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Review for So Blonde

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What would a stunningly beautiful 17-year-old girl be doing on the deck of a luxurious cruise ship on a hot, sultry day? Getting a tan, maybe? Not at all for So Blonde’s protagonist: she is getting bored! Who on Earth would prefer a relaxing sail on the sapphire-blue water of the Caribbean Sea over a frantic afternoon of compulsive shopping? Especially if, while you’re stuck on this dull cruise for your parents’ anniversary, your friend Kimberly is ransacking Manhattan shops in search of the latest fashion designer shoes! Poor Sunny. Her adolescence is surely a nightmare: her father wouldn’t even allow her to build a tree house in their Upper East Side apartment.

Does all this sound like a cliché? If so, you’re absolutely right. And do you know what Sunny Blonde would reply if you pointed that out to her? “I love clichés!”. Little does Sunny know, however, that her life is about to be turned upside down, leaving those tired clichés far behind.

So Blonde does indeed start out like the most stereotypical Hollywood teen chick flick, until Sunny gets swept off the ship by a violent storm and finds herself stranded on a savage tropical beach. She is totally alone and her make-up is a total mess and her precious beauty-case is nowhere to be seen. Her cell phone doesn’t work and, when she approaches a lonely boy sitting on a rock, she finds out that he’s unable to point her to the nearest hotel or fully-furnished mall. In fact, much to her astonishment, the boy has never even heard of such things and certainly doesn’t know what a cell is. Worse still, other island inhabitants are dressed like pirates and a large galleon is moored in the bay. Sunny clings to the tiny hope of being in a 17th century themed resort, trying not to face the uncomfortable truth that she’s somehow actually ended up in the past.

As she soon finds out, there aren’t any five stars hotels on Forgotten Island. There is an inn in the town, but with a pig scampering in the room it hardly matches the luxury standards Sunny is used to. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, since she has no money in any case. When some of the locals, listening to her complaints, suggest that she find a job, Sunny gasps: she is trained for nothing (except shopping, of course) and what can a “dumb blonde” – her words, not mine – do to survive in such an inhospitable environment?

First of all, she has to quit her spoiled manners and discover what her real nature is, because there is something big going on and almost everyone intends to use her as a scapegoat. Years ago, an evil tyrant, the short but cruel pirate One-Eye, took over the rule of the island. He and his gang of thugs, led by the enormous Diablo, are frightening the islanders and making slaves out of them to work in pits and caves. The other authorities – the Mayor of the city as well as the Chiefs of the indigenous tribes – have no power against his ferocious domain and no choice but to submit to his will. What’s worse, the worshipped spirit of the island, Atabey, seems to grow weaker and weaker as the days pass and there are rumors amongst the villagers of an evil curse laid upon them. Given that everyone has a (more or less) secret agenda, Sunny must rapidly learn to function on her own, because it will be up to her to set things right on Forgotten Island and, at the same time, find her way back home.

By now it should be clear that the game moves far past its original clichés. Indeed, there is much more to So Blonde, and to Sunny herself, than first superficially meets the eye. This is a common feature of the game: when it initially introduces the player to something – a character, a situation, a new location – it indulges in stereotypes, then slowly but steadily, the superb script scrapes the opaque patina off and reveals the depth beneath the clichés. Sunny is a perfect example in her own right. She starts off like the typical high-class, spoiled girl whose greatest hope is to be Queen of the Prom and, in the end, she turns out to be one of the most well-rounded protagonists seen in an adventure game in a long time. The same can be said for the rest of the cast: from the beautiful but tormented captain Morgane to the yearningly romantic Juan, Sunny is surrounded by colourful, multi-faceted and likeable characters. Moreover, the writing by Steve Ince is always fitting and often brilliant, at times amusing while at other times movingly heartfelt as it manages to highlight some deep, serious themes by means of the laughter. Sunny’s adventure on Forgotten Island is not only a classic coming-of-age tale, but also a story with some meaningful undertones about tradition vs. modernity, reason vs. superstition, even about female emancipation and social gender conventions. Most of all, it is a compelling story that will enthral the players up until the very end.

Perfectly blended with the tone of story, the luxurious graphics are a real treat for the eyes. Forgotten Island is wide and varied, from the sunlit coral beach in the southern part to the grim, foggy forests of the northern end. The cartoon-like hand-painted backgrounds are so richly detailed that sometimes I stopped playing to stare astonished, soaking in the additional ambient touches like butterflies fluttering about, smoke rising from chimneys, and shutters waving in the wind. When we get the chance to see the island by night, the graphics offer some really spectacular lighting effects, with eerie purple and azure-blue lights, and breathtaking panoramic views.

Like the the lush environments, the characters are fluidly animated: they move smoothly, run quickly but gracefully, and a cel-shading technique gives them a very bright, vivid look. Even more important, they are brought to life by a cast of very talented voice actors. When I found out that the same actress, Jules de Jong, did the voice for the hawkish Morgane and the petulant Sancha I was utterly impressed, but particular praise is owed to Laurance Bouvard, who provides the voice for Sunny and gives a thoroughly believable and charming performance, and William Vanderpuye, who wonderfully voiced the short and prickly voodoo priest Chemi’n. The sound effects, most noticeably the ones involving water, are masterfully implemented and add great value to the player’s feeling of immersion. The musical score nicely blends together tribal rhythms and pop melodies and – whilst slightly repetitive – displays some good theme variations in the tenser scenes.

In terms of interface, So Blonde is a standard point-and-click adventure with a smart cursor that displays – with a right-click of the mouse on elibigle hotspots – all the possible actions: walk, look, take/operate and, when appropriate, talk. A tap of the space-bar will automatically reveal all the hotspots in the current location, and sometimes its help is really invaluable. Not because objects are difficult to see, but because each location is filled with items to examine, and many of them serve no other purpose than to enrich the environment, often with wisecracks or witty references to classics of the genre, blockbuster movies or TV shows and pop-culture. It should be noted that Sunny walks across screens with a deadly slow pace, but a double left-click will make her run or immediately change locations if clicking an exit. Still, it’s a pity that even when Sunny manages to find a map, it can’t be used to fast-travel, sometimes forcing the player on long walks through the whole island. This issue brings up another problem: upon entering or immediately after leaving a location, the game displays a loading screen and, even with the graphical parameters settled at the lowest, the loading time can be pretty long. Given that almost every task you have to face will require a lot of back and forth between various locations, the loading screens quickly become tiresome.

You’ll have plenty of reason to travel the island, too, as So Blonde presents a good number of challenges, especially inventory-based puzzles. Sunny’s inventory is capacious and will be filled by plenty of items right from the very beginning of the game. Thankfully, apart from a very few occasions, you’ll be able to take every object that isn’t nailed down (and sometimes even if it is) immediately, preventing a lot of annoying backtracking. Some puzzles are fairly logical and consequential, but others are a bit silly, particularly early on when Sunny has no clear direction of what to do next and some of her actions seem a little senseless. For example, I still wonder if there wasn’t another way to enter the town than the MacGyver-type solution Sunny choose, and later in the game, when Sunny has to get rid of a suspicious seagull, I was almost driven mad that our blonde could be nitpickingly choosy on how to clear her way. Luckily, these puzzles are the minority and the other challenges, even the few logic-based and mechanical puzzles, are more reasonable and better integrated in the story.

Another interesting feature is the ability to play not only in Sunny’s shoes, but also as Juan Grant, the Mayor of the city, and Max, a cute, brownish little creature that resembles a cross between a dog and a bear. Some obstacles can be overcome only by the cooperation of these characters, and it’s really nice how these passages are worked into the main plot. The gameplay is also interspersed with some mini-games that consist almost entirely of arcade actions that require hand-eye coordination. With few exceptions – arm wrestling against a pirate and the completely optional rifle range are the only ones that stand out – I found them useless at best and dreadful at worst, since they do nothing more than interrupt the natural flow of the game. Thankfully, if you share my natural revulsion of these kinds of segments, you shouldn’t be worried since each and every one of them can be automatically won, even without a single try.

My other complaint about the gameplay concerns the linearity, which sometimes feels extremely forced. All story-based games face this challenge, of course, but here it’s possible that you’ll have perfectly figured out what to do and already have all the necessary items, but if you missed a single line of dialogue, the event you are waiting for simply won’t trigger. Luckily, such ocurrences are seldom but it is nonetheless a nuisance, since the game is already difficult. So Blonde clearly isn’t a game for novices; on the contrary, it’s a tough challenge that will put to the test even the most experienced adventurers, thanks to some brain-teasing puzzles and the vastness of the game world.

The difficulty contributes to the game being pretty long, taking roughly fifteen to twenty hours to complete. Luckily, So Blonde has an ideal pace and never becomes boring or feels artificially lengthened. Rather, it still feels too short: there is so much meat on the bone and the characters are so likeable, the environments so rich and the story so involving that I didn’t really want it to end. Now I can’t wait for the upcoming “alternate reality” version, announced for Nintendo DS and Wii. This game does have some unpolished aspects, including an installation procedure that is one of the worst I’ve ever seen (I had to uninstall my antivirus and slow down my disk drive to finally get the game working), but it is nonetheless one of the most compelling adventures I have played in a long time and a journey that every adventurer worth the title should embark upon. Just be sure to bring a good pair of sunglasses and some suntan lotion when you pack.

WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD So Blonde

So Blonde is available at:

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Our Verdict:

Like its protagonist, there is more to So Blonde than meets the eye. Whilst some tiresome nuisances prevent the game from realizing its full potential, it’s a very enjoyable adventure that deserves to be played.

GAME INFO So Blonde is an adventure game by Wizarbox released in 2008 for PC. It has a Comic cartoon style, presented in 2D or 2.5D and is played in a Third-Person perspective.

The Good:

  • Top-notch writing
  • Compelling story with some meaningful undertones
  • Well-rounded, likeable characters
  • Spectacular graphics
  • Excellent voice acting
  • Rich environments to explore

The Bad:

  • Horrible install process
  • Frequent and long loading times
  • Annoying mini-games
  • Linearity sometimes feels forced

The Good:

  • Top-notch writing
  • Compelling story with some meaningful undertones
  • Well-rounded, likeable characters
  • Spectacular graphics
  • Excellent voice acting
  • Rich environments to explore

The Bad:

  • Horrible install process
  • Frequent and long loading times
  • Annoying mini-games
  • Linearity sometimes feels forced
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