All I could find was kind of a mention of it here: http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,1146. I just read it not long ago but can't find it. Try googling it :)

Yes, the 6/10 from eurogamer seems harsh (don't know since i haven't played the full game yet) but there are also a lot of positive things mentioned in that review. As the reviewer said at the end, the fact that he wrote a 3 page review on the game also means that it had a lot of potential and good things going for it.

And he doesn't seem to be alone in his negative points (voice, frustrating illogical and "typical" puzzles). I'm not trying to bring the game down (bought it myself) but there's more to a review than just the score at the end.

Having to put up with terrible voice acting i'm afraid is a bit of an occupational hazard with a lot of adventure games. Surely we're all used to it?

This one does seem a bit too 'classical' for me. I've never really been too into the Lucas Arts style games (Discworld II is the only one that springs to mind that i relaly love). The guy earlier was making some very good points about the often dull, repetitive nature of inventory type puzzles. It's getting a little old now. Mybe it's gameplay aspects like this that can do with some 'innovating', rather than game engines etc.

Visually the game looks amazing. If the genre went all 3D, as some people here advocate, and we were no longer getting these beautiful games i would lose interest quickly.

Re: Eurogamer Review by John Walker.

I, too, found that the review published on Eurogamer is inaccurate in many ways. It is very subjective, sometimes takes issues with the right things for the wrong reasons and is in some instances factually wrong. I was taken aback so much that I originally had planned to post a detailed rebuttal, point for point.

But I now see that it is in fact much easier than that.

The main point that Mister Walker seems to be totally unaware of is that he's reviewing a children's game. The whole thing reads as if he felt as if he was the targeted audience. The gist of his review clearly shows that he is not. And maybe that's a good thing, too.

Now I don't know how old Mr. Walker is nor if he ever actually wrote about children's games but he certainly doesn't sound qualified to do so to me.

He's taking issues with illogical puzzles.
He's taking issues with the main character's voice.
He's taking issues with the ending.

(Alright, this starts to look like a point for point rebuttal now, but I'll try to not go very much deeper into this).

The previously mentioned points are nothing that kids are concerned with. Quite on the contrary I should say. It is - like someone before me on this thread already said - about solving puzzles. Someone has given you a task (may that be a character within the game or a developer or programmer) and you go and solve it. "Illogical" oftentimes seems to be code for "My mind was not open enough to think of that".
Again: Kids don't have any problems with that. They'll try 'til they get there.

As for the voice( of Sadwick): The discussion about that is at least one and a half years old when it was an issue in the discussions concerning the German version. The developers stood by their decision to make him sound this way. He is really basically the same. You (as a thirty something like me) don't have to like it. Kids not only might, they will.

As for the ending:

Spoiler:

Maybe it is a very strong point FOR the game that Mr. Walker didn't like it. I have a strong feeling that he was so deeply immersed that he couldn't stand having to leave the Whispered World. But that's what you do after ending a game. Only this time it is more genuine than anything else.

On a side note: Asking for innovation all the time and then not being able to cope with some genuine original scheme looks very muck like whining.

I think nobody can stand up, look me strait in the eye and say that he expected THAT to happen.

As for free choice in adventure games: There isn't any and there never has been. How a professional can overlook the fact that it is about the ILLUSION thereof beats me.

On a last note I'll have to admit that I just created my account just now (as a few of you will already have noticed) to get this off my chest.

And yes (as almost as many of you will have suspected), I have had something to do with the game, so my assessment of the Eurogamer-review might be biased. I still think my arguments are valid.

I really recommend trying the demo. No harm done and I assure you, you'll know if you want to play it or not.

Cheers from Scotland, Dan.

Thanks for the help regarding puchasing a retail copy. Kind of frustrating that I am unable to find it anywhere. :frown:

John Walker is a bit too harsh with adventure games, mainly because it is his favourite genre. If you read some of his other genre reviews he's a bit more forgiving. I still have nightmares about his review on Still Life.

Anyway, i was going to buy it from Steam, but... 35€ for an almost year old game is a bit too much (i know its cheaper in other places, but i really want to buy it on Steam). I 'll wait a few more months when it gets a bit cheaper. I have a lot to play nowadays anyway.

I'm not sure I buy that the Whispered World is aimed particularly at children. It seems like a typical adventure game to me. It seems a little too easy an excuse to say that any faults a game has are the result of aiming it at a young audience. Is any of Daedelic's promotional material aimed at children? It seems to be mainly the usual (adult) adventure crowd buying this game to me. Nowhere on the official website for the game does it indicate this game is aimed at children. If that is the case then it really should be made clear or else people are buying the game under the false pretense that it will be a satisfying game for an adult to play.

I'm not saying that i agree with everything in that review but it is one person's valid opinion.

@ cbman

The thing is: adventures - in my opinion - have always been targeted at a younger audience, and not the audience that embraces it the most:

Guys like you and me who refuse to grow up.

In that sense TWW is not exclusively a children's game. It is for everyone who kept an "innocent" view of the world. It should be clear, though, that it is not the real world the player is dealing with. I mean we are playing a character who is about 12 years old! That is a very teenage teenager to me.
So where is the fun in immersing yourself in the "reality" of someone like that?
It's the same like with Guybrush Threepwood: We long for the days where we didn't have to bother about the REAL challenges of life.

I really think that in this respect TWW is different. A grown up who wants to immerse into the reminiscence of the unburdened times of his childhood (which he cannot possibly achieve completely) will not experience this game the same way as someone who goes in there without any preconceptions whatsoever. 'Innocent' (again) is what comes to mind.

A lot of people I know can still do that. I know a lot of people who cannot do so completely but they can still play the pretending game for the course of an adventure.
I'll bet that a child, a youth or an adolescent has a better chance to do that, though.

And obviously there is someone who has to deal with this immersion dilemma in professional terms and might not be able to do this at all. ...
Or maybe too much for being able to keep the distance that is required by his profession of reviewing games.

Anyway, I see a big deal of inherent contradiction in the review and just wanted to make the point that it is definitely worth a try. You will be surprised in the end, one way or another. (I hope this is not considered a spoiler).

Cheers, Dan.

It's been years since I've enjoyed a full length adventure game as much as I did The Whispered World. The last one was probably Still Life, and before that The Longest Journey. I specified full length because Machinarium and some of the Sam & Max episodes were close to perfect in my book, but a 15+ hour game is a completely different kind of experience.

I loved the puzzles. Not because they were particularly original, but because there's a unique response for almost anything you can try. That does mean I solved some of the inventory puzzles by accident because I tried stuff at random for fun, but all the puzzles were logical enough in the setting and could have been solved without too much trial and error. I guess the huge amount of recorded dialogue isn't much of a plus for those annoyed with Sadwick, but...

...I actually liked the voice acting, and voice direction for once. Sadwick is annoying, but the voice fits the character perfectly. It feels like you are dragging an unwilling hero through the game, which at least to me became part of the game's charm. Sure, some jokes were obviously lost in translation, but the game doesn't rely too much on comedy, and most of the humor in the game is in Sadwick's sarcasm and pessimism which works fine. Overall, the only issue I have with the translation is that the lip-sync doesn't work with English voices. I'm not sure if it fitted the German ones.

I enjoyed the story very much, including the ending, and the visuals, music and ambiance were all close to perfect. I wouldn't give the game a perfect score, though. At least for me, the game had some technical glitches that would be hard to ignore. Some descriptions and dialogue lines had the wrong sound file, including some with German voice-overs instead of English. The rest may be due to incompatibility with my hardware, but especially near the end of the game I started experiencing game freezes during certain animations and a couple of crashes. During some of the cut-scenes, sound would stutter. Since this happened most frequently during the 4th chapter, it took away quite a bit from the overall impression.

Anyway, it's a gorgeous, traditional point and click adventure game. If you are after innovation, look elsewhere, but I'd say The Whispered World is easily on par with old near-classics like Simon the Sorcerer and Discworld, just with modern graphics. Of course it shares a lot of the flaws of those traditional point and click adventure games, but I for one like those "flaws".

@ Sik

glad you liked it. It just seems that the Eurogamer review is all over the net.

As for the non fitting audios and subs: Could you find it in your heart to report that to www.daedalic.de .I bet they'd be most gracious.

And as for things "lost in translation":
Some things aren't even lost. They're just awkward. Others were added instead. (I've tried my best).

And you were talking about one of the main features of TWW (in my opinion):
There's a response to everything you try. I believe most of it is rather funny.
(I'm just happy to see someone is really into these kind of things).

Cheers, Dan.

My memory is terrible, so I'll have to play through it again to report bugs. I'll make sure to make a note of them next time I do, though if they plan to release patches, it'll hopefully be too late already. :)

As for the "lost in translation" issues, that was not meant as a criticism of the translation. The flow of the dialogue, and the language used is as natural as a game produced in English most of the time. There just seems to be a few missing, or forced puns at times. Nothing that made me cringe, though, and I'm sure a lot of creativity went into making the translation work as well as it did.

Oh, and lack of interactivity is one of my pet peeves with most new adventure games, so I really appreciate the work that has gone into making trial and error fun in TWW. I know some people hate red herrings and "useless" hotspots with a passion, but then again people are usually more vocal about what they dislike than what they like.

I have to agree with what everyone's saying orient, you shouldn't be listening to these guys. If we all listened to reviewers to base our take on adventure games, no adventure would be bought. Well, almost all, some do get good reviews but most don't BECAUSE they are adventure games. Those kinds of comments - illogical puzzles, frustrating moments - I'm seriously so tired of seeing them thrown at adventure games. Critics - GET OVER IT!

I appreciate this eurogamer is an adventure fan. Don't know what got his goat over the game, but back to the other critics. This isn't fair at all I don't think. Hell, one journalist had to defend Machinarium at PAX because critics there looking at the demo were saying 'I don't get it - what game is this supposed to be?'. These are the people we are often listening to and basing our judgement of a game on?

I'm no further than chapter 2 - only because my son loves it so much and will not allow me to go on without him - but chapter one was an absolute joy. I was never stuck for long, and found all the puzzles to be very fun. The eurogamer had a stab at being able to get clothes off the line - gimme a break, for christ sake. That was a puzzle that I caught onto very quickly and is very justified in the context of the situation. Sure, there were moments where I thought 'oh this can be solved by doing that' and then, sometimes it had to be done a different way. But to the eurogamer guy - boohoo. Try and think beyond that. Oh, your first idea didn't work? Diddums! Don't write a bad review over it, use your brain. I'm doing fine myself.

End note - buy the game. You won't regret it. I'm only one chapter in, and it's already by far the best adventure I've played in a long, long time (except for Machinarium). Screw Heavy Rain. THIS is great character, storytelling, atmosphere, setting. What more could an adventure gamer want?

Alright alright, I'm downloading the demo now :P

It's going pretty slowly...37KB/sec. I'll be here all day!

Haha! Good, good. Now if you don't like it I'll forgive you :P (though you would have to be crazy to dislike it)

Bad news - my internet must've cut out halfway through. The file was only 255mb and when I tried to extract it there was an error. I noticed Gamershell have a torrent for the demo so I may have to try and get it that way.

Keep going orient! You can do it - don't give up now! It's so close...

I got to disagree with you. Many adventures have puzzles that you simply can't solve if you aren't old enough - at least not without using excessive amount of trial-and-error. Also, the themes and stories in adventures are often deeper than those in i.e. action or rpg genres sometimes to that extent that you have to have more understanding of the world than children usually have. (And before anyone else says it: Yes, children can sometimes be very perceptive about their surroundings and understand very complex things but I'm talking about the young audience in general.)


Hmm. That's not really a solid argument. I mean, there are a lot of books and films with child protagonists and yet the books are not meant for children or at least the children couldn't catch the deeper meanings (well maybe some could, but not all). I can't imagine children watching The Reflecting Skin, for instance, or reading most of Joe Hill's short stories.



More to the point: I liked Whispered World very much and wrote a very positive review for a gaming journal for reasons which have been mentioned many times in this thread already. Many would say that WW has a nostalgic feel to it and much of it appeal comes from the nostalgia. I don't think so. WW doesn't just lean on old classics. To me the game seems somehow very modern and shows that 2D point'n click can still be as entertaining as any type of game, even for a new generation of players.

But views vary. That's just me. :)

@Askobar

Now, how does this quotation device work? ... I see ...

Yes you are certainly right to some extend. I was referring to the classics like the 'Space Quest' Series, 'Maniac Mansion', 'Day of the Tentacle', 'Indiana Jones' and such. Sorry I didn't make that clear.
But coming to think of it there also was 'Leisure Suit Larry' very early on which is clearly not a children's game. A lot of teenagers played it, though.


Again, you are right. I didn't mean to say that *because* the protagonist is a teenager the game must be meant *exclusively* for teenagers. It's just that Sadwick has some very typical teenage problems and his attitude is *very* teenager-like. The story, all in all, is a children's story in my opinion (think about the ending), or at least a coming of age plot.

So why do grownups still find pleasure in playing such a charakter?
Wouldn't you agree that playing adventure games is somewhat an escapism with a smattering of self chosen regression? (This isn't meant in a negative way at all, I like to immerse myself in fantasies of more innocent times myself).


Yes, I think TWW is very unique, too. It is just so hard to explain why it is without spoiling it for those who haven't played it, yet. I was amazed that with all the commotion on the net nobody has really spilled the beans, yet. goes to show that the adventure gamer's community (in general not just here) is a considerate bunch.

Cheers, Dan.

p.s.:I've just played around with the quote markers, so if this looks strange that's why.

TWW sound problem
 

Hi :P
I've downloaded the german demo and the sound was interrupted during the logo and the cutscene and also the image was not synchronized with the sound[already bad enough].
The game in english has the same problem.
I think it may be the requirements.
My processor is an AMD Sempron 1.4 GHz and I have 1280 RAM.The software I need to play the game I think is fine :|
Maybe I have some issue with my sound card dunno.
Hope I have posted this game issue in the right place and it will be noticed.
Maybe a patch to fix this pb will be realesed.
[By the way, sorry if I made writing mistakes.I'm still learning English :D]
So...any advise, please?

@ wanna figure that
 

Hi,

the system requirements on the back of the box say:

XP/Vista 32-bit
CPU 2.0 GHZ
1 GB RAM
DirectX 9.0 compatible 256 MB graphics card.
DirectX 9.0 compatible sound card
3GB free disc space.

I'm afraid your machine may be a little too slow.

(I had a bit of a problem with the intro and cutscenes on a Mac with the latest Fusion VMWare, too, but at least the gameplay was flawless).

Never mind the mistakes. This is not school ;)

Hope you'll be able to try the game somehow.

Cheers, Dan.