Broken Age (Double Fine)

During my splurge on the Steam Summer Sale recently, I bought Broken Age. This is a brand new game by Tim Schafer who is known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango and Brütal Legend and co-designer of the early classics The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Day of the Tentacle. As this guy is part of so many wonderful games, the second I heard of his involvement, I knew I wanted to play this, without reading ANYTHING about the game anywhere else first!

The odd thing about this game I that I can't decide completely how I feel about it. It was weird, but weird can be good. I felt oddly detached in it. I so badly wanted to love this because of the team behind it. It has some wonderful ideas in it, and I can sense Tim's humour within the game, but it wasn't as prevalent as it is in his other games. This game is only part one (which I only discovered when I finished the game!) so there is more to come, but as far as I'd got, it didn't really make much sense to me, as a game.

There is no denying the beauty of this game...

I didn't dislike it, but I didn't love it either. I feel oddly ambivalent about playing it. It's got some big names doing the voices in the game, Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Wil Wheaton! Everything about this game should make it absolute magic, but some sort of spark is lacking. I can't deny that the voice acting is absolutely breath taking, the graphics are beautiful, and the world created is enchanting.. but the puzzles fell flat, and I felt like I was missing something the whole time. I downloaded several games at the same time, and I completed most of the others before I came back to give Broken Age another try, as it just wasn't a game I felt I wanted more of. This said, I will probably try the next part of the game when it is released in the hope it completes the picture more for me, but I feel it's more an indulgence of ideas than something cohesive that works.

Shay the male character (voiced by Elijah Wood)

As for storyline, it's very surreal, but that's not a bad thing. There are two different characters to play and you can switch between the two. There seems to be no connection between the two characters at all until the very end, and it felt a little like playing two different games at once with the same art style. A couple of hints at things that connect the two would have been nice to stop the disconnect in the game. What is interesting is that the concept here is that the two heroes are being babied and controlled with decisions taken from them, and that's exactly how I felt in the game. I was babied with easy puzzles, and felt I had little free will.

I don't like an adventure game that has nothing beyond left clicking on things to interact with the environment, no choosing of whether to look/take/use etc, just if something highlights, you click, and it does the right thing. It feels too easy that way. That is how Broken Age works. Everything seems spoon fed, superficial and easy in that sense.

Vella the female character

Perhaps the problem is that I expected so much more from this game because of the people involved, and that  is why I'm disappointed... It's not a bad game, and it was worth playing... I think... All other reviews I've seen seem to be glowing, so perhaps I'm missing something! For me, Broken Age has many of the right ingredients, but someone screwed up the cooking process I think.

Click below to get the game and try for yourself. Let me know what you think about it!

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The Shivah (Kosher Edition) by Wadjet Eye Games

The Shivah is the most recent game I have played by Wadjet Eye, despite them having made it back in 2006 as their very first game! With the re-release of the game, remade with new graphics and full voice and sound packs as the "kosher edition" I reconsidered it.

Shivah screen shot (apartment appears in a Blackwell game)

I will admit that I avoided it originally because of it's content. I am not a religious person (I'm actually an atheist), and I know nothing about Jewish culture, and I didn't know what to expect in a game about just that. However, I must say I'm pleased I decided to give it the time. When I thought about it, I realised other games had helped me understand religions on some level without it being an absolute "religious game" it just had that as a partial theme- Gabriel Knight 'Sins of The Fathers' had masses of stuff about voodoo, but was about murder and conspiracy. Broken Sword taught me about the Templars, and the Gnostics and more, and I've lost count of the games with mentions of Catholicism. Some sort of religion can make a good story in an adventure game, that's for sure. The Shivah is not so much a "Jewish game" as I may have though, but a game about murder and loss, that happens to have a Rabbi at the centre, so his world involves Jewish themes and ideas. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy it!

Don't mess with tha' rabbi!

It's a very short game, but that doesn't detract too much from it, especially when you know it was Wadjet Eye's first game. I'm very fond of their style, their humour, the graphics and even the music of their games. The only thing is I'm sick of New York now! I know it's where Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye lives with his family, so it's what he feels most comfortable using as his setting, and I can understand that, but I'd love to see something somewhere else.. anywhere else!  

The game, despite it's short length, has multiple endings. You can end it before you even start anything interesting in fact, without ever knowing anything. It makes a short game more rewarding as I replayed it several times to try to get all the endings, and getting it through Steam meant it had Steam Community achievements too (you have to get the game through Steam to do that though)

Rosa's cameo

One of my favourite bits in this game was the cameos of Rosangela Blackwell from the Blackwell games, standing in a bar "talking to herself", and Detective Sam Durkin who is also in the Blackwell games. Of course, Sam could well have been in Shivah first, but I played them the wrong way around! The apartment you visit was also in one of the Blackwell games, but I know from hearing the commentary on the Blackwell games that it did come from the Shivah first. Little things like that make nice connections for fans through games which is particularly nice in Indie games.

New York skyline

The voice acting is, as you would expect from Wadjet Eye, beautiful. Well cast, well recorded, well acted. The music is stunning, same as I expect from them, and the graphics are just beautiful. I mean look at the screen cap of the skyline for a start! I sound like a screaming fan girl, I know, and I suppose I am. Everything Wadjet Eye touch is gold. Of all their games, this would be my least favourite, but it's still a damn good little game and worth a play.

How many other games have you ever played where you get to play a boxing Rabbi??

Click below to buy the game from Wadjet Eye (currently $4.99 via this link or £3.99 on Steam)

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Mata Hari "Betrayal is Only a Kiss Away" (2008)

The REAL Mata Hari in costume

The Real Mata Hari 

Well, I had high hopes for this game. It's one I'd had on my wishlist for awhile. I'd not read anything about apart from having websites suggest to me that "you like x, y and z, so you'll like this" and I'd seen some screenshots that made me interested.


Firstly, if you didn't know, Mata Hari was a real person, her real name was (Margaretha Geertruida "Margreet" Zelle MacLeod) but she was mostly knwn by her stage name Mata Hari which comes from the Malay meaning, mata 'eye' and hari 'day', as a compound meaning 'sun'. Mata was an exotic dancer from the Netherlands, who was thought to be a spy. She seduced men and got secrets out of powerful people this way. She is said to have lived 7 August 1876 – 15 October 1917, when she was executed in France by a firing squad under charges of espionage for Germany during World War 1. 
As you can imagine, the real story of Mata Hari is an interesting one in it's self, but sadly, that excitement and intrigue fails to come across in this game. What follows will involve some spoilers, be warned!

Firstly, I found the interface rather clunky to get on with. Any new interface in a game can be awkward, but I never quite felt right with it, even by the end of the game. It was also never explained anywhere (though originally the game may have come with a manual, but I got the direct download on Steam) It was also never explained that I could gain extra points by looking around for things, and gaining Spycraft, Wealth and Skill points. I only discovered this at the very end and felt duped. I realised I was gaining Skill Points every time I did a train journey the non-direct route but that was about it. Spycraft points are gained through investigating and noticing other things outside of the missions which actually explain what is happening. I found ONE of these randomly, and never found another. It was a pixel hunt thing for that one, so no idea how to get the rest. Wealth is gained through doing dances, and I only did the bare minimum of those, because the less said about that mini game, the better...

Train route mini-game

Ok I will explain the mini-games. The whole game relies heavily on mini-games. Repetitive and dull mini-games. There are three types, varied throughout, but repeated, and a couple of others that aren't done to death. The first is the train based mini game, where you have to pick a route on the trains to avoid the people trying to catch you. As you travel more there are more people to avoid, but you do get options like "safe stations" and to put some of them out of order. Paying it once is fun, but it gets very annoying very quickly as you have to travel a lot. You can learn about the direct routes to all cities from fellow spies, but you gain no skill points that way.

Infuriating dance mini-game

Secondly, my most hated, the dance mini-game. In this, you have to help Mata perform by moving your mouse to a circle when a musical note reaches the centre of that circle. Sounds easy yes? Well.. it isn't. Nobody has a mouse THAT responsive, and if you wave your mouse a bit too far and overshoot you loose points. And you have to move it between 4 fixed points at speed and accurately. It's insane. I nearly stopped playing from sheer frustration when I came to the last dance I had to do, there is no way I would have continued "for fun". Most mini games you can skip, but I saw no option to continue and skip on the dance game. I HATE when adventure games force you to take part in a skill based puzzle or action puzzle. If I wanted to play that kind of game, I would. I play adventure games because I like to use my brain alone, not my response times. I'm heavily medicated nowadays for reasons I won't go into here, but sharp mousing skills are not something I'd say I possess.. I think the game would have been more doable if it had been pressing say the WASD keys or using the numpad, but accurate muse movement makes a game awkward and unplayable.

Rotate wires...

Now rotate some pipes!

The third repeated mini game is the "turning pipes or wires to complete a circuit". Lucky for them, I like this sort of puzzle, but it was dragged out in some variation regularly. 

The other mini games were less repetitive and thus more interesting, like rearranging books on a shelf to solve one puzzle, using a cipher machine to decode some messages, altering chemical levels in a factory and walking a certain route around a room to avoid upsetting some rats!

Other than the mini-games, the game involved on very little in terms of inventory or interrogation, which are normally key to an adventure game. I felt more like a bystander than part of the game somehow. I felt eternally disconnected from Mata and the storyline. I'm not sure if that is mostly because I MISSED a lot of storyline due to not knowing to look for more, but I feel so frustrated my the mini games and the overall clunkiness of the way the game worked, I don't feel inclined to play it through again any time soon.

To it's credit, the game has wonderful graphics, smooth animations (for the time) and the music and sound effects are good. The puzzles felt superficial and tagged on, and the mini games were infuriating. 

Would I recommend this game? Well, only not the hardcore gamer who wants to have played EVERYTHING or a sadist who enjoys failing in badly written mini games, or a fan of the history of 
the real Mata Hari, otherwise I would advise you to steer clear and play something else.. 

To finish with, here's some larger screenshots so you can appreciate the beauty of the visuals in this game.

A screenshot to show the gorgeous graphics 

Mata Hari in Marie Curie's lab!

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WELCOME!

Hello guys and gals!

Snowball by Level 9 on a BBC Micro

I have so many blogs now, it's practically obscene, and I never keep up with any of them, but this is one I've been meaning to make for a long time, and kept putting off!

I've been a fan of the adventure game genre for my whole life pretty much. No really. My first computer, was a BBC Micro (ok it wasn't mine, it was my dad's!) and I loved the text adventures. I learnt how to spell using those things, and you had to get good pretty quickly, because if you spelt things wrong the text parser had no idea what you were on about. My tag line with "Arfle barfle gloop" is a homage to those Level 9 adventures and the frustrating text parser... I think that particular one was in Snowball?

Then, for me at least, there followed the beginning of the graphics adventure with text input! Enter Sierra On-line with such wonders as the Kings Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest seriesesesesss I also played Leisure Suit Larry, but that's only because my dad was convinced we wouldn't be able to work out what we had to do with our innocent little minds, and I must say spelling "prophylactic" was challenging, but I managed it! When my dad worked it out, he took the disk away from me and my brother (until we found it again! BWAHAHA!) I still love all these Sierra games and they bring back a wonderful sense of nostalgia!

One of my favourite bits from Space Quest 4 by Sierra

The peak of adventure gaming, in my opinion at least, was the 1990s. My favourite games came about in the beginning of the 90s, with VGA and Sound Blaster around, things seemed more realistic (stop laughing at the back, kids, it WAS impressive at the time!) and when the point and click games arrived, and you know longer had to guess the exact phrasing the computer wanted from you, it became a little more user friendly, and more about the puzzles. My favourite games to this day include Space Quest 4 and Monkey Island 2. Two classic VGA point and clicks, from two classic studios, Sierra and Lucasarts (Yes, as in George Lucas and Star Wars!)

Sadly, when graphics got more and more realistic and with a dawn of new gaming for everyone, not just us geeky shut-ins, games changed. Adventure games slipped away quietly. A few would come out sporadically, but they were few and far between, with poor budgets. Sad times. I satisfied myself playing the retro games I'd already enjoyed using DOSbox (I still do this!) and sulking t anyone who would listen about how much I missed good gameplay.

A screenshot from The Blackwell Epiphany by Wadjet Eye Games
(made with AGS by Chris Jones)

BUT! Viva la revolución! Adventure games have been creeping back! The recent advent of such platforms as Kickstarter has meant games such as Leisure Suit Larry got remade, because of public support. Steam Greenlight has been helping developers put games out that the people want, not just a guy in an office who decides for us. My ultimate discovery, has been AGS, the  Adventure Game Studio . An engine which adventure game fans and enthusiasts can make their OWN adventure games in, and share them with the world! The majority of these games are free, and some of them are.. well, pretty dire, but amongst them are some wonderful gems, and some even worth paying for. I have paid personally for several of them, including every game Wadjet Eye has made to date. Their Blackwell series in particular is amazing. 

I made my own Simon the Sorcerer.
It was the first time I'd used this software too!

On a personal level, since those beautiful VGA backgrounds back in the '90s, I wanted to be an adventure game background artist. I was devastated that by the time I was grown up, it was all about 3D rendering and maths based art, which is not how my mind works. Seeing AGS, I feel a renewed enthusiasm, and I have started drawing my own backgrounds for fun, as practice, and I hope that one day I'll get my art into a game of my own! Watch this space. The rubbish little Simon sprite design to the left is one I made using a program called Pro Motion. Not bad for a first attempt!

So, what is this blog about? I've told you my life story about adventure games back there and probably bored you to tears, but it was necessary, sorry. In this blog, I'm going to review and discuss adventure games!. That might be retro ones from long, long ago, it could be a recent remake, an indie game, or something a lot more mainstream, and maybe look at ones currently being made too, but when I say adventure, be clear that I mean a true adventure like a point and click or text based, not something like Tomb Raider or even Final Fantasy, which are adventures of sorts, but action and RPG, not a TRUE adventure, in terms of my blog definition of them at least! (Don't get me wrong, I adore both those series, and I play more than just adventuress, but damn adventures are an under-appreciated genre!!)

OK, so enough waffle. I will take a bow and return with some actual content! I have downloaded MANY games in the Steam Summer sale recently, so I have a few to discuss...

All screenshots/images are used under creative licence and critical analysis and are not owned by me, but by the respective game creators who hold all copyright. I will happily remove any images used within this blog if they belong to you and you have a problem with them being here, just send me an email. I purely use them out of love for the genre!

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