[Weare6]

Originally Posted by Guardian_Misterioso

I finished "Tales of Monkey Island" two days ago. The adventure is much better than "Escape from Monkey Island", of course, but very very easy. I like classic adventures because they were a challenge for the user, but today is almost impossible to find a game with that difficulty.

Very well said. Couldn't of put it better myself. I am playing Tales of Monkey island at the moment and although I am enjoying the adventure it is way too easy.
I guess they are trying to appeal to a wider age group (meaning younger).
But they could of at least had an option for an easy or Hard adventure... like they did with Curse of Monkey Island.... i think. that would be cool.

[maladroid]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

I had a good time with it, didn't scare me as much as I had hoped but this is mostly due to my playing the game with company rather than alone and with all the lights out. The gameplay felt familiar and fresh at the same time and I thought the game looks and sounds very good, even without having the budget limitations in mind. Where I felt it was lacking was in the story, which was both quite transparent and unoriginal. I wasn't expecting to be blown away, but I can't help thinking they could do better than that, without compromising the atmosphere or mystery that comes with the exploration of the castle. Also, some additional variation to the environments wouldn't hurt, although I suppose dwelling exclusively in cellars and dungeons is a horror genre mold that's hard to break. Overall, a very well-crafted and effective game, should you follow the "prescription" and allow it to scare you shitless.

8/10



Edna & Harvey: The Breakout

Now there's a gem of a game I had been waiting too long for and proved to be everything I had hoped. The story is unforgiving but sentimental in its core, the characters hit all the right notes with their wackiness and mental predicaments and the dialogue/commentaries -though occasionally too long- are both witty and true to the characters' personalities. I found the game to be of perfect length and difficulty (had to peek into a walkthrough once, though) and the massive amounts of interactivity actually outrank the classics of yore (forget Monkey Islands, we are talking Grim Fandango/Tex Murphy territory here). I had a great time Talking To EVERYTHING in the environment and using my items on the numerous hotspots to get all of the available responses Poki (the developer) wrote. Considering the game is almost entirely his own achievement for the most part, I think the guy deserves all the praise and respect he gets.

This game is obviously a labor of love and hard work and I am seriously enamored with it, wish there were more games like Edna & Harvey out there.

9.5/10

[Pallav Nawani]

Septerra Core (6.5/10)
An old RPG game with anime style art. The world of septerra is very interesting and intriguing, and the combat is fun enough. The mazes are horrible though - and there are a lot of them. Overall I enjoyed playing it.

[Fantasysci5]

Hey Pallav!

I have mixed feelings about Septerra Core, and I'm glad you played it, since I don't really know anyone else who has. I absolutely LOVED the characters and plot, and the world was so detailed. On the other hand, I HATED the constant battles and the mazes. Near the end-ish, I had to put in a cheat where you can just walk past enemies, but I wouldn't get the experience, and even then I just gave up, so I never did know what happened at the end. And the world and characters were so awesome...

[DavidN]

I just finished "Lost Horizon", and absolutely loved that game! The puzzles were good, very fair, and the game had a decent length too.

(Prior to that, I played "Gray Matter", another thoroughly enjoyable game)

Now, I have both "Black Mirror 2", and "Black Mirror 3" to play, which should keep me occupied for some time)

[Agent 47]

Finished Broken Sword 4 and Homefront. Both excellent games, though flawed.

[stepurhan]

The World Ends With You for the Nintendo DS

Trailer on Youtube

Weird in the way only a Japanese game can be, but in a good way.

Neku Sakuraba wakes up on the Scramble Crossing in Shibuya (a real district of Tokyo) with no idea how he got there. He is soon attacked by creatures that appear from thin air and has to make a run for it. At the nearby statue of Hachi, Shiki Misaki, a girl he has never met before, insists he make a pact with her and tells him that they are both part of the Reaper's game. The game lasts seven days, with a mission each day. Fail in the mission or fall foul of the other hazards of the game and your existence will be erased.

It's a strange setup and the story only gets weirder from there. THe main body of the game involves fighting the monsters that appear from thin air, collectively known as Noise. Noise exists on two dimensions at the same time and can only be defeated by fighting them on both. This is achieved in-game by fighting them on both screens of the DS simultaneously. On the bottom screen you use the stylus to move Neku and launch attacks. The attacks you have available are based on the pins that you wear and their activation varies as well. Tap, swipe or hold the stylus on yourself, monsters or even empty space to get different effects. Meanwhile, on the top screen arrow combos appear which you form using the D-Pad to attack with your partner. Make repeated combos on either screen to power up attacks for both. Winning battles earns Pin Points, which can level up your pins, or even evolve them to more powerful forms.

There's a whole bunch of other stuff in there as well. You can buy various types of branded clothing that enhance your characters in different ways, though you'll usually need to befriend store clerks to find out how. A lot of the pins are branded as well. This can affect how useful they are as each district of Shibuya has its own fashions with fashionable pins getting a bonus in battle and unfashionable ones suffering a penalty. There are also various food stores with each player able to eat a total of 20 "bytes" of food in a real-time day. These provide various permanent enhancements to players.

What surprised me was the sheer variety of play from the same battle mechanic. Different combinations of pins work better against different enemies and the fashions mean sticking to the same ones isn't always an option, though you can affect this by fighting with weak pins to move them up the fashion chart. The story is also intriguing, if downright weird in places. You can also tweak the difficulty setting at almost any time. As well as overall difficulty you can adjust the new pin drop rate (the better it is, the harder the fights) or chain fights together so you have longer before you can recover. This allows hard-core players to push themselves while making it more accessible for the less able.

It was a tough one to find here in the UK, but I'm glad I tracked down a copy. Now I've completed the main game, I can go back into any chapter and complete additional challenges to open up more of the back story, so there is more to come from this. If you've got reasonably fast fingers and can split your attention between two screens, I'd recommend trying to track this one down.

[JemyM]

Mass Effect 2: Arrival
Arrival is the final major DLC for Mass Effect 2 and a preparation for Mass Effect 3. Does it deliver, or is it just another Witch Hunt?

Story
Admiral Hackett sends Shepard alone into a batarian outpost for a rescue mission. Dr. Amanda Kenson, a deep-cover operative and scientist, claims to have proof of an Reaper invasion but she must be rescued first.
There's really no further interaction with NPC's than those mentioned. This is a solo mission and it serves as a story filler between ME2 and ME3.

Gameplay
Arrival provides little in terms of new gameplay. There are some brief moments where you control droids and there's a minor crane puzzle. None of it stands out like the content in the earlier DLC's. Kenson temporary acts as a new NPC but most of it you have to survive on your own. It might be an interesting challenge to play without any backup for once. There's a lot of enemies to defeat, interestingly without armor most of the time, so if you are optimized to break armor then too bad for you. There is an achievement that can only be gained through surviving wave upon wave of enemies that took me quite awhile to finish on insanity since I had forgotten to reequip my armor and had my skills optimized for teamwork. Somewhat inspired by Metal Gear Solid perhaps you also get an achievement for not alerting any guards. Interesting but could have been fleshed out a bit more.

Final Verdict
Arrival is the weakest DLC for Mass Effect 2 but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. This is not Witch Hunt for Dragon Age that uses almost exclusively rehashed content and ends with a slap in the face. There is some new content here. The promise to set things up for Mass Effect 3 is really there and with Arrival you can see what's coming (more than the Reapers that is). With that it's probably time to allow ME2 to rest for me, having finished all major missions, earned all achievements, bought and researched everything in the game...

[THayes]

4K adventure, a tiny text adventure game about a dwarf that needs to find a magic orb for the lord of the land. Really simple, really small, but I had a fun few minutes exploring the locations and working out how to solve the game.

[Guyra]

Finished Gray Matter. Fantastic game!

[Oscar]

Black Mirror 3

This was a disappointment for me. Not so much because it was a bad game, because it wasn't. As a conclusion to the series it did a fairly good job bringing the story to an end and satisfying the player with a sense of completion.

Yet, this game was packed with filler and felt quite unfinished. Three quarters of the game were taken up by looking at things. If I didn't do that and just completed the puzzles, there would be little substance. Now, this would be fine if the locations were brand new and interesting. But it's the same town Darren's been since the last game. He's seen most of it, yet has to make comments on every dull thing he comes across. And because of this, his comments are very cynical which becomes very grating when he's the main character.

The characters were poorly done. Valentina was an incredibly dull character with apparently no personality. I would have liked to learn about her catholic upbringing and outlook, but we got none of that. The detective was completely unrealistic, coming across like a spoiled 13 year old emo kid, and seemingly voiced by one. Each character was two-dimensional and uninteresting, which I felt was a departure from the previous games.

Thankfully Gordon was back again with some personality, and we had the psychiatrist who seemed to have something intriuging about her, although we never found out just what. I liked the gravedigger but we only got a few lines from him. The best new character was the butler. Perhaps the only inspired new character in the game, and he goes missing just after he's taken on the job for no reason? Why? The plot could have been so much more. It should have given us something more than good beating evil and everything returning to normal. I find it very hard to relate to Darren's situation because it's something that would never happen to me.

Most of the characters except Darren are left hanging without any conclusion. I wanted to know what happens to them and the town. The developers prepared so many threads but didn't fulfil them - the detective with his career problems and dreams of transfer, his relationship with the coffeeshop girl, the guardians of the mirror and future of the town. At the end I felt Darren was still unsettled as ever. How would he survive in a town with no money where everyone thinks he's a murderer, the barkeep wants to kill him? There was just no thought behind all this.

Towards the end I was just itching to get it over with and get to the credits. Parts of it were fun, but most of it dragged along aimlessly. The lack of new locations really stood out to me, having the whole game set in one village - the same village featured in Black Mirror II - makes the game feel like an expansion to that game rather than a sequel.

[Guyra]

Oh, and I finished both The Path and Alter Ego before Gray Matter.

The Path was fantastic! Definetly not for everyone, but I felt I got a lot out of it. ^^

Alter Ego started out very good, but two thirds into the game it kind of stumbled, fell, hit its face, poked its eyes out, broke its legs, and fell down a cliff. That the ending made the whole game completely unnecessary(in my eyes) did not help at all.

Now I just finished Scratches, which I dare say is first person adventure gaming done right! Too bad it was way too short, and a bit too much pixel hunting going on. But great story, gameplay, and atmosphere!

[SamuelGordon]

Black Mirror 3

Really a disappointment. The beginning was fun, i loved seeing all the old places again but they could've easily mixed this game with Black Mirror 2. The ending was poorly constructed, the final confrontation was ridiculous and once again..too short (two seconds).

The puzzles were easy. The only thing that was frustrating were the glitches and bugs of the Sector 13 puzzle (were i spent HOURS trying to figure it out, until i googled "bugs" and came to gameboomers) AND the labyrinth bugs where the game just freezes when the shades go from room to room. They really need a patch.

Voice acting was ok except when Adrian went into Mordred mode, really hilarious BAD voice acting..oh my god hahaha. The game's antagonist(s) are even worse than black mirror 2 (Mordred sucks).

All in all 2,5 / 5, disappointing series finale but you should play it if you want some closure(even if there are tons of unanswered questions..eh).

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by SamuelGordon

All in all 2,5 / 5, disappointing series finale but you should play it if you want some closure(even if there are tons of unanswered questions..eh).

Yes I would give it a 2.5/5 too. I cannot understand how it got a 4/5 from Adventure Gamers.

[SamuelGordon]

Originally Posted by Oscar

Yes I would give it a 2.5/5 too. I cannot understand how it got a 4/5 from Adventure Gamers.

Yeah same here, i think you get a better experience if you play 2&3 in one play through..well i'm glad it's done, moving on

[Pallav Nawani]

Originally Posted by Fantasysci5

I have mixed feelings about Septerra Core, and I'm glad you played it, since I don't really know anyone else who has. I absolutely LOVED the characters and plot, and the world was so detailed. On the other hand, I HATED the constant battles and the mazes.

Yeah, exactly. The mazes were horrible. I plodded on though. Once I get half way through a game I always finish it. I finished morrowind (another tedious game) too

There are people who have written walkthroughs for Septerra Core, so I am assuming someone else also enjoyed it

[Fantasysci5]

OMG Pallav, you're my new best friend...

I didn't like Morrowind either, even though everyone says it's such a classic. If I don't like a game, though, I just quit. But the thing is, I *like* Septerra Core, just not the fighting.

[terhardp]

Black Mirror III

I remember the crude original rather well even though I've played it only once so far back in the year it came out (2003, I think). But it still haunts me: the story, the atmosphere, the locations, the mythology and so on.

The sequel was fun, though nowhere atmospheric and creepy as the original. But it has layed the solid foundation for this part.

Black Mirror III is more similar to the first game than the second one and therefore better (IMO). The gloomy and occasional desolate atmosphere as well as the constant sense of creepiness are back in style. Also, the story itself nicely ties many loose ends from both the cliffhanging sequel as well as from the mythology started in the original game. I'm guessing that most of the "Black Mirror" series fans expected a lot in regards to the answers to the many questions left unanswered in the previous games. I imagine that some of them will be dissapointed, but personally, I'm satisfied with the conclusion to the story.

A few words on the other aspects of the game. Graphic is nicely presented with very good bland between the legacy style from the first "Black Mirror" and the more modern game engine. I am also pretty happy with the music which is mostly atmospheric, but also rather bombastic at times. Sometimes this is somewhat inappropriate, but sometimes it works out nicely. Voice-acting ranges from excelent performances to poor ones. The voice of the main protagonist never appealed to me much and had always felt out of sync with his character. Miss Antolini (an important character) also sounds ridiculous at times. But most of the characters, even the minor ones, are convincingly portrayed.

The puzzles in the game and the gameplay itself is mostly identical to the previous title. The inventory puzzles are mostly self-explainatory, though I was stuck quite a bit at times. There are also several "logic" puzzles that are not very difficult, but well put together, IMO. And finally, like in the original game, there are a few rather frustrating puzzles and some bugs as well.

All in all, with all the flaws of the original game as well as the sequels, "Black Mirror" series probably has enough factors to call it a "cult adventure game". It's certainly one of the most intriguing game series I've played so far, and I will likely put it among my favorite adventurs.

Verdict: 4,2 / 5

[Guyra]

Finished Memento Mori yesterday. I was very disappointed...

Story wasn't bad, but it had some problems with the build up so that what happened in the last chapters pretty much came out of nowhere. Also, it was ruined by the painfully bad monologues and dialogues. The fact that everyone had those overly cliché accents did not make it any better.

As for the game's tagline,

Spoiler:

that was a bit of false advertising: "Sometimes the secret to eternal life can be murder", or whatever. Not once is eternal life even hinted at. Sure, I can stretch me as far as the abbot dude working with Death so he might have eternal life because of that - but I'd only come up with that because of the tagline.

Tagline epic fail.

As if that wasn't enough, I was highly annoyed by the fact that I often easily came to the conclusion that I needed to take a certain items or do a certain action, but the character stopped me because he/she did not want to, despite it being the obvious course of action. A great example is

Spoiler:

the photos from the security cam. Despite Max actually noticing and explaining about the inconsistencies with the time stamps on them, he won't let you do anything until he has basically explained it one more time, in a different manner!

And even then it isn't enough, no. The game seems to have problems deciding who's supposed to be the main character.

Spoiler:

Lara is displayed in front on the cover, while Max and André are in the back, a bit faded. She is also the first and last character we play. However, in the game she is just helping Max out - because the story revolves around him, not her. Lara is just a side character, but for some reason they try to sell her as the main character. Why?

The story was decent. Could've been good, if it had been built up better. I will play the sequels after it comes because there is a chance there's a good story there, and some of the flaws above have been fixed. However, I'm not having high expectations.

2 / 5

[Panthera]

Knights of the Old Republic

Finally finished it, after several marathon sessions, with uber light side ending.
Kotor is the only game I've ever played where I finish it and immediately want to replay it, because I didn't do everything perfectly and didn't unlock all the party member side quests (didn't get Juhanji's quest, and didn't get to finish Canderous).
That said, I've had big problems getting the game to run properly on Win 7, having it tab on me at cut scenes and loading in native resolution, but I've not had any of the big problems some report with the game not starting or crashing on start-up.
Mostly Ive been able to fix it with alt-tabbing. Aand, of course, after I've finished it, I suddenly find there's a patch out upgrading the game to v1.03

Having said that, I love the game, playing on easy really solved some of the difficulties I've had before, and it really sucks you in and keeps you playing. Next time I think I'll play a bit more neutral and snarky, going with some of the more fun answers, as opposed to the extreme light I played now, taking only one dark side hit throughout the game, and focus on raising my repair and interacting with Juhanji and Canderous so that I can get more back-story there.

Still, a game I recommend for anyone who loves a strong story, great characters, beautiful scenery, and do not mind a bit of linearity and a lot of dialouge (and very few battles compared with "normal" rpgs)

4,5/5

Thinking about playing Kotor 2 now, and, in other news, I found I haven't sold my copy of Ghost Master. Score!