Recent reviews by eje211

I really don't like horror, and I didn't experience this game as horror-themed at all. The third story, a bit, but by that time, it didn't bother me. There characters were wonderfully compelling, particularly Lady Winterbourne. Their problems felt very real, common, and tangible to me, unlike in a horror story where usually the problem comes from a supernatural or unbelievable source. The pixelized aesthetic added a lot to the game: it makes it easier to imagine each character the way you'd imagine they'd be. The animations are simple and graceful. They're in the same mold at the animations of the old Sierra games, but more minimalistic, more tasteful.

The design of Lady Winterbourne is the one that impressed me the most. When she's walking around with her hair up, she looks elegant, frail, energetic, and kind, all at once. Each of the characters (including Laylah, the fourth "traveller," the one who's asking about the stories instead of telling her own) have emotional conflicts I can relate to. And I don't think that any of them have a clear solution to any of their problems that they're just ignoring for the sake of the plot.

Finally, I was blown away by the soundtrack. It's true that I tend to like extremely uncool music, but to me, this was the first time I really wanted to buy a game's soundtrack. I'm guessing, however, that most if not all of the music used in this game must be frelly available. I don't think there's a lot of original music among the pieces that I loved the most.

Also, I started reading the novel "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" because of this game.

I'm close to the end of my first playthrough. Overall, I'm extremely impressed.

This truly a story-driven game with actual narrative stakes. The visual design is fantastic and matches the tone perfectly. True, not all the songs are great, and not all the singing voices are perfect, but that's really nitpicking. Getting a few more or less right would have been a huge achievement already, and Stray Gods goes well beyond that point.

The way the story unfolds, the player has excellent incentive to start over and make different choices. I thought that the solution to the main mystery was pretty obvious, but the underlining story was not what I expected.

Two things in which I think the game does not succeed as well as the rest: First, the icons in the dialogue options are not clear. I had to look up what they meant. Also, the dialogue options that allow Grace (the player character) to flirt are extremely cheesy. I don't think the characters she's talking to would respond to her being that direct.

I love point-and-click adventure games. They can be even better when there is an extra mechanic than enhances the whole gameplay. And they can be disastrously bad when the writing is less than excellent. This is where you can see that Kindergarten (and its sequel) shine.

The mechanic of having a limited number of actions per period really turns the game into a puzzle. Rather than limit exploration, like some other game's limits do (like putting a time limit on some actions), it gives an importance, a weight to everything the player character does. The items collection mechanic is extremely clever as well. When the player character completes a quest, he gains a new item that will always be available. This allows the designers to control the order in which the player learns the elements of the rather complex backstory. And it ensures that the "best" ending can only happen last.

The humor is spread throughout the game, is consistent, and is pretty deadpan. Everything forces suspension of disbelief. The children speak like educated adults. The graphics are pixelated but have very smooth animation. And the psychology of the NPCs is over the top, but actually pretty consistent.

The built-in hint system is probably the best I've seen for a game of that type. It's not just the nature of the hints that struck me as excellent, but the way they are presented to the player: it's not a sign of failure or a sign of weakness to use them.

I consider this game a masterpiece. The only drawback, and it's a small one, is that once all the endings have been completed, it lacks replayability. But in the meantime, it's been such an amazing puzzle and such a comic adventure that it would be unfair criticize it just for that.

Fran Bow is one of the best recent adventure games out there. This is saying a lot with the likes of Oxenfree, Return to Monkey Island, Thimbleweed Park, and what seems to be an adventure game renaissance. Fran Bow is clearly made in a much more amateurish level. The language is awkward, the interface is a bit clumsy, the story is not perfectly structured. But the game has an amazing ability to make gameplay and story go hand in hand. Furthermore, every time I saw something coming in advance, it turned out I was wrong and, every time, the game's system or story was ahead of me by a long shot. The game uses the fact that it is an interactive experience to tell the story and plays with its own rules in a way that is not just surprising but also coherent and compelling. Despite its imperfections, I was extremely impressed.

After the average-to-awful sequels made by people who were not Ron Gilbert, it's impressive to see what can be made of the world of Guybrush when someone who has true talent is at the helm. It's not just the content, the interface is incredibly smooth. The wit of the characters is sharper than ever. And the puzzles won't throw a (monkey) wrench in your progression but just make everything more compelling. I'm not very far in, but I'm blown away so far.

The Stanley Parable is a narrative game classic. This is true even though it doesn't have an actual story and Stanley is not even a real character: we know nothing about him, about what he looks like, what his personality is, what his aspirations are, anything. It is more reminiscent of the postmodern works of the Oulipo than... Well, this is probably not the sort of the comment that belongs on Steam. Hands down to Kevan Brighting as the narrator. He brings so much to the game it would be a completely different experience without him. And, like many, I am now impatiently waiting for The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe.

Dreamfall Chapters is the epic conclusion to the three-part "Longest Journey" series by Ragnar Tørnquist. It's a true adventure game, which is something that some people look down upon. They seem to think that adventure games don't make sense. If you're reading this, you probably don't have that problem, but, in general, all games are limited by their rules and adventure games are no exceptions. In first-person shooters, you can't decide to start trying to discuss what we are truly fighting about with your opponents or trying to unscrew the wall panels to find a way through the map, unless it's a feature of the game. In adventure games, even if you can think of another way of reaching the goal, you're supposed to figure out what the correct way is in the world of the game. It's a game, it's not real life. Most objects are just lying there but you can't pick them up, but you get to go on amazing journeys and travel through parallel realities. It's a compromise.

In the first game, The Longest Journey, from 1999, Tørnquist had attempted to make a truly long game as most adventure games were pretty short or took place in small locations. His main problem (I think) was that his player character was very silly and not very bright. April Ryan was written to please everyone and ended pleasing no one. She was American even though Tørnquist was Norwegian. She spoke like a Valley girl. But the game was fascinating. And the world he built was incredibly engaging. The game came to a true conclusion. There was a hint of a cliffhanger, but not much. Still, it was a vast and complex world with engaging characters, other than April Ryan.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, relesad in 2007, the second game (usually known as just Dreamfall also had its qualities and drawbacks. The think I loved about Dreamfall was its main player character: Zoë Castillo. She was amazing. Similar to April Ryan, but bright, decisive, determined. She seemed to have been written in a much more personal way. But this time, we have several player characters and, oddly enough, we start with a completely minor one and taking him to a mysterious point. The other main player character was someone called Kian Alvane, from a people we'd never heard of. He seems fascinating, but we don't hear much about him and we don't play much as him. The main thing about Dreamfall is that it was meant to be not a game as such but the introduction to an episodic game series called Dreamfall Chapters, where one chapter at a time would be released in quick succession. That never came to be.

Still, it left Dreamfall with problems: too much story and not enough gameplay. A huge cliffhanger with no resolution. Tørnquist also saw a future in console, so the gameplay system was really optimised for consoles, even though it was mostly played on personal computers. People were frustrated. I happened to look past that and I loved it. I was completely drawn in and I wanted to know more.

Then, several years later, a Kickstarter campaign came for Dreamfall Chapters. It would be released in "books" that would be in turn, divided into chapters. It was released between 2014 and 2016, with the five books making thirteen chapters with an introduction and an (non-playable) epilogue. The game inherits a lot from its two predecessors and introduces new elements.

The first innovation that struck me was the language. Adult language is now permitted. I think it makes the game seem less professional, but I got used to it. Like in Dreamfall, there is a big emphasis on story. Sometimes, it feels like the gameplay is secondary. Not always. Sometimes the gameplay is fantastic. There is a moment is book 4 when the player character has to stop someone from getting shot that's (I think) amazing gameplay, and there are other moments, but a lot of it is really mostly story playing through story.

In fact, books 1 through 3 are basically just story. All the big moments in terms of both getting the story moving and the gameplay intense happen in book 4. Book 5 has a lot of story dump for all of the revelations. That's not really bad. I would be a lot worse if the game got worse and worse. It's good that the the second-to-last book is the best. But I would have liked the first three books to be more intense. A lot of them seem like filler. I would particularly have liked Zoë to be more assertive as she was in the second game. The fact that she's not is intrinsic to the plot, but a plot where she is more assertive would have been more pleasing.

The interface is both interesting and a bit annoying. Moving the mouse makes the player character look around. When there is something interesting near the center of the screen, an icon appears with a label, like "document". If the character is too far, the icon will be circle, which means "no action". If the character is closer, it will be an eye. If the character is closer and there is only one action possible, like "use", it will look like a hand. Otherwise, it will look like a gear which offer a selection of up to four actions.

This seems like a good system, but the game often uses it to make an updated version of the old "pixel hunting" gameplay of the old 2D games. Now, one has to look for a 3D object that can be anywhere in the environment and that may not show unless the player character is right next to it. Also, a lot of the environments are very dark, which makes hunting for objects rather annoying. It mostly looks like a ploy to extend gameplay.

Dreamfall Chapters also uses TellTale's "choice" system, which seemed state of the art untel TallTale went bankrupt. The story will always stay the same, but the relationship between characters, or some details will be affected by the player characters' decisions. This actually works because of Tørnquist's incredible ability to create compelling characters. I really was torn about what other characters would end up thinking about my character. But after I was done playing, I ended up looking at all the consequences of all the choices and they weren't that big. Also, I wanted some of my choices to have a big consequence and it didn't and I was disappointed. Following the "choice" system can be dangerous and I think Red Thread, the game makers, ended up regretting it.

Intertwined with the choice systems and of the story are some real-life social issues. They are not subtle but not preachy about them either. If you disagree with them, you wouldn't be playing that sort of game anyway. The stakes are somewhat fairly represented. There are a couple of stereotypical villains, but I suppose that was necessary.

Some of the final mysteries are not revealed by the final story dumps, which leaves some mysteries to the players' imaginations. And I like that.

On aspect that had been typical of the two previous games had been one character shifting between worlds and there is almost none of that in this world. There is some, but very little. Towards the end, we learn that it is no longer possible, but, thinking back, that makes no sense at all. I suppose, since Tørnquist no longer has the rights to the IP, it gives a sense of finality to the whole story. Still, it does not seem fair that the Shifters and the Dreamers no longer get to Shift and Dream. Maybe that's why it was Dreamfall and the end of the journey. But I have trouble believing that. I think it's more companies withholding rights.

There is the equivalent of five medium-sized games in one here. It makes sense to have played the previous two in order first. The first game, The Longest Journey is referred to several times in Dreamfall Chapters. There is a character guide that fills up every time one of the player character meets someone from a previous game, but that's a poor substitute. And if you are the sort of person who might like Dreamfall Chapters, you will certainly like the other two as well.

Oxenfree is one of the few true masterpieces of interactive storytelling. It does have "good", "bad" and "best" endings, but the less good endings are not truly disappointing. They actually ressemble life the most. There is a supernatural element, but it's used more to reveal the deepest elements of the characters' personalities. The game is made to be replayable, although each playthrough will follow a somehow similar story and I'm not sure who will actually go through the whole game time and time again. The company's following game, Afterparty, was not nearly as good, which is a testament to how much work and testing must have gone into Oxenfree.

I love Yuppie Psycho. It's a great game with one huge caveat, at least on Mac. (I should try it on my Linux machine more.) The game has strong survival horror elements and uses them perfectly. Part of that is that saving is not trivial. There are limited opportunities to save, so that each time you CAN save, you ask yourself, "Do I really want to save now or keep going and bank my saving ability for later?" Again, this is great in terms of gameplay. It makes the stakes higher. The problem is that the game crashes quite a bit. Sometimes, after 20 or 30 minutes after a save point, the game just vanishes from my screen. That's a problem. If I could save all the time, I would, but then, it would not be the same game.

The game itself is fantastic. It's a survival horror satire that has an interface like Zelda: A Link to the Past but that plays more like a point and click adventure game. The player character, Brian, is never armed and mostly collects objects, figures out when to use them and interacts with NPCs. In a more action-oriented way, he does, however, need to avoid a lot of enemies who all want him dead for some reason and he needs to collect health boosters in order to survive. The game really is a witty comment on work-life balance, how large companies are structured, office politics, hypocrisy in the corporate world and many other similar themes without ever mentioning them directly and certainly without ever being preachy about it.

It works with a keyboard, but I'd strongly recommend using a controller for it, even on a computer. The writing and storytelling are extremely good. The plot manages to be surprising. The mystery is really tantalizing. Clues are dropped all the time, but you never know enough to really know what's going to happen, and the player character is not an idiot: when he's placed in a dangerous situation, he always decides to leave, but an external cause forces him to stay. He's not a gratuitous hero who wants to "fight evil" for whatever reason. On the contrary, he mostly wants to just get out of there, but it's tricky: working at that company is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him. He has a shaky sense of self-esteem at best and all of that makes him and his relation to other character feel relatable.

If the game just didn't crash, it would be almost perfect.

I saw a review that criticized the simplicity of the puzzles, but I think that it matches the overall theme. The game does bank heavily on its graphics and music, but the use of the two characters is often ingenious and a feature of adventure games that's often underused. Like many recent adventure games, there is no inventory. I wonder if having one might not have made a deeper experience, but it would have been a radical change.