I started playing "Ripper" recently, the FMV adventure game, and I dropped it after a few hours of it testing my patience. In no particular order:
1) It has unskippable, SLOW transition FMVs whenever you move around (the game is played in first-person). The movement also feels weird and unpredictable (your character will zig-zag in very annoying ways before settling down on a spot, and even turning requires an FMV). The fixed spots they picked sometimes have very bizarre angles, keeping lots of stuff just barely out of sight or annoyingly positioned in the scene.
2)The cursor is a giant, spinning knife which I find very distracting.
3) You can zoom in/out plenty of unremarkable and uninteractive elements (again, forcing the unskippable FMVs on you), the protagonist almost never has anything to say, making it awkward to figure out if there is something more to the scene or not (the spinning knife also makes it hard to pixel hunt scenes, by the way). This is all complimented by the fact that that a LOT of the renders seem to have random noise or pixellated details which are really hard to identify (I can't say if this is an issue with the dos version).
4) The puzzles have finnicky controls, and/or sport some of the worst leaps in logic I have submitted myself to in a while. This really takes out any satisfaction when completing them.
5) It has dreadful on-rail shooting combat (it's as bad as you'd expect an FMV shooter to be).
6) The acting is really bad and the voices aren't clear at all (I think these two are connected). Seeing famous actors delivering such unimpressive performances is kind of sad. The script would be kind of fun (although it also seems full of non-sequiturs), but the delivery is so mismatched that for the most part it's unenjoyable. There are also various questionable directing choices for the videos.
7) The story is alright (if I am being generous), but I find the atmosphere weak, so there is nothing to redeem the gameplay.
I am particularly disappointed, because people seemed to consider it a good game, yet I have played a lot of adventures (either FMV, 2D or 3D) which eclipse this, even flawed or very flawed ones.
Post edited August 02, 2022 by mdqp