Adventure Gamers - Forums

I just finished Gray Matter, A lovely game, great story and characters. Kept me inthralled until the end. The graphics were amazing, I liked it almost as much as a Gabriel Knight game. Deserved the Aggies it won.

danigar - 17 September 2021 06:06 PM

Adv_Lvr - 17 September 2021 09:03 AM

I just finished Gray Matter, A lovely game, great story and characters. Kept me inthralled until the end. The graphics were amazing, I liked it almost as much as a Gabriel Knight game. Deserved the Aggies it won.

I love Gray Matter, I may replay it again since it’s been a while. I know it wasn’t as well received but I also liked it as much as GK. I can only imagine what Jane could have done with a sequel or a new GK or just any game with modern graphics/technology… Like I mentioned in another thread, I miss the adventures of this era. I know we have great indies and great innovative games nowadays but I can’t help to feel nostalgic with games like this.

About 2017, I bought 46 games from this era from half price books and I am now finally playing them. They are, simply put, fantastic. First TAC and then Viva Media published them.

I finally wrapped up the indies on my IPad, so for the next year at least I will be in adventure game heaven. Good thing is, we got allot of games released during this period of time, so I’m set for quite a while.

I finished the extra added ending of The Longing and have to say it was disappointing, especially with what was required to get there.  I actually enjoyed solving the puzzles that lead up to it, but my favorite ending is still the first one I tried.  My reaction to it was very viseral.

One of the things I wasn’t able to do was find a way to write in the journal, so that never got crossed off as accomplished in the shade’s thoughts book.

Just finished our latest episode which was Maniac Mansion.

Actually never played it all the way through before. On the whole I enjoyed it but definitely had my issues with it. I found it a lot less fun than the early Sierra titles we had been doing - the humour was a lot zanier and less dry which was not to my taste.

It was also extremely frustrating at times in terms of not having any idea of what to do (we don’t use walkthroughs if we can help it!), and the constant backtracking was exacerbated by the three character format, when you realised one character had something another needed and had to walk across the whole house to transfer it.

That said, I enjoyed the non-linearity of it and the fact that the different characters actually had different abilities and reactions to events.  Very much increased its replayability, and the intricacy of the puzzles was refreshing compared to more modern adventures.

Ultimately I can appreciate the importance of the game, and admire what it did for its time, but to my mind it has not held up quite as well as some of the Kings/Space Quests from the 1980s.

DomiDarko - 26 September 2021 09:16 PM

In the past 14 days I finished:

The Secret of Monkey Island (don’t know how often I finished it… )
The Book Of Unwritten Tales (2nd time)
Edna & Harvey: The Breakout (2nd time)
Deponia
Samorost 1

Next to finish will be Fran Bow.

Wow you’ve been busy!

I’m familiar with Monkey Island (obvs) and Deponia but will have to add the others to my list!

Not heard of Fran Bow before - is she related to Laura?

Not heard of Fran Bow before - is she related to Laura?

No relation to Laura, Fran Bow is a horror indie game.

Anyway, I finished Memento Mori and it was…..well….OK. Nice graphics and all….but the puzzles were pretty boring, very pedestrian. Also, the ending came out of nowhere and felt rushed.

I won’t be playing the second one, I’ve read it’s simply more of the same.

Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases is developed by the studio of Murder Mystery Machine, and it shows. Gameplay is very similiar: move a young Poirot (at the time, a detective of the Belgian police force) around the Van den Bosch manor with an isometric view, gather clues by searching the house and questioning the suspects as you investigate a blackmail and a murder case. Gathered clues are plotted on “mind maps”, and like in MMM and games like Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes, you have to connect certain nodes there to generate new insights/deductions/clues to follow up on. It’s a lot more streamlined than Murder Mystery Machine (mind maps are neatly organized already, the game indicates how many links are possible to make at the moment, there’s a check list of what to do next) and overall it’s a fairly enjoyable detective game.

The one thing that bothered me however is that it doesn’t at all feel like a Poirot game. While this is set in Poirot’s younger days, nothing about the writing suggest that the character you are playing will become the famous Belgian detective we all know. Save for the moustache on his model and the mentioning of his little grey cells, there’s honestly really little that reminds of Poirot. And it could have been so easy! There’s optional banter where the young Poirot talks about travelling: have him mention wanting to go to Egypt for example! Mention long train rides! Have him complain out the assymmetry of the house or something. This game could have had any random protagonist. The A.B.C. Murders game adaptation of a few years back was not as good as a detective game, but that had a lot of little touches that made you feel like you were playing Poirot, like having him curse if you walked through a muddy spot or he’d check his tie when examining mirrors.

Tantei KID - 04 October 2021 02:42 AM

The one thing that bothered me however is that it doesn’t at all feel like a Poirot game. While this is set in Poirot’s younger days, nothing about the writing suggest that the character you are playing will become the famous Belgian detective we all know. Save for the moustache on his model and the mentioning of his little grey cells, there’s honestly really little that reminds of Poirot. And it could have been so easy! There’s optional banter where the young Poirot talks about travelling: have him mention wanting to go to Egypt for example! Mention long train rides! Have him complain out the assymmetry of the house or something. This game could have had any random protagonist. The A.B.C. Murders game adaptation of a few years back was not as good as a detective game, but that had a lot of little touches that made you feel like you were playing Poirot, like having him curse if you walked through a muddy spot or he’d check his tie when examining mirrors.

Whoa, way to drop the ball. One of the most known and easily recognized characters in the world… well, maybe that’s the problem. They’re thinking he’s so big they don’t have to bother, the name itself is enough. But of course it isn’t. And I already didn’t really like the character model - it’s a handsome bloke, but didn’t feel like Poirot.

I’ve been watching the TV series with Suchet again and I really like the small touches than bring out Poirot’s personality and the interactions with other characters. Too bad. Might give the game a go for the gameplay at some point, when it’s super cheap somewhere,  but I don’t have much enthusiasm otherwise after hearing this.

Has anyone seen The Chocolate Box? It is wild.

Comparing any depiction of Poirot to David Suchet might be unfair, like comparing a very nice mural to the Sistine Chapel. But this detective seems more like the smart and detached handsome-stache variety.

Poirot’s is not some ticking logical machine, where facts go in and deductions come out. He’s not obsessed with clues, or the material world. Most of his inner world is moral, emotional, religious and deeply human.

The game looks pretty good, though. I don’t want to be curmudgeon about it. Fanfic Poirot.

Yeah, that was a bit harsh, maybe. He’s perfectly decent as some version of Poirot.

I’m not usually about things being canon or true to it’s original design. But it’s an amazing character when portrayed by David Suchet.