to an HD, fully realized mirror shine.”

“My personal pick since it’s been floating in my mind is Battletoads. Slick power set, variety of stages, but it was 8-bit and super hard. I’d like the difficulty toned down or at least optionalized so that players can choose. Online multiplayer. Allow all 3 toads to play together. Also keep the sidescrolling aspect intact ala Double Dragon Neon. At least 2.5D, like the latest Street Fighters have done. Actually that way, we can have the giant hand attacks animated closeup with literally high-impact.

“Adventure-game-wise, I’d like to see Loom get remade. It had so much potential in its use of music as spellwork. I can imagine more crafting via composing, more notes and chords, but that may mean more of a sequel or expansion than a straight remake. The simplicity of playing forwards and backwards to achieve opposite effects may be hindered if spells are made too complicated. So any remake of the original should probably keep the spell system simply as-is but pretty up the graphics and sound for the current generation.”

“ It’s a tossup between Dreamweb and Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. Dreamweb had a hypnotic  and  somber atmosphere, but could be lightly redesigned to allow for all the depth of story and character the the tone is so evocative of.

I also love Rex Nebular, but there’s an entire middle section where I really thought it was going to intelligently subvert gender roles, and do so in an interactive way. The game either sidesteps this issue, or didn’t realize its own potential. Either way, the game still has a wonderful conceit that could be better fleshed out and honed in a remake.”

“Final Fantasy 7.”

 

I want to once again thank Katie for taking the time to answer yet another set of questions for us. Be sure to keep an eye out on Phoenix Online Studios (twitter @postudios) and Pinkerton Road Studio (Jane Jensen’s twitter: @jensen_jane) for more information on this upcoming remake of a classic.

Moebius: Empire Rising Review

Note: Review based on pre-release copy. Issues encountered might not be in the retail version.

Moebius is a Point & Click Adventure game by Pinkerton Road Studio in collaboration with Phoenix Online Studios. The Game follows antique appraiser and historian Malachi Rector as he travels around the globe using his analytical skills to uncover a conspiracy threatening to ruin the world. Continue reading Moebius: Empire Rising Review

Phoenix Online Studios – Moebius: Empire Rising

Welcome to another issue of Attic Diving, where we interview interesting people to help us jump into their Mental Attics to see what we find!

Today’s issue is all about Moebius: Empire Rising, the new game from adventure game legend Jane Jensen’s Pinkerton Road. It’s set to release tomorrow, April 15th, all over the world. You can still preorder it and get a nice 20% discount.

I want to thank Phoenix Online Studios’ Katie Hallahan, PR Head and Assistant Designer for Moebius, for taking time out of her crazily busy schedule to answer these questions and others you will get to read in the coming days.

Continue reading Phoenix Online Studios – Moebius: Empire Rising

Phoenix Online Studios – Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller

And I’m back! Holidays enjoyed, food devoured, post-bing-detox done! Now let’s start up a year with a nice little Attic Diving, where I take a plunge into other people’s Mental Attics to find out nice stuff about their past, current and future projects. To start the year we have an interview with Phoenix Online Studios, developers of the hit episodic game Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, which earned top marks on The Mental Attic’s Scoring System! You can read my review here.

I want to thank the amazing Katie Hallahan, Head of Phoenix Online PR and Game Designer, for taking time out of her busy schedule to answer this mammoth list of questions, which will hopefully not be the last list I send her, though I have promised and committed to keeping the interviews shorter from now on!

Warning – Spoiler Alert: The last two questions (19 & 20) contain spoilers, so if you haven’t played the game, please skip them!! Continue reading Phoenix Online Studios – Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller