Adventure Gamers - Forums

That sums it up very well. I would subtract one star for the lack of manual saves though. This is a scourge of modern adventure games, and even worse with games featuring multiple endings and/or achievments. Forcing you to replay the entire game for an additional 20 second cutscene and/or nabbing that last achievment is the modern equivalent of a maze.

I started a new game and chose “sensitive” at the start to see if the dialogue was different. No, my Voodoo Detective was just as rude to his new client as before. Why make the player choose? But I stopped playing shortly after the intro, so there might be differences later on.

fiksdal - 11 June 2022 07:26 AM

That sums it up very well. I would subtract one star for the lack of manual saves though. This is a scourge of modern adventure games, and even worse with games featuring multiple endings and/or achievments. Forcing you to replay the entire game for an additional 20 second cutscene and/or nabbing that last achievment is the modern equivalent of a maze.

I like your maze analogy. It’s very annoying and possibly a gamestopper in the case of bugs.

My final score is 5.5 or 6- when I’m in a forgiving mood.

Finally decided on playing Voodoo since it doesn’t seem like it’s coming to GOG any time soon (which is strange, I mean, surely GOG is a better place for classic adventure games). Having finished it in 2 days I agree with the comments above, the game is very nicely done, but it could’ve been so much more. I got stuck only once on the stone hands puzzle - for some reason I just failed to understand the logic of the hint and then a bit near the end on the Mortal Combat-ish fight, also because I didn’t get the logic of staying alive at first. Gemini Rue might be the one to blame since I had played it before, and that game had real life logic.

Rather than that the game played more-or-less casual, with clear goals and mostly obvious solutions for the puzzles while the one-button interface and the lack of hot spots made it even easier to solve. It often felt like those locations were underused, like they could’ve been stuffed with more puzzles - like the graveyard, for example: all that work just for one fetch quest and casting one spell? Still I appreciated some unorthodox use of items and voodoo spells in particular.

Speaking of which, I thought Grammy’s book of Voodoo was a pretty cool idea, like a mix of spell cooking from Kyrandia 2 and voodoo doll making from Monkey Island 2. But, as it was mentioned above, the spells could’ve been used more creative and more than once (then again, Kyrandia 2 has similar design and nobody blames it for that).

I also found the game quite amusing, and some moments felt so silly that just remembering them makes me smile, like the - already infamous - toilet handle puzzle, or the toilet boy with his “Welcome to the bathroom!” greeting. Or the captain of the ship where the most influential locals conduct their meetings who looked and acted like the most cliched stereotypical dirty pirate they could’ve come up with. Or the French ghost telling us how he bravely escaped the crime scene while the killers were busy shooting his wife and then relaxing in a bath with a rubber duck. Those kind of details worked on me better than many visual gags.

The detective himself was a solid and pretty unique character, and the music numbers were great to listen. Always wanted a hero who can play musical instrument on occasions, and here it is even an essential part of some puzzles. Music in general and voice acting were of high standards, it’s great to find so much quality in a modern adventure. The game feels like it could use a sequel or two, I wouldn’t mind playing them at all, I just wish they put more effort into game design next time around.