Adventure Gamers - Forums

nomadsoul - 03 June 2016 09:45 AM

Best Cing game. One of the best mystery stories, i bet you didnt guess the killer.

If by guess, you mean “made a worthwile deduction based on the clues left throughout the story that proves beyond a doubt that X is the murderer”, no, I didn’t guess the kiler. If by guess you mean “read the documents the game forces upon you late in the game that basically tell you who the murderer is”, then yes, I did correctly guess who the killer was. That wasn’t difficult.

I’d say that Glass Rose is at best a passable mystery game, as the game has no gameplay-system that allows the player to connect the dots themselves. They just give you the complete picture instead. And that’s a shame, because the story could easily allow for a more logical build-up to the ending and the reveal of the killer. Now, you just have a couple of murders that anybody could’ve committed (in terms of circumstances), then they give you a piece of evidence that basically says that X is the killer, immediately followed by the *shocking* reveal that X is the killer.

Doom (2016)

Playtime 18:18 on “Hurt me Plenty”.

Reboot of the classic shooter series after Doom 3 stank up the franchise for 15 years. You are Doomguy the legendary Demonslayer out to close the portal to hell.

Pro

* Looks and sounds gorgeous. Martian vistas and Hell levels all have appropriate sights to behold. Appropriate rocking tunes keep you pumped and motivated.
* Moves like grease lightning. Your mobility as you circle strafe and leap around the levels is superb. Unlike most modern shooters this kept you moving constantly to stay alive, constantly on the edge of death.
* Level design is great. Reminicent of some of the best levels in the original games they flow neatly around and now have a lot of verticality missing from the old games. The design gives open spaces and tight areans allowing you to dodge and avoid the enemies, find hidden secrets and find new ways to get the drop on the demons and avoid getting cornered.
* Nice variety of new designs for the old enemy types. All the old favs are back. All the classic power up are still there as well. Quad Damage being the most fun.
* Dry sense of humour right from the start. I wish I could hit cancel on that demonic invasion in progress bar. The data logs are really funny so make sure you read them.
* They have done a nice job of integrating modern items into the mix. Challenges, collections, upgrades to weapons and Armour etc are all there. While it keeps the health and ammo packs and general feel of the shooting from Doom 1 and 2.
* The new Glory Kills are varied enough and built into the strategy of the shooting seemlessly. Shooting the enemies until near death activating the melee kill or Glory Kill will replenish your health so can come in really handy in tight spots. There are multiple animations so they never felt that repeditive to me.
* So many nods to the old games in the way it plays and the sound design that constantly reminds me of the good old days playing ID games of old.

Con

* Multiplayer is a bit MEH.

Overall this is a fantastic single player game which is so much fun to play.

Best shooter in years.

5/5

J.B Harold Murder Club (DS version): the DS port of the 1986 murder mystery adventure developed by Riverhillsoft, written by Rika Suzuki (who would form CING with some other ex-Riverhillsoft members after the company’s bankruptcy). A very orthodox command-style adventure game, where you take on the role of police detective J.B. Harold, trying to solve the murder on Bill Robbins, a member of the local elite. It’s a very sober adventure: the whole game consists of talking with all the suspects, until you have enough evidence to get search warrants or enough grounds to bring them in for questioning at the police station. There are no chapter divisions, and you can easily complete the game just by using every option with every person (a lot of times). And the game has the usual weird design choices of command-style adventures, like forcing you to ask about the same topic several times even though there’s no reason why the person wouldn’t have told you everything in one go.

But… I thought it was a pretty amusing game, in a very sober way. You do feel like you’re slowly uncovering the murder as each interview with a suspect will bring something new up, which brings you to another suspect, and that usually leads to another hint etc. As you progress, you’ll slowly get enough grounds to ask the prosecutor for search warrants etc., so it does feel like you yourself are doing the police work. That said though, I wish this game had a more comprehensive database system for all the evidence/testimonies/etc. It only records the basic information of each entry, and few of the discoveries you make as you progress through the game are added, so the database doesn’t really help when you want to review the whole case again late in the game. (This is especially bothersome if you want to compare alibis etc, as the database doesn’t add all discoveries you make about the alibis).

Other versions of this game are available in English by the way, like a Windows and MS-DOS version. The DS version (only available in Japan) is a slightly enhanced version as far as I can tell, adding a new epilogue as a bridge to the second game (which was also ported to the DS).

Dreamfall Chapters : Book 1

Never got round to finishing one of these episode due to my decepit PC not being able to run it at anything other than a crawl.

To be fair the PC was 8 years old and had a Geforce 220 graphics card and was constantly crashing. So with the help of a ton of overtime at work I splashed out on a new i5 PC with 16GB of ram and a Geforce 970 graphics card.

It now runs dreamfall on Awesome levels.

Got Chapters from the GOG sale and started playing.

Pros

* Looks very nice. Not top of the range textures, but the lighting, shadows and other effects are good.
* Voice work is great.
* Sh*tbot
* Script is pretty decent so far. Setting up the new storylines for each of the protagonists.

Cons

* Game seems a bit buggy with character models vansishing, walking on the spot etc.
* Really slow to get going
* Switch off the Lens Flare. Was this directed by JJ Abrams.
* The City was overly confusing to get around and finding locations meant a lot of wandering in circles.

Looking forward to what comes next , but this hardly blew my socks off.

3/5

Lucien21 - 11 June 2016 12:31 PM

Dreamfall Chapters : Book 1

Perhaps not the best timing, as the book 5 release in a few days also contains some changes to the first book
(But it is probably only minor changes)

Dreamfall Chapters : Book 2

Book 2 was an improvement on the opening chapter. The pace seemed better, there were less glitches (although I did still have some)

Pros

*  Still Looks very nice. Not top of the range textures, but the lighting, shadows and other effects are good.
* Voice work is great.
* Some new characters like Queenie and whatever that little blue boys name was. Alos Enu was the highlight and I hope we get more of her going forward.
* The “mysterious” Anna..
* Script is kicking up a gear. Consequences are starting to unfold.

Cons

* Game still a bit buggy with character models vansishing, walking on the spot etc. However it was less frequent
* Both Cities are overly confusing to get around and finding locations meant a lot of wandering in circles. This game would have benefitied from a map in hand rather than the signpost maps.
* Wishing there was more interaction with the world and it’s characters.
* Wishing Kian had more personality

Getting more into the story and enjoyed a better split of time between the two main characters.

3.5/5

Dreamfall Chapters : Book 3

This episode seemed pretty short, probably took about half the time of Chapter 2.

I’m starting to get into this. However I wonder if it would have been different waiting for each episode rather than binge playing it like I am.

Although I hated the interlude (Finding 10 paintings hidden in the environment isn’t that enjoyable). Saga’s character may be interesting, in where I think it may be heading, but the HOG-lite sequence doesn’t really do anything to forward the story apart from the last few minutes.

Overall though it is a strong if short episode.

4/5

Dreamfall Chapters : Book 4

Ok i’m officially over the innuendo jokes I get it….“Rooster and Kitten”, “The Salty Seaman”, “Fingerlings”. They were funny once.

It’s strange how in last episodes the cities were confusing to navigate, but they have been gradually “fixing” this by narrowing the size of the area by blocking off portions. However in this episode they just made you just follow Crow around just as I no longer need to as i’m familiar with the locations. Yeeaaah!

Also remember the dream powers you had back at the start of the game and then they were never used again. Now they are suddenly back for some reason in a boss battle. That’s bad design.

This is a weaker episode than the last one which is disappointing. There was next to no puzzles which is a shame because the last one in the episode with Saga was probably one of the best puzzles so far. It is easy to complete by brute forcing it, but if you solve it the right way it gives insight into the characters while you were puzzling it out.

The rest of them seems to just be handed to you by NPC characters telling you how to solve things. Like Blind Bobs appearance and timly mention of a character etc or following a bird to the next area.

Kian’s side mission to “Auschwitz” seemed a bit pointless and heavy handed. Skulls on shelves, suggestions of genocide etc.

Ah Well onto the last ep (Downloading as I type) I hope it wraps up the story neatly or it will be another 10 years before we get any answers.

3/5

Dreamfall Chapters - Book 5

Officially called REDUX, but it should have been called EXPOSITION.

I “Played” through this episode or at least I think I did I may have dreamed the whole thing. I barely remember touching the controls as the game filled in all the exposition without much in the way of obstacles.

With one exception….Blooming song puzzle made a reappearance. Hum the tune if you know it, but I could get past it last night for ages and you can’t back out of it until you hum the right tune. Crowa rendition was no help whatsoever.

Otherwise it passed up all opportunities for puzzles. Need to put a machine into an infinite loop…great chance for a puzzle, no just watch a cutscene.

As for the endings..Lord of the Rings nearly had as many endings.

2/5

Dreamfall Chapters

For all of the episodes together

Pros

* Looks very nice. Not top of the range textures, but the lighting, shadows and other effects are good.
* Voice work is great.
* It was nice to get some new characters with Enu, Saga and Sh*tbot being a lot of fun.
* Great to be back in this universe
* I liked the control scheme even if they didn’t do much with it.

Cons

* Game seems a bit buggy with character models vansishing, walking on the spot etc.
* Switch off the Lens Flare. Was this directed by JJ Abrams.
* The City was overly confusing to get around and finding locations meant a lot of wandering in circles.
* Story was all over the place and had to have multiple endings to “wrap things up”, but still left too many holes.
* Lack of interaction especially towards the end.
* Kian is not a great character or at least needed to be partnered with a Crow stlye character to compliment him.

Disappointed

3/5