Adventure Forums - View Single Post - New Jane Jensen game and Kickstarter campaign

ozzie · 04-05-2012, 02:25 PM

I also spent 50$. I'm probably not the biggest fan of her games. My favorites are her older ones, KQVI and GK1. I wasn't wholly satisfied with the whole package of the latter ones, and I haven't played Gray Matter so far, but I always enjoyed the stories. It's hard for me to tell how good Jane can be, especially since the Gabriel Knight series was forced through so many technological advancements that didn't really seem suitable, but there are lots of great moments in her games. Le Serpent Rouge is just an astounding puzzle complex. The character of Gabriel Knight is so unique, and she's so good at characterization overall. The story of GK3 is a bit of a mess, structurally, but it's so full of detail and so much you can choose to find out about or ignore, all the things the characters do during the course of the game, it's intriguing. In GK3 the little details mattered more than the overarching storyline.

I find it hard to grasp what I like and don't like about her games. Gameplaywise I was often annoyed by invisible triggers that you don't know about but have to trigger to progress. Some puzzles were ridiculous, like the cuckoo clock or cat hair mustache. She may not have designed the latter one, but it still remained in the game. It should've been cut wholly. So, I always found them kinda frustrating to play (oh, there was also the pixelhunting for the snake scale! And the barely hinted at need for the voodoo code message on the cemetary tomb wall...), but the stories were always great, and I enjoyed the characters.

So, 50$ for the great storytelling, for the hope that she may have learned from her design flaws, and because of my loyalty to the genre.

Reading it back, this may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but then, I think that most of the best adventure games are pretty flawed. Heck, even Grim Fandango is not a good adventure game in my opinion! So...she's one of the best designers of the genre, no doubt about it!

04-05-2012, 02:25 PM	#283
ozzie Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Germany Posts: 726	I also spent 50$. I'm probably not the biggest fan of her games. My favorites are her older ones, KQVI and GK1. I wasn't wholly satisfied with the whole package of the latter ones, and I haven't played Gray Matter so far, but I always enjoyed the stories. It's hard for me to tell how good Jane can be, especially since the Gabriel Knight series was forced through so many technological advancements that didn't really seem suitable, but there are lots of great moments in her games. Le Serpent Rouge is just an astounding puzzle complex. The character of Gabriel Knight is so unique, and she's so good at characterization overall. The story of GK3 is a bit of a mess, structurally, but it's so full of detail and so much you can choose to find out about or ignore, all the things the characters do during the course of the game, it's intriguing. In GK3 the little details mattered more than the overarching storyline. I find it hard to grasp what I like and don't like about her games. Gameplaywise I was often annoyed by invisible triggers that you don't know about but have to trigger to progress. Some puzzles were ridiculous, like the cuckoo clock or cat hair mustache. She may not have designed the latter one, but it still remained in the game. It should've been cut wholly. So, I always found them kinda frustrating to play (oh, there was also the pixelhunting for the snake scale! And the barely hinted at need for the voodoo code message on the cemetary tomb wall...), but the stories were always great, and I enjoyed the characters. So, 50$ for the great storytelling, for the hope that she may have learned from her design flaws, and because of my loyalty to the genre. Reading it back, this may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but then, I think that most of the best adventure games are pretty flawed. Heck, even Grim Fandango is not a good adventure game in my opinion! So...she's one of the best designers of the genre, no doubt about it!