Orwell

This game is a decent game, but it could have been a greater one. The game is pretty immersive, you get into the story, kind of feel for the characters. But in the end there is a real lack of depth to maintain the player's interest into the story and the investigation itself. The biggest flaw to me is the actual investigation, datachucks should have been way more interactive: hidden, retro-active, etc. All you have to do is clicking on indicated sentences, which will add up in the database. Also, the fact that two datachucks can be in conflict is really poorly handled in the game, for example you know this guy has a girlfriend now but you're discovering he got married 10/15 years ago, both information are in conflict while it makes sense that he could very well just divorced before getting involved with his current girlfriend, and yet you have to CHOOSE what information you want in the database. And that problem is also occurring to major hints/clues that influences the story. This makes the experience pretty frustrating when you have to choose what to put into the database if the conflict doesn't make sense. In the same vein, I was pretty disappointed that pictures are actually useless in the game. Some pictures can say a lot more than a whole block of data. To be honest I'm not sure about how I feel about the story, the "plot-twist" that happened didn't make much sense to me. I wish the story was more subtle and in-depth, the characters more complex and the amount of information you have to dig in vaster. Overall it's a pretty good game for the price. I would say playing Orwell was a good experience, even if I can't get rid of the frustration that I loved the idea around the game but the game itself is just not good enough.

I played this over the weekend after I bought it. I beat it in one marathon session playing in one night, in about 5 hours. I was able to pull off what I assume is the "bad" ending and the "good" ending in the game. However, the story in the game hand walks you thru the whole decision making process and short of a few ambiguous choices during each of the "chapters" in this story; there isn't much of a challenge and seems very similar to how other police procedural games (such as the classic Police Quest games). In that you have to get X items of evidence to open up Y items of new clues. At worst this game is like some of the older and harder Infocom games or like Dragon's Lair, where you have to play thru multiple times or restart a number of times to get some of the clues right to progress thru the game. The concept is interesting and the idea is supposed to challenge you about what a security state looks like using modern data collection tools. However, the weak execution of it and the two run-thrus I did from end to end in the 5 hours that I played the game doesn't make you think. There just isn't an "ethical" way to make some choices, and in some of the other choices you are presented with a lose-lose situation that doesn't really seem to advance themes behind the game at all. My biggest annoying feature of the game that others have already mentioned, is that investigator you interface with. Oh and the other second most annoying feature is when you have to parse phone and text conversations for clues. The data is recorded in real time and it takes so slow for the data to come in. Therefore, you spend forever (and I mean forever) waiting on the screen to roll. JRPG games have had faster text scrolling than this thing. Overall, it was interesting to start with, but I would wait till its for sale under USD$10 before buying it if you are interested in this.

It's more of a good interactive story than a video game. I see this game more as a storybook where you are in the story rather than as a video game or a sandbox. If you want a sandbox, you would be disapointed by this. Uplink and Incognito are better spy video games. This game however has a captivating story that showcases what how the modern internet can be used to collect information on people. It has a strong message and good delivery.

I'm only an hour or so into this game but I'm struggling to continue, not because the game-play is poor but because the sense of immersion is spoiled by some very poor grammar. For a game which relies upon reading above all else this is pretty much a game breaker for me. The standard of writing (not necessarily the plot itself) just doesn't live up to the standard you'd expect to see on the official websites, news sites and in advertisements that feature so heavily in the game. I'm using the English version, I'm not sure if it's translated from another language. Maybe you can live with writing that doesn't reach adult standard but I'm struggling to get past it. Shame because the atmosphere and graphical style is quite nice.