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General discussion (archive)Release: Moebius(113 posts)(113 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 15, 2014
Empire Rising

Moebius, a contemporary metaphysical adventure from the master storyteller Jane Jensen, the creator of Gabriel Knight and Grey Matter, is available for Windows and Mac OS X on GOG.com for $29.99.

When a secretive government agency enlists Malachi Rector to determine whether a murdered woman in Venice resembles any particular historical figure, he is left with nothing but questions. Why would the U.S. government hire him--a dealer of high-end antiques--to look into a foreign murder? Why does David Walker, a former Special Forces operative he meets in his travels, feel like someone Malachi’s known all his life? And how come everytime Malachi lets his guard down, someone tries to kill him?

Moebius is a contemporary adventure that merges classic point-and-click puzzle solving with Jane Jensen’s sophisticated storytelling. Travel the world using Malachi’s unique deductive powers to analyze suspects, make historical connections, and uncover the truth behind a theory of space and time the government will defend at any cost. This thrilling new adventure game from master storyteller Jane Jensen (Gabriel Knight, Gray Matter) and Phoenix Online Studios (Cognition, The Silver Lining) introduces Malachi Rector, an expert in antiquities whose photographic memory and eye for detail transform people and clues into interactive puzzles. The game comes with the original soundtrack both in high-quality MP3 and FLAC format.

If you miss the times when adventure games were played mostly for the great and immersive storytelling, not just for the puzzles, humor, and views, be sure to get Moebius for $29.99 on GOG.com.
Posted April 16, 2014
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zavlin: yeah i didnt say they were hard, i said they were tedious. A bunch of puzzles where you just click on the options until youre right. They ultimately dont really add anything to the game... and thats a really large % of the puzzles between analyzing people and coming to those conclusions.
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Crosmando: They keep you playing and your brain working, I wouldn't say they were "tedious", I would say they aren't the best puzzles I've seen, but I've rather them than no puzzles at all, because that would be a boring game.
Most of those "hes got a blue sweater on, so that says this about him" are completely arbitrary.. its just guessing. And its a boring game anyway ;)
Post edited April 16, 2014 by zavlin
Posted April 16, 2014
I had high hopes for those analysing puzzles, but in the end they weren't that well done. They could had been great, but the way they are, it feels like pointless exercise. You can even do most of them without any bigger thought.

And the final chapter of the game is just plain disappointing. Bringing a boring maze as a major part of the final chapter seems like a bad try at making the game a tad longer.
Posted April 16, 2014
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mistermumbles: I'm very interested, but, yeah, maybe not so much at that price point. It's a rarity for me to buy adventure games at full price. Daedalic's Night of the Rabbit was the one of the very few where I had no qualms doing so. Well, that and Wadjet Eye's stuff since their games are generally pretty affordable in comparison. :) Anyway, I quite enjoyed Cognition despite some of its glaring technical flaws, so I don't think I'll have any problems with this.

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ne_zavarj: RPS ... reviews sucks .
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mistermumbles: Indeed. Once again they had to pull their 'game is sexist' angle out of their arse to boot. *le sigh*
Indeed. I didn't post this out of any maliciousness, and I wholeheartedly agree the RPS 'political correctness' angle is a non-starter in any review. I wish they would just stop it, because on the whole i enjoy most of the stuff thats posted on there.

Some of their other points may have merit, but I couldn't personally comment. Im strictly neutral when it comes to adventure games - neither despise or love em.
Posted April 16, 2014
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Crosmando: Oh man this lack of a right-click is killing me, I need to click once for a radial menu to come out, and THEN examine or use. Also you can't hold down a key to see all objects of interest, you need to open the top menu and select the "bullseye" picture.
You can hold down the spacebar for the hotspots! :)

Everyone, here's my review of Moebius for Nerdy but Flirty!

http://nerdybutflirty.com/2014/04/14/review-moebius-empire-rising-the-latest-from-jane-jensen/

I liked it for the most part, but the last chapter gets really uncreative compared to the rest of the game. It took me 8.4 hours to complete, according to Steam (I also had access to a walkthrough, but didn't use it much until the last chapter).
Posted April 16, 2014
Well I for one stopped the demo in the first minute because of the ridiculously awful walking animation.
I've been a major fan of adventure games since the dawn of Sierra and Lucasarts and this game has the worst character animations I've ever seen.
Posted April 16, 2014
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MrAlphaNumeric: Well I for one stopped the demo in the first minute because of the ridiculously awful walking animation.
I've been a major fan of adventure games since the dawn of Sierra and Lucasarts and this game has the worst character animations I've ever seen.
Do you have strict criteria for perfection for all games, or just this one :p

But to be fair, the guy was carrying a heavy backpack; I thought it was realistic and all that.
Posted April 16, 2014
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HypersomniacLive: I hope there's going to be a patch to iron out the various glitches/ bugs I read about before I do.
What bugs? Played quite a bit of it and didn't encounter any bugs so far.
Posted April 16, 2014
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kelseyr713: You can hold down the spacebar for the hotspots! :)
Thanks.
Posted April 17, 2014
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Crosmando: I just finished the second chapter and I'm enjoying it so far.

I would point out though that PCGamer gave high reviews to "adventure games" that are very casual and have basically no real puzzles, ie Gone Home, The Walking Dead and Broken Age, yet they gave a 55/100 score to PRIMORDIA, which is one of the greatest P&P adventures in modern times in my opinion, so their reviews mean shit all to me, it's obvious they don't like real adventure games they like "Story-Games" and " First-Person Walking Simulators".
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groze: I'm not trying to instill paranoia towards video game news media, but it all pretty much sucks. No conspiracy theories, no "they get paid to praise this and belittle that" on my part, I just think they're really, really bad at their jobs. They are either PC or console gamers and tend to be way too partial and vocal about it, they make piss-poor reviews of video games and they always excuse themselves with the typical "we're just human, it's just an informed opinion".

That's not to say I didn't like the games you mentioned (I love Broken Age, find The Walking Dead to be 'meh' at best and am biased towards Gone Home because IGN's Greg MIller loves it, and that in itself makes me loath it, even if I tend to like experimental video games like Dear Esther and Montague's Mount), but I also LOVED Primordia, and that lame excuse for a review rating is a disservice to the video game industry. Yeah, sure, everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but if I'm sick I don't go to a car salesman because of his opinion on medicine, I go to a doctor. Video game journalists should be experts on video games, but instead they're just some random guys that happened to have connections and got a job playing some video games mostly everyone knows about (screw that indie scene stuff, man! Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham games all the way, baby!) and reviewing their political correctness, their "obvious" misogyny and sexism and how the developers are such cool/uncool people.

I haven't bought Moebius due to an unfortunate economically terrible stage I'm going through in my life, right now, but from gameplay videos, screenshots and word of mouth from people who are playing the game -- people who, though not claiming to be video game experts, end up being more so than "official" video game journalists -- I get the idea some of the lower scores and reviews are really unfair. If you're reviewing a point and click adventure game, the least you can do is have an actual point and click adventure player and "connoisseur" review it, for crying out loud!
I won't argue that a lot of reviewers aren't bad at their jobs, but are you seriously trying to posit that certain games on a site receiving certain percentages versus other games is an indicator of such? For one thing, many times there is a different reviewer across different games, and they all have their own spin. This is no different than when I used to read newspaper reviews and they would sometimes include the new york times reviews in our local paper alongside our own.

I enjoyed primordia, but if I were to review it alongside something like the walking dead, or even gone home; I would have to give the edge to the later two. Not that it's really fair to compare different genres, or to compare an indie game to games developed by industry experts with more resources.

As an adventure game nut, it feels like there are only two types of adventure games we get these days. Ones that try to be really modern and change things up to be relevant to todays audiences, losing some of the charm of the older games. And ones that pander so hard to be like the older games yet still manage to fall short somehow. I tend to buy games from both camps, but usually end up disappointed in some way :( The closest have been the daedelus games, but their humor and storytelling often doesn't translate very well.

This one is unfortunately looking like the latter to me, from what people are saying. Back to playing journeyman project 3 for me!
Posted April 17, 2014
Screw the haters, I'm liking this game.

Also Malachi Rector is a cool protagonist.
Post edited April 17, 2014 by Crosmando
Posted April 17, 2014
high rated
I just finished my playthrough. The game has strengths and weaknesses (and quirks) similar to other games from Jane Jensen. Personally I enjoyed it, though I also think that it could have been done better. I still don't regret the purchase and would recommend the game, with some caveats.

Mini-review:

- Story is an interesting mix of detective work around historical characters, political conspiracy, and paranormal thriller. Some of the political aspects are a bit naive, and I think personal Horror (Gabriel Knight) or a purer paranormal thriller (Gray Matter) are a better match for Jane Jensen's skills than political topics, but I've seen much worse.

- Game feels a bit rushed towards the end, the last chapter is just a disappointing slug through a boring maze. Many questions remain open, though the game's main story arcs do receive proper closure.

- Lots of well-researched detail. This is the part where Jane Jensen usually excels, and Moebius is no different than her other games in that regard. Which other game is so admirably obsessed with details that it educates you about six different types of marble and how to differentiate between them, or serves you information about dozens of historical figures that you may or may not know? For me, the game triggered several Internet searches since it made me curious and I wanted to get more information. I very much like that.

- Good writing in general, especially if one likes sarcasm.

- Puzzles are so-so. Generally not very difficult, but some are a bit contrived, and sometimes I had to spend a lot of time finding out what the game actually wanted me to do, as some seemingly unimportant click was missing and preventing the game from progressing. The "matching historical figures" mechanic is original, and can be a lot of fun if you really indulge in history, but may feel a bit lackluster if you don't.

- Scene graphics are pretty good for an adventure game, beautifully drawn and in decent resolution

- Character models look rather amateurish - weird proportions, hands too large, armpits much too high, animations are hardly natural. Didn't bother me much, but will be offputting for people to whom good visuals important. Facial expressions are hit and miss.

- Voice acting is pretty good for the main characters, decent for the rest of the cast

- Background music is pretty good; sets the mood but stays in the background as it should. Never distracts from the game, but somehow still stays in your head. ;)

- Game is remarkably bug-free for a freshly released product, I only ran into one single issue and that was easily resolved by saving, quitting, restarting, and reloading.

Altogether I enjoyed the game. It's not quite as great as I had hoped for, but it's a good adventure game and a decent addition to Jane Jensen's much too small ludography.
Post edited April 17, 2014 by Psyringe
Posted April 17, 2014
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K_1269: What bugs? Played quite a bit of it and didn't encounter any bugs so far.
Nth game-breaking (aside from the rare crashes mentioned by some), mostly things such as mentioned here for example.
And while not game-breaking, I'd still appreciate it if they were fixed before I played.

For anyone interested, Jane Jensen is accumulating all the professional site reviews in this thread here, and also encourages backers (CSG members) to post their personal reviews here.

The reception is far more positive than the initial couple of reviews coloured it to be.
Posted April 17, 2014
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HypersomniacLive: Nth game-breaking (aside from the rare crashes mentioned by some), mostly things such as mentioned here for example.
And while not game-breaking, I'd still appreciate it if they were fixed before I played.
Good to know, was wondering if I just got lucky. Actually finished the game in the meantime and didn't encounter any of the issues mentioned in the link ( didn't try reproducing them though). So it could just be some odd graphical glitches that don't nessesarily happen in most players normal playthrough ;)

Also, quite enjoyed the game! Not going to go into details, as Psyringe already summed everything up pretty nicely imho.
Post edited April 17, 2014 by K_1269
Posted April 17, 2014
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Psyringe: I just finished my playthrough. The game has strengths and weaknesses (and quirks) similar to other games from Jane Jensen. Personally I enjoyed it, though I also think that it could have been done better. I still don't regret the purchase and would recommend the game, with some caveats.

Mini-review:
snip...
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make a game review, unlike the John Walker "game journalist" rant in RPS!

I learned more about the game, it's hits and misses, in this mini-review than I did in that lame attempt at sarcasm!
Post edited April 17, 2014 by WireHead
Posted April 17, 2014
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Psyringe: I just finished my playthrough. The game has strengths and weaknesses (and quirks) similar to other games from Jane Jensen. Personally I enjoyed it, though I also think that it could have been done better. I still don't regret the purchase and would recommend the game, with some caveats.

Mini-review:
snip...
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WireHead: And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make a game review, unlike the John Walker "game journalist" rant in RPS!

I learned more about the game, it's hits and misses, in this mini-review than I did in that lame attempt at sarcasm!
Indeed. If only "professional" game journalists learnt something from this...

kelseyr713 also made a pretty nice review of the game.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Release: Moebius(113 posts)(113 posts)
(113 posts)