Does anyone else miss the days of this graphic style? It had so much more personality to it.

Great games :)

I did like the character portraits in Legacy and Convergence, but not not so much in Deception.

I like it simply because it doesn't melt my laptop.

I got the Blackwell Bundle from the current sale, not really knowing what to expect. Completed the first three titles over the weekend.

I enjoyed adventure games in the early 90's-abouts, so the graphics felt just right. The portraits and the animated characters are very well drawn in each, although I recall that some of the backgrounds in the first title felt a bit unfinished, and one in the second title had the characters look two storey tall next to a house.

I made sure to disable the "Smooth scaled sprites" in each title (antialias=0 under [misc] in acsetup.cfg), because I generally like my pixel art crispy and because it made the characters stand out from the backgrounds in a disturbing fashion when scaled. Briefly tried the 16-bit option in one of the titles, but it didn't seem to do much if at all.

I've started the fourth title now and it looks a bit different. The new Rosangela sprite is growing on me, and some of the new portraits are pretty good. Unfortunately Joey is one of my least favorite ones, and he shows up a lot.

It's really nice to see a well made point and click adventure game again. I don't think I've actually enjoyed one this much for over a decade. I bought this game a week ago and already went through all four. Needless to say, I got hooked. The story is almost too good. I get a bit frustrated at having to actually figure out the puzzles. I want to know what comes next! Also living in NY, I caught some of the references to places and people, jobs (an item description at Frank's apt. specifically made me chuckle). It was neat and added a personal touch for me.

I agree about the character portraits in the 4th game, not quite as appealing as the first 3 games. I think Rosa and Joey looked best in Convergence. Also, not having the lip sync in Deception threw me off a bit. About halfway through I got used to it but I needed to sort of ignore them to not get distracted by the lack of mouth movement.

One thing I was really happy about with Deception was that there was finally an audio volume control. My ears thank whomever decided to add that. It was helpful to get the dialogue louder than the music.

Can't wait to buy the 5th game when it comes out. :)

I, too, like the graphics a lot, and it just goes to show how a retro-styled game can still look pretty and polished without requiring your computer to be an "ULTRA ÜBER ELITE SUPER GAMING EXPENSIVE" rig (which, obviously, my 2008 mid-to-low-range Acer TravelMate 5520 laptop with integrated 256 MB "up to 896 MB" ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 HyperMemory is far from being).

My only complaint would be the drastic art direction change in the latest installment... I very much preferred the one used in all three games before it (I'm talking mostly about character portraits and photos, not sprite design, they're still great in that department).

I also had a whole deal of fun playing Unbound, which seems to be the "black sheep" of the series, according to some fans. I actually liked it more than the first one, but I reckon I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much had I not played Legacy before it. I felt it had superb art, plus, it's nice, as a smoker, for once, to see a game in which smokers are not utterly crucified for that practice (just take a look at Wadjet Eye's Resonance, for instance), following recent "first world" policies throughout, that deem us as complete scum and whatnot. Yes, I more than proudly unlocked the Chain Smoker achievement as soon as I could, having Lauren smoke more than 100 cigarettes during my first play-through.

The music is... well, as far as I'm concerned, it ranges from acceptable to plain bad. Again, the only title I find has great tunes is, indeed, Unbound. But, hey, you can lower or turn the music off altogether, so that's not a major issue to me.

This is a topic concerning our love for the graphics and the bottom line is I share said love, though I'm not at all fond of Deception's character portraits and photos.

I disagree. Of course music is a matter of taste, but even if it's not your style, it's well composed and fits the game. Compared to other indie adventures, it's above par and you'll recognize the sound design in each part of the series, providing a unique Blackwell feeling.

You're absolutely right, and I apologize if I came out as rude. It's a matter of opinion, and the music not being to my personal liking doesn't change the fact that the game has a brilliant, amazingly produced -- even by big game studio standards -- sound design. I may not like it, and that's my prerogative, but its quality is pretty much undeniable.

Funny you mention it... I remember I tried every way to bring misery upon Ed after his remarks about smoking in Resonance :)

Same here, though my opinion differs between games. Legacy i thought looked pretty good, but had a pretty weird soundtrack compared to the rest. Unbound was okay-ish, both in graphics and music, though i missed the lip-flapping mugshots when i first played it. Convergence looked best and convinced me to download the soundtrack included with the bundle. Lastly, Deception's graphics weren't terrible, but they were a bit of a step down when compared to Convergence, if only because the mugshots were radically different in design (and no lip-flapping, sadly). Its music is up there with Convergence.