Adventure Gamers - Forums

chrissie - 01 July 2012 06:12 PM

GOG also has the game for download - DRM free!

While I like to give my money to GOG, in this case Wadjet Eye’s website is probably the best way to go. You get a DRM free direct download as well as a Steam key which, as far as I can tell, is also DRM free. In this case it probably also gives the most money to Wadjet Eye and Vince Twelve.

Fair point! I totally agree, louiedog.

Ordered the old-school boxed version, with poster, soundtrack and behind the scenes stuff, directly off Wadjet Eye Games.

Not that I particularly need any of that, but more in order to show my support.

If they keep on making games like Resonance, they can have my money any day!!

*walks away contemplating whether ot not that was a clever thing to say*

GameSpot’s review. I know GS is generally regarded as being hard on point-and-click adventures, but this is pretty extreme.

While I do agree with their main criticisms, specifically the writing (dramatically inept, save for the climax) and puzzles (unfocused, disorganized), I do not agree with their score.

Gamespot’s review is absolutely shameful. I will never EVER take seriously any of their reviews ever again. I honestly thought they had mended the anti-adventure mentality they used to have, but this train-wreck of a review proves me completely wrong. Bad, contrived plot (“Half-baked writing abounds in Resonance, with plot point after plot point relying on silly contrivances”) and nonsensical puzzles (“combine syrup with cat hair to make mustache”-type adventure game puzzles”)? Seriously Gamespot? A horrible, utterly unfair review. Is the adventure-game genre dead? Definitely not, but Gamespot surely gives it its best shot to kill it off. To think that I was actually looking forward to this horror of a review…

I haven’t taken a Gamespot review of an adventure game seriously in a very long time.

3.9 for Scratches, 2.6 for Barrow Hill, etc. Those games may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but sometimes it seems like the reviewer has a strong bias against slower, thoughtful games.

Not all their AG reviews are so negative, of course, but they seem to especially hate “Myst clones”. Obviously Resonance isn’t a Myst clone, but I’m disappointed Gamespot gave them a harsh score. Everyone around the web, including non-hardcore adventure gamers, seems to really like Resonance.

I generally have a lot of respect for Gamespot, so I’m really surprised by this review. OK, so the reviewer didn’t like the gameplay and that made him see the game as a whole in a bad light? That can happen. But stuffing the review full of spoilers (including one screenshot that’s pretty much as spoilerific as it gets)? That’s careless and unprofessional.

EDIT: It looks like they changed the screenshots since I read the review a few hours ago. Good.

I think the reviewer just wanted to show off a new word he’d just learned - he used “contrived” or “contrivances” a total of 5 times.

But all in all, I don’t think the review was THAT bad. It certainly gave me a better idea of the game than AG’s fawning review. Something in between the two extremes would be nice.

Felt like reading a high school essay.

I just found “The last Will and Testament of Manuel Calavera” in the city Archives!!!

Just finished Resonance. Too lazy to write a full critique, so just a few points: First off, this game felt like a breath of fresh air from beginning to end. At every corner it dazzled with expansive animations and inventive gameplay elements. Resonance is no cookie-cutter game. It surprises with its variety of puzzle types and its innovative gameplay ideas while retaining the spirit of a classic adventure game.

I have to say I consulted a walkthrough a lot in the second half of the game, onwards from the big non-linear portion in the middle of the game, when you try to find out where the vault is located. I guess I felt a bit lost there, regarding what I had to do, and my motivation wasn’t at its highest, I guess since story progress was naturally a bit slow there. Another reason probably is that I didn’t realize until much later that you could ask the other characters for some hints. It didn’t occur to me soon enough, I guess. The first half I played without any help, though.
Then, the puzzle in the super collider. I didn’t realize that you could actually control the bridges with the power switch. I was stuck there for much too long!

Anyway, about the “twist”: I’m not sure I found it quite believable how Ray and Bennet realize that Ed is a bit suspect. I mean, Ray questions how Ed could have been riding coincidentally the same subway as Anna, but how did he know about that episode, anyway? Did they ever talk about this? Maybe they did earlier on in the game and I forgot, I dunno, I played the second half some weeks later.
Otherwise I didn’t find Ed very interesting as this unhinged, murderous, conflicted guy. I guess the writing wasn’t up to the task on this, and I guess it’s very difficult, to portray this character switch believably, to depict him as fearsome and allow us a view into his psyche, showing his emotions and thoughts, allowing us to see the warped reasons for his actions, the mental instability that allows him to justify his actions to himself. The game tries of course, but Ed just doesn’t come across as a very interesting antagonist, he just seems whiny, angry and confused.
Maybe that’s a general weakness of the game, that the characters generally fulfill more certain tropes and archetypes than to be well fleshed-out fully bloodied individuals. I don’t really have any complaints about the other characters, but Ed’s is so important, since so much hinges on this twist. It shows us that there’s another side to him, and the game’s last third has then to focus on questions as who he truly is, what he did, why he did it and how he could be this way. The answers to this, or the lack of convincing ones, seem pretty disappointing. The twist reverberated quite strongly in me, but it muted significantly when I realized that, really, there wasn’t much depth to Ed’s character. And depth, a delicate portrayal of his psyche, is what would have been needed. But I guess the game painted a bit too much in broad strokes for that. That’s by far my biggest criticism of Resonance, and it lets the last third of the game down a bit, especially compared to everything that went before.

As always, I’m more negative than positive in these immediate write-ups, but I guess that’s only because the positives seem so self-evident. So I guess I shouldn’t forget to mention them now.
The plot handles quite a lot of heavy themes and gets you thinking. The gameplay nudges the genre gently forward into some unexplored terrain without stepping over the boundaries of the genre. The story is full of mystery and surprises. The game world manages to feel alive thanks to expansive animations, locations and the amount of interactions you can perform. Resonance is truly something special. It’s not perfect, yes, but then, no adventure game is.

@ozzie,
About the text in the spoiler:
You said “I’m not sure I found it quite believable how Ray and Bennet realize that Ed is a bit suspect. I mean, Ray questions how Ed could have been riding coincidentally the same subway as Anna, but how did he know about that episode, anyway? Did they ever talk about this?” It’s probably as you also said because you played the second part of the game a long time after the first, but Ed does tell detective Bennet about meeting Anna in a train (in a rather drawn-out and in retrospect suspisiously lengthy conversation) when he first meets them at the hospital and interrogates them, right when Ray makes his appearance. So both Bennet and Ray know that Ed and Anna met in the subway. Also I don’t think Ed was meant to be portrayed as mentally unstable, but as an ordinary scientifically-minded guy who gets trapped in a path of murder and deception by Antevorta and his own ideological beliefs. At the end of the story he is supposed to be confused not unhinged, so I think he is meant to come across as whiny, angry and confused in the final confrontation. I actually felt a bit sorry for him there, but not enough to not blast him into nothingness with Resonance for killing sweet Anna.

Ah, thanks, that explains it!
But I just don’t buy it that Ed was this nice dude once that just so happened to get trapped “in a path of murder”. Most of his murders are rather reflexive, like he’s blanking, and in another way he seems reckless. When the research about Resonance is in danger he kills. When people just seem to be in his way he kills. Anna died because she might not have chosen like he wanted her to. Benett and Ray might have died just because they were there. The destruction of the lab and murder of Dr. Morales was planned of course, but probably performed in panic after Morales told him that he wants to destroy the research. The thing is, Ed already had this bad side to him before we got to meet him. At first we only see him as this nice boy, before we realize there’s something seriously wrong with him. Yes, he was part of the 11th Foundation, and he says the he was used by them, but this doesn’t in the least explain his actions. What could they have done to him to turn him into such a monster? Did they reprogram him to be this unstable killer machine that does everything to protect the research about Resonance? We don’t know anything about his relationship to the 11th Foundation bar his own words. And they’re not necessarily to be trusted I think.
Maybe he’s just this social cripple who’s unable to convince people of his viewpoint and therefore kills them when they remain in the way because of that. I dunno. I just don’t feel very compelled by his character, like I said, more could have been made out of it. I neither pitied nor feared him in the end.
I feel like I could write more and more about my problems with his character, but I don’t feel like I would come any closer describing my exact problem with it. Words sometimes feel like an insufficient crutch to convey meaning. Maybe I’m lacking the right words. Anyway, I hope you understand what I mean.