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General discussion (archive)Release: Broken Age Season Pass(87 posts)(87 posts)
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Posted April 03, 2014
Tim Schafer, Tim Schafer!

Broken Age Season Pass, granting you access to the both episodes of the Double Fine's big-budget adventure game, that was made famous by Kickstarter and made Kickstarter famous, is now available for Windows and Mac OS X, 33% off on GOG.com. That's only $16.74 for the next 48 hours!

The first graphic adventure by Tim Schafer in sixteen years, [url=http://www.gog.com/game/broken_age]Broken Age began two years ago in a historic, record-breaking Kickstarter campaign. Now it's here in all its beautiful, 2D, hand-painted glory, with an original orchestral soundtrack and an all-star vocal cast. Broken Age is a timeless coming-of-age story of barfing trees and talking spoons. Vella Tartine and Shay Volta are two teenagers in strangely similar situations, but radically different worlds. The player can freely switch between their stories, helping them take control of their own lives, and dealing with the unexpected adventures that follow.

Your purchase of Broken Age Season Pass gives you instant access to the game's (already released) first act, and will allow you to play its (already funded) second act, as soon as it's ready (later this year). Until Saturday, April 5, at 9:59AM GMT you can get the season pass 33% off, that is for only $16.74.
Posted April 14, 2014
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Crosmando: Just submitted my GOG review. *smugface*
For someone who according to his own words doesn't care about this game, you're acting pretty butthurt about it.

You review is a joke. It's pretty clear you haven't played the game and have at best read the Codex thread about it. There is no character called Marek the Wolf. There's a character called Marek who wears a wolf costume. And he doesn't tell you what to do in the sense of how to exactly solve the puzzles (you don't even meet him right away), but he gives you "missions" to do (for example, get control of the boom arms of the ship). Some of the "missions" may seem obvious, but if you had really played the game, you'd know that

SPOILER...

there's a good reason for this as he most likely represents the second level of the simulation.
Post edited April 14, 2014 by Mrstarker
Posted April 14, 2014
Well, it isn't shown what Marek really is, so I'm using the term Wolf, perhaps Part 2 will show his true identity, even though he says it's costume. There's no excuse for giving away puzzle solutions via the story, that's the point of an adventure game - to explore and adventure and find things out yourself, not have everything shoveled down your throat in cinematic form. And even if those "hints" didn't exist, I'd still have a problem with the game because nothing in it makes you really think about anything, when solutions are "use spoon on cereal bowl", "catch runaway train", "use spoon on ice cream", "talk to marek", "get screwdriver", "use screwdriver on air vent", "get inflatable raft", "combine inflatable raft with air tank".

Is this game for real?! It's an insult to any adult person's intelligence.

Although it wasn't to my taste, the story and art-style isn't bad, I'm simply saying that it's a poor adventure game.

Edit: Also my review was much, much longer at first, but GOG doesn't allow reviews beyond a certain word count.
Post edited April 14, 2014 by Crosmando
Posted April 14, 2014
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Crosmando: Well, it isn't shown what Marek really is, so I'm using the term Wolf, perhaps Part 2 will show his true identity, even though he says it's costume. There's no excuse for giving away puzzle solutions via the story, that's the point of an adventure game - to explore and adventure and find things out yourself, not have everything shoveled down your throat in cinematic form. And even if those "hints" didn't exist, I'd still have a problem with the game because nothing in it makes you really think about anything, when solutions are "use spoon on cereal bowl", "catch runaway train", "use spoon on ice cream", "talk to marek", "get screwdriver", "use screwdriver on air vent", "get inflatable raft", "combine inflatable raft with air tank".
The puzzles are easy, I'm not disputing that, but they are a far cry from Telltale style "click next-next-next for the story" puzzles.

Breaking out of the mission loop is fairly non-obvious, getting to space is fairly non-obvious, getting to Prima Doom is non-obvious, the riddle of Yorn is fairly non-obvious, getting tree sap is fairly non-obvious, getting the golden egg from the bird nest is fairly non-obvious, etc...

Some of them take multiple steps and don't have any hints given out at all (or at least not immediately available hints), let alone solutions.

Also what puzzles have the solution "catch runaway train" or "talk to Marek"? Are you looking them up from a walkthrough?
Post edited April 14, 2014 by Mrstarker
Posted April 14, 2014
Well, I never got stuck on any of them, and I'm generally pretty bad at adventure games and will resort to walkthroughs if I have to, I won't give more examples because well... those are spoilers, but I will say that creating the Star Chart to Prima Doom was completely obvious, and the answer to the riddle was too.
Post edited April 14, 2014 by Crosmando
Posted April 14, 2014
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Crosmando: Well, I never got stuck on any of them, and I'm generally pretty bad at adventure games and will resort to walkthroughs if I have to, I won't give more examples because well... those are spoilers, but I will say that creating the Star Chart to Prima Doom was completely obvious.
SPOILER

You don't even know the NavScarf is alterable until you examine it and you have to find the means yourself.
Posted April 14, 2014
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Crosmando: Well, I never got stuck on any of them, and I'm generally pretty bad at adventure games and will resort to walkthroughs if I have to, I won't give more examples because well... those are spoilers, but I will say that creating the Star Chart to Prima Doom was completely obvious, and the answer to the riddle was too.
I hope you're not implying that an adventure game is only good if you get stuck on the puzzles so badly that you have to resort to using a walkthrough and you can admire the game for being tougher than you? ;)
Post edited April 14, 2014 by Leroux
Posted April 14, 2014
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Leroux: I hope you're not implying that an adventure game is only good if you get stuck on the puzzles so badly that you have to resort to using a walkthrough and you can admire the game for being tougher than you? ;)
No, but I am implying that puzzles are the core gameplay of an adventure game, and if they're weak the game is weak, story cannot save a bad game. And yes, it was often touted about that Tim Schafer was an adventure game design genius, but I didn't see any real clever puzzles in Broken Age, certainly nothing to justify all the media adoration going on.

More than anything though, I'm astounded that the biggest Kickstarter project produced such a tiny little "game" which is completely unimpressive, even in production values. Especially when it seems that Moebius and Tex Murphy seem to have done FAR better despite having not even a quarter of the budget.

The Kickstarter did promise a "classic adventure game" and an "old-school adventure game", but BA is not classic nor is it old-school in design.
Post edited April 14, 2014 by Crosmando
Posted April 14, 2014
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Leroux: I hope you're not implying that an adventure game is only good if you get stuck on the puzzles so badly that you have to resort to using a walkthrough and you can admire the game for being tougher than you? ;)
Someone called for me?
:)
Posted April 14, 2014
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Crosmando: More than anything though, I'm astounded that the biggest Kickstarter project produced such a tiny little "game" which is completely unimpressive, even in production values. Especially when it seems that Moebius and Tex Murphy seem to have done FAR better despite having not even a quarter of the budget.
The game is not finished yet. And the production values are excellent. Music composed by Peter McConnell and performed by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, top notch voice acting, great animation, good writing...
Post edited April 14, 2014 by Mrstarker
Posted April 14, 2014
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Mrstarker: The game is not finished yet. And the production values are excellent. Music composed by Peter McConnell and performed by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, top notch voice acting, great animation, good writing...
I disagree, if anything the game looks like it was made in Flash or Flixel, the graphics are extremely simplistic and in my view worse than AGS games like Primordia or Heroine's Quest (which is free) which at least have a charm in the pixel graphics, this game looks cheap. The music felt "off" to me and not really suited to the game, just using a symphony orchestra as if that's the de-facto for "quality", the voice acting was also "off", except say for Jennifer Hale (who is exclusively a voice actor) they used Hollywood live actors like Elijah Wood and Jack Black. If anything the voice-acting reminded me of the cringeworthy stuff in those Pixar animated films where they just get a big Hollywood name and throw them in as the main character, completely oblivious to the fact that live actors do not necessarily make good voice actors, almost how Bethesda does it. I would have preferred text and no voices in this game tbh.

As for great animation, well that's the thing, most of the game is told in cutscenes, which ~very~ animation heavy, great writing doesn't such literal and expensive tools, it's great straight off the "page".

I mean can you tell me who the great voice-actors were in Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island games? Because I can't, the voices were great but I don't think they were even in the credits. BA's voice-acting was distracting.
Posted April 14, 2014
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Crosmando: I disagree, if anything the game looks like it was made in Flash or Flixel, the graphics are extremely simplistic and in my view worse than AGS games like Primordia or Heroine's Quest (which is free) which at least have a charm in the pixel graphics, this game looks cheap. The music felt "off" to me and not really suited to the game, just using a symphony orchestra as if that's the de-facto for "quality", the voice acting was also "off", except say for Jennifer Hale (who is exclusively a voice actor) they used Hollywood live actors like Elijah Wood and Jack Black. If anything the voice-acting reminded me of the cringeworthy stuff in those Pixar animated films where they just get a big Hollywood name and throw them in as the main character, completely oblivious to the fact that live actors do not necessarily make good voice actors, almost how Bethesda does it. I would have preferred text and no voices in this game tbh.

As for great animation, well that's the thing, most of the game is told in cutscenes, which ~very~ animation heavy, great writing doesn't such literal and expensive tools, it's great straight off the "page".
It looks nothing like a Flash game. If anything, it looks like a Miyazaki movie.

There were no other Hollywood actors apart from Jack Black and Elijah Wood. Jack Black had a very minor role and Elijah Wood did an excellent job in act 1. He got all the timings right and managed to convey just the right amount of ennui or excitement for the character, as the situation demanded. Plus he isn't just any Hollywood actor hired for a payday. He's a fan of the project and of adventure games in general.

That the music sounded "off" to you, someone predisposed to finding faults in the game, is not any indication of quality either. MSO is not just any symphony orchestra and Peter McConnell is not just any composer. He has composed many great soundtracks for games, including GF and MI, and he did a very good job this time as well.

And most of the story is told via dialogue with the characters. The cutscenes are used mostly for scene transitions or action scenes. As you would know if you had played the game.
Posted April 14, 2014
The game looks NOTHING! like a Miyazaki film, that's an insult, and I recently watched Porco Rosso Bluray, damn if they had of been able to master an art-style as good as that film or Nausicaa I would be impressed.
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Community
General discussion (archive)Release: Broken Age Season Pass(87 posts)(87 posts)
(87 posts)