Posted December 17, 2015
My first impression made me quit something like 6 months ago, mostly due to game stability issues. Having restarted to give the game a second try it seems that didn't really help much. Came across a steam note that overriding your AMD catalyst to forced gfx would fix and make the game more stable. I am not sure i found that specific option, but updating it on a per-game basis did make the game a lot more stable (only crashed once afterwards, vs on loading or 3 minutes into a game).
note: I've been playing the Humble bundle version; v3.5.7.45015
Graphics: Looks impressive in a almost hand drawn style, at least until it gets to animation. The bodies move in one direction and way while the eyes and conversation totally doesn't match with the scene. Also the facial animations reminds me of the older TMNT movies where the mouths, facial expressions look and feel unreal like they were a doll with unwanted fixed positions.
Audio: Seems good enough, i didn't notice anything too blaring about it.
Story: Haven't completed all 4 episodes so i am not sure yet, but it's very much a mystery that just gets more confusing as time goes on. On the other hand there's a few parts that are very funny, like a college girl singing to an Ouija board trying to remember some vague detail.
Puzzles: Mostly not too difficult, although the hint system and getting help in a walkthrough i found necessary, but nothing in comparison to another game like say a couple of the Blackwell games... Still there were several times i was almost yelling at the computer saying 'Then what the f*** am i supposed to do?', when i was suppose to do something else first before doing the action that logically made sense to me.
Still the item count and complexity of the puzzles are fairly small, actually there's plenty of stuff in the game that don't do anything at all, like the phone where you can search entertainment where i haven't had to touch it at all yet. The second game has had a lot more items than the first game, but for it to refuse to do anything until you have all 4-5 charms limits the complexity (except at the end of episode 2 which i won't spoil)
Annoyances: The first game seems to have more annoyances than the second one. The GUI is set up so you click and get a 3 options wheel, but if you move the mouse wrong or too fast or it feels like it the window goes away. Not only that after an action there's something like a 5 second pause before the GUI and options become something you can do something with.
Lack of fast travel is annoying. Nothing like watching the character get out of a chair, push the chair back in, then walk (or jog) to the front door only to have to select one of four floors in order to go to another map location.
Also annoying is the computer system, you'll go into a system search and search for something like 'Sarah' in the records and get no results even if it's the most open for a search result. Instead you have to have 3 fields or know the full name (which you can't type in you have to have 'learned about it' somewhere) before a single result will show up. Not 'too many results i have to narrow it down' or something like that which would make sense, I'd have preferred that, even a few entries i could glance through and have Erica comment 'these have nothing to do with my case...'
Then especially in Episode 1 having to look at something and the game happily complains to you that you have to step out of what you're doing before you can look at a particular paper or photo or item in your inventory, while you can pull your phone up almost at any time.
Episode 4 was also annoying that the number of fail states got ramped up. Dying repeatedly made me unwilling to really figure things out and just go through a walkthrough to finish it, and I'd rather have just watched all the cutscenes rather than play this.
Game hanging/crashing, likely due to the AMD catalyst and there were no notes of what to expect. Although i certainly don't expect the proper settings to get auto-installed in the Catalyst to handle the game, but a note of how to fix it if it's known would have been nice.
Summary: With the stability issues worked around, the game isn't all that bad. But the Point&Click nature and extreme linear gameplay/story telling makes me wonder why i'm playing it at all.
Edit: Added notes about Episode 4
note: I've been playing the Humble bundle version; v3.5.7.45015
Graphics: Looks impressive in a almost hand drawn style, at least until it gets to animation. The bodies move in one direction and way while the eyes and conversation totally doesn't match with the scene. Also the facial animations reminds me of the older TMNT movies where the mouths, facial expressions look and feel unreal like they were a doll with unwanted fixed positions.
Audio: Seems good enough, i didn't notice anything too blaring about it.
Story: Haven't completed all 4 episodes so i am not sure yet, but it's very much a mystery that just gets more confusing as time goes on. On the other hand there's a few parts that are very funny, like a college girl singing to an Ouija board trying to remember some vague detail.
Puzzles: Mostly not too difficult, although the hint system and getting help in a walkthrough i found necessary, but nothing in comparison to another game like say a couple of the Blackwell games... Still there were several times i was almost yelling at the computer saying 'Then what the f*** am i supposed to do?', when i was suppose to do something else first before doing the action that logically made sense to me.
Still the item count and complexity of the puzzles are fairly small, actually there's plenty of stuff in the game that don't do anything at all, like the phone where you can search entertainment where i haven't had to touch it at all yet. The second game has had a lot more items than the first game, but for it to refuse to do anything until you have all 4-5 charms limits the complexity (except at the end of episode 2 which i won't spoil)
Annoyances: The first game seems to have more annoyances than the second one. The GUI is set up so you click and get a 3 options wheel, but if you move the mouse wrong or too fast or it feels like it the window goes away. Not only that after an action there's something like a 5 second pause before the GUI and options become something you can do something with.
Lack of fast travel is annoying. Nothing like watching the character get out of a chair, push the chair back in, then walk (or jog) to the front door only to have to select one of four floors in order to go to another map location.
Also annoying is the computer system, you'll go into a system search and search for something like 'Sarah' in the records and get no results even if it's the most open for a search result. Instead you have to have 3 fields or know the full name (which you can't type in you have to have 'learned about it' somewhere) before a single result will show up. Not 'too many results i have to narrow it down' or something like that which would make sense, I'd have preferred that, even a few entries i could glance through and have Erica comment 'these have nothing to do with my case...'
Then especially in Episode 1 having to look at something and the game happily complains to you that you have to step out of what you're doing before you can look at a particular paper or photo or item in your inventory, while you can pull your phone up almost at any time.
Episode 4 was also annoying that the number of fail states got ramped up. Dying repeatedly made me unwilling to really figure things out and just go through a walkthrough to finish it, and I'd rather have just watched all the cutscenes rather than play this.
Game hanging/crashing, likely due to the AMD catalyst and there were no notes of what to expect. Although i certainly don't expect the proper settings to get auto-installed in the Catalyst to handle the game, but a note of how to fix it if it's known would have been nice.
Summary: With the stability issues worked around, the game isn't all that bad. But the Point&Click nature and extreme linear gameplay/story telling makes me wonder why i'm playing it at all.
Edit: Added notes about Episode 4
Post edited December 18, 2015 by rtcvb32