Typical! you wait weeks for the playthrough of your favourite game and then your home internet goes down so you can't post all weekend!
I've only re-played through day one so far and cannot help being reminded of some of the reasons I love this game!
Firstly, the characters. One of the criticisms I often have of adventure games is a main character who is unlikeable, or who I do not sympathise with or want to get along side. For me Gabriel is instantly likeable, funny and not too much of a straight clean cut American, like so many other main characters. In short he is more of an "adult" character, not designed to appeal to children, or any particular group, but as a character in himself, with no apologies or concessions made to political correctness or for his own shortcoming and/or failings.
I think one of the reasons I like Gabriel so quickly is the amount we find out about him so early on. His banter with Grace tells us a lot together with meeting his Gran, an old school friend, his local pub landlord and visiting the family grave on the first day we meet him! One of the amazing things is that although we are being fed lots of information about him, mainly through dialogue, it doesn't get boring, being very, very well written and always tinged with humour, even in the more serious bits.
Where Gabriel is laid back, unconventional, humourously sardonic, a dreamer and a bit of a rogue, Grace is the opposite, being upright, straight-laced, caring and practical and this combination works
really well! There is a real chemistry between Gabriel and Grace thanks firstly to how well written their characters and dialogs are and secondly how well voice acted they are.
To be honest the voice acting is excellent all accross the board in this game with some serious talent behind the voices. I have heard some people deriding Tim Curry's Gabriel as a really poor New Orleans accent. Not being from that way myself (or from America at all!), this really doesn't matter to me and personally I think Tim Curry does the definitive Gabriel, accent and all!
The characters in general are all excellently written and voice acted and massive kudos goes to Jane Jensen and the actors for embellishing the great story, puzzles etc. in this wonderful way.
Hmmm, I 've been going on for ages already and only really talked about one thing(!) so must quickly say something about downsides to this game. For me, there is only really one and that is the interface. 8 verb-coin actions is a pretty serious amount, and the old "try everything on everything" style of game play takes a while! Having said that, the different responses for trying all the actions on Grace almost make it worthwhile on their own!
