Posted March 11, 2010
Put simply, Gabriel Knight did not transition to 3d well. GK:3 suffered from wanting to be on the cutting edge without fully knowing how to use or grasp the technology. The look and game play suffered as a result.
GK:3 puts Gabriel in the south of France to solve a Dan Brownesque mystery regarding a kidnapped infant, vampires and the holy grail. The ambient sound and voice acting are superb, but the visuals are lacking, mainly due to the use of low resolution textures broadly applied across large areas of the screen.
Worse yet, the gameplay suffers quite a bit. The sections of the game where you play Grace are still up to par, letting you solve some pretty big mind teasers. The Gabriel sections are generally simple, boring or in some areas ludicrous. This includes the infamous cat mustache puzzle lampooned quite justly on Old Man Murray back when the game came out. This puzzle is difficult not because it's clever but because you're simply left stumped by the illogical and idiotic nature of the solution.
The game ends on a cliff hanger and there was clearly meant to be a fourth Gabriel Knight, but the reaction to this game was lukewarm at best, and interest in the series died soon after its release. GK:3 represents the adventure genre at its nadir, when game companies were doing everything in their power to resuscitate adventure gaming's corpse by latching onto whatever gimmick they could find. It led to sloppy, ill thought out, moon logic puzzles, and ugly game play in quite a few venerable franchises. GK:3 is just another regretful victim of the trend.
GK:3 puts Gabriel in the south of France to solve a Dan Brownesque mystery regarding a kidnapped infant, vampires and the holy grail. The ambient sound and voice acting are superb, but the visuals are lacking, mainly due to the use of low resolution textures broadly applied across large areas of the screen.
Worse yet, the gameplay suffers quite a bit. The sections of the game where you play Grace are still up to par, letting you solve some pretty big mind teasers. The Gabriel sections are generally simple, boring or in some areas ludicrous. This includes the infamous cat mustache puzzle lampooned quite justly on Old Man Murray back when the game came out. This puzzle is difficult not because it's clever but because you're simply left stumped by the illogical and idiotic nature of the solution.
The game ends on a cliff hanger and there was clearly meant to be a fourth Gabriel Knight, but the reaction to this game was lukewarm at best, and interest in the series died soon after its release. GK:3 represents the adventure genre at its nadir, when game companies were doing everything in their power to resuscitate adventure gaming's corpse by latching onto whatever gimmick they could find. It led to sloppy, ill thought out, moon logic puzzles, and ugly game play in quite a few venerable franchises. GK:3 is just another regretful victim of the trend.