I don't know whether you're a male or a female threerings not that that is of any importance.
I can only speak from personal experience. I am probably a "bit" older than you – 86 last January and I have experienced very many unhappy demises – both men & women – unfortunately one of the negative fates of aging.
I do not maintain "that men don't grieve for their wives when they die". Out of scores (or more) of cases I know personally, they overcome it quite well in three years & and in most cases much less time than that.
Apart from maybe half a dozen, they have managed to attenuate their grief sufficiently to remarry within one year and not a few even within six months.
I have the good fortune of being married (to the same woman) for 62 years – so far. I don't believe that I would remarry or fall in love again if my wife had died somewhere along the road – but I would not vouch to this hypothetical situation!
The males I have talked about are from most walks of life. Being a Physics teacher myself, most of my family, friends & acquaintances are "professionals", but also business people, workers, etc.
I'm sorry if I've offended you but that is my personal life's experience only – yours maybe different.
It may be romantic to think of men mooning over his wife's dress, and music, and wine & scent, and who knows what, three years after she has passed away. But I have encountered next to nobody of that noble disposition. I am not a psychiatrist and maybe it could be the result of a traumatic undeserved guilt complex – but who knows, I found it somewhat exaggerated and unrealistic!

In the old days it was rather normal to a man to marry the younger sister of a deceased spouse. Not saying your necessarily that old but the times have changed a lot. There are a lot of couples that never marry. If you go back a few decades I bet the pressure to get a companion and get married is a lot higher so I'd imagine you would find another spouse faster. Not so sure all those people always "get over" the old one so fast. These days the idea of "consolation price" is frowned upon. There is also a matter of location. Even these days there are arranged marriages etc. all over the place.

And just because not all people mourn their spouses for 3 years I don't really understand why Dr. Styles couldn't. Should game characters be some kind of average of real life? Styles is obviously a lot more romantic than your Average Joe and guilt ridden. Did many of your acquaintances lose their spouses young in a tragic accident?

(1) Many folk like me inn the 2nd 1/2 of their 80's tend to get less romantic and more cynical!
(2) Some men, if their happily married wives pass away, do not get LEGALLY married a second time but live with a woman as per a married couple but without the certificate.
To allmintents and purposes they are married - lots of sense in that on both sides IMO!
(3) The majority of men cannot cope, or rather do NOT WANT to cope with the cooking, cleaning, housework, child rearing (if applicable) etc., etc.

Yes but Dr. Styles isn't in his 80s, he was very romantic and madly in love with his wife. They only had a couple of years together and Styles obviously had some other issues regarding the accident too. He also has a housekeeper.

I personally don't have a very romantic take on love and relationships but I know people who do and to me Styles didn't strike as artificial at all.

Very true! :)

Here is why I have no problem believing he was still mourning his wife!!:D

Bwaahahhahhaa

Jane Jensen is a woman is she not?
If she were a man I doubt she/he would have given Dave such extyreme characteristics.
But I may be very wrong.
N.B. Wasn't he maried for THREE year and niot two ??

I don't remember every detail now as I played the game already on German release, just that they were quite recently married.

The whole story is very 'Jane Eyre' today mixed with some supernatural elements. I think it's done brilliantly and I'd welcome more of these kind of stories in any media, but already when playing I knew there would be guys that dislike it because it is romantic. There are a lot of guys that can enjoy their Brontë or Austen etc. but then again there are a lot that just seem to get rash from even the most brilliant drama classics just because they are also romances. And I don't mean to offend anyone with that, my own spouse is pretty rashy with that stuff too and we never have any issues about it.

If aimed at me, and understandably, I plead guilty!
I inferred that the plot of Gray Matter is more appealing to women than to the vast majority of men. Several other posts & comment etc. on the Net imply the same thing.
This doesn't negate JJ's excellent storytelling!

BTW – being a Physics person, I do not believe in so called supernatural phenomena – but our 'heroine' Sam doesn’t either! So I'm in good company – and no insult intended.
In any case, I believe that one of the main motif's of the plot was to contrast the supernatural with materialistic hoodwinking 'magic'. Hence the name of Sam's pet rabbit! Houdini in later life set about debunking all the hoaxes and frauds who purported to spread séances & other such phenomena.
This caused a rift between him and his friend Conan Doyle who desperately wanted to contact his dead son and others of his family through `spiritualism.
P.S.
I love ALL the works of Jane Austen! :D

Got the German LE version of this game some time ago now, since it has both English voices and subtitles.

I've played up to the last chapter, going to finish it tonight.

In any case - sadly, I have to say I'm quite disappointed with this game.
It's not that the game is bad by any means, but it has some real issues that makes it much less fun than it could have been, speaking for myself of course.

* I don't really mind the animation of the characters, but I do find a problem that results from it very annoying - it takes too long to look at/pick up/interact with things as the character has to go over and line up perfectly. Gameplay feels slow and sluggish because of this, in my opinion.

* The puzzles are WAY, WAY too easy. I find them easier than the puzzles in many Telltale games, and that should speak volumes. I have to admit I haven't played many modern adventure games at all, except quite a few Telltale ones, so I'm not really up to speed on how adventure games generally are these days concerning this. In any case, never having to think about anything is a bit dull I think.

* Sam's voice - really don't like the voiceacting for this character, which is kind of a big deal since you control her for more than half of the game. I feel her voice doesn't fit her looks at all, she looks like a woman with some attitude but her voice sounds like someone reading a book to children, somewhat.

* Very few hotspots in most areas, and very short and generic responses when looking at them. This is a big deal for me, I've always loved exploring my surroundings in adventure games.
The Gabriel Knight games had plenty of hotspots, and a lot of nice (often funny) responses.


Now for some things I do like about the game -

* The storyline isn't bad. However, I actually did expect something better in a game written by Jane Jensen... it's nowhere near as immersive and exciting as storylines in the Gabriel Knight games.
But when compared to a lot of other adventure games, it's still good and the main reason I'm playing through the game despite my issues with it.

* The background graphics are really good. I've read a lot of comments in this thread saying how the graphics are unimpressive, and I can only assume people are talking about the character animations as I find many of the backgrounds really good looking.

* The music is great, I like most of the tunes in the game. The game does seem to repeat the same tunes a lot, though... but seeing how I enjoy the music so much, I don't really mind that.

After all this time I finally saw a copy of GM in the local Target. Decided not to buy it and try the demo first. Getting the demo to run required DirectX runtime as the required DeDxp_43.dll was not found. Then I could play the demo. Not terribly impressed. The cut-scene/comic graphics are nice, but they are only marginally better than I have seen FloodLight produce for Jane's Oberon Women's Murder Mystery Club games. 3D modeling is really good. Too bad 3D modeling movement isn't up to par. Characters also occasionally block the very spot you must interact with. Thus requiring you find a way to "get them out of the way." Voice acting is above normal. Music is quite good. The girl that sings in the intro and some of the scenes is superb. Think she is related to someone involved in the project. I liked her voice.

After all the harping and carping, I'm not sure I want to buy the game. Granted, it's only a demo. But if it is representative of the game's total style, it leaves me cold.

I'm sure it relates to the "wait". After waiting sooooo long for a game that supposedly had so much promise, I don't think that promise has been fulfilled.

A long time ago I found Amber in a bargain bin for 5.99. One of the best games I ever bought. GM may, too, be one of the best games I ever bought, but I think I will wait for it to hit a bargain bin somewhere.

Gamespot rated it a 7.0 in their review this month (not sure if it has been mentioned in the thread) which is pretty good and may help sales. Given that many of the mainstream sites have reviewed it, I'd hazard a guess it is the best selling traditional adventure game in quite some years.

What is disappointing is that Jane herself is MIA and I can't find any comments from her since the release. Her blog hasn't been updated since March 2010. http://blog.graymatter-game.com/ - I'd love to hear some thoughts and plans for the future. Will there be a sequel or new game for example?

I'm in chapter... 7? Anyways, somewhere in the last half and I have to say I'm enjoying it immensely. Sure beats the Dragon Age (1) I was playing :P (as well as Sam & Max S:2 and A Vampire Story) Really, despite some flaws which I don't find so bugging (so what if the animations aren't perfect? I really couldn't care less - the only things that I found slightly disturbing were the talky-heads and the radial menu in the 360 and I quickly got used to them both), the story and all that is just so good that I couldn't care less about little imperfections. I can't believe how that can be a problem considering how past-oriented the AG community usually is...

And it carries the whole GK puzzle style over, meaning that you don't just solve puzzles, you do all sorts of things like search for info and sort (and look through) filing cabinets etc. They aren't challenging puzzles (they aren't really puzzles at all), but makes you feel much more immersed than just a puzzle after puzzle after puzzle. In relation to the Telltale puzzles, well, this isn't like that at all. They're much more "realistic", though I understand that Telltales isn't always going for realism (but that's not what I meant either :P). Of course, it's all a matter of what you're looking for in AGs. If you're looking for great stories and characters etc. it really doesn't matter if it's more towards the interactive movie alley, but if you're looking for many difficult puzzles then I suppose it isn't your game. Then again, neither are most of the GKs, considering they're also very much leaning towards interactivity instead of puzzles.

I don't see why everyone's complaining about voice acting, I thought it's really good. The only one so far I've found to be a bit unfitting is Styles, and even he's still got a good voice actor, if slightly unfitting for the part though.

Really, it's the best game I've played in a long time, and definitely the best AG in a long time.

I started yesterday. :)

I fully admit to being biased on this point. Given Jane's track record with GK, and the amount of time it took to bring this game to fruition, many of us expected something close to perfection. I doesn't matter that there were publisher and developer and design and distribution issues. It was to be a JANE JENSEN GAME!. The consumer really doesn't care about the back-story. Nor should they.

Maybe the demo doesn't do the game justice. All it did was help solidify my opinion. Which is what a demo is supposed to do. If the second, unplayed' half of the game is much better, then snippets of those should have been included. Like I said, I'll wait for it when it hits discount.

I just got the game. I have only started to play, but I must admit that it is striking me more favorably than did the demo. Oh, and I got it at Walmart for just $20.

So I finished the game last night, and surprisingly (to myself!) I was a bit disappointed with the ending.

Not that's it's *bad* or anything but I expected something better from Jane Jensen... not just the ending but the story in general.
While it was a great storyline, especially when compared to a lot of other games, I don't feel it holds up compared to the storylines in the GK games.
And I think I can say this isn't coming out of nostalgia, not nostalgia alone in any case... I really do feel the GK storylines are more intriguing, involving... more exciting and fun to play through.
A lot because I find the characters in the GK games a lot more interesting (not only talking about the main characters here... characters like Von Glower and many more).
They seem to have more depth in the GK games.

EDIT - when reading through my post here, I see it sounds awfully negative... just to clear it up, I do find it a really good game and I'll definitely play through it again someday... it's only disappointing when compared to Janes earlier work. On its own, it's a great game that I have no problems recommending to anyone enjoying a good storyline and nice atmopshere.

Exactly

I just finished GM and, as with all JJ adventures, I enjoyed it immensely until the end. The weird disconnected from reality series of events there put me off a bit. But it seems to me the ending of the story is also not yet written. I have so many questions! For instance:

• Who was the first girl who wanted to apply for the assistant job?
• What about Sam's necklace? David thought it was his mother's, but what is the real story?
• Does Helena use drugs or doesn't she?
• Why were the brains of all students 'lit up' during the first two experiments, and only Angela's brain in the second two?
• Who wrote the word 'IMPOSTOR' on the roll thingy in David's lab?
• From whom was the message 'check the cars, David?'
• Why did Mrs. Duncan have a key to David's private lab? David says he lets no one in there, not even her.
• Where did the key to the tower come from?
• And the million dollar question: Did Angela kill Laura?
• Why wasn't the driver of the other car hurt in David and Laura's accident?

I hope some of you can answer some of those questions.

So you enjoyed immensely a game you didn't understand half of its plot? :P