Caltrops - Gemini Rue - Some more AG reviews

Forum Overview :: Gemini Rue

by skip 12/14/2014, 10:55pm PST

Memoria - So much better than Chains of Satinav you wonder if whoever wrote the sequel was desperately trying to ignore as much of the first game as possible. The new characters are more engaging and the story is better done. The holdover characters are treated like the boring assholes they are and any section involving them or that crappy love story is glossed over. Hell, even the "good" ending involving the milquetoasts form the first game implies a heavy amount of relationship by inertia. This game is dragged down by involving them though. The art is great, voice-acting better although not great and puzzles manageable. Overall, I'll keep an eye on Daedalic but they still have yet to make a game good enough to compensate for the Deponia series. Easily the best game of the three sets here.

Erica Reed: Cognition series - I played this a few months ago, but I can easily see how this series swept the Aggies for readers while editors were giving blowjobs to Gone Home. It's an actual adventure game with puzzles and a plot line that runs through it. The series is bookended by its worst games. Number 1 is highly unpolished with graphical clipping and often bizarre facial expressions and only passable voice acting. The fourth is basically a CYOA game with graphics with very few puzzles. Two and three have better stories and smooth over the issues in the first. Three especially has the best puzzle mechanics. There are definite weaknesses, especially in the fourth game when everything gets wrapped up, and the black antique dealer is of course the all-knowing guide. Overall, though, a decent series that deserved to win against Gone Home or the Deponia games.

Samaritan Paradox - A mystery involving a scavenger hunt to uncover the will of an eccentric Norwegian author. There's some shoehorned love story that never goes anywhere. The main story is fine although it runs "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" lite. It just wasn't interesting. The puzzles involved too much pixel hunting which was a pain in the ass with the low-res graphics and there were a few unintuitive ones. The voice acting was mediocre. The story was made so you could accuse the culprit without even finding the relevant evidence and I don't think it was on purpose. Characters were shallow and there were a lot of relationship plotlines which could have been fleshed out. The story-inside-a-story mechanic couldn't reach the heights of a gimmick. I'd be more annoyed if it took a few hours to finish.

All of these are only recommended if you like the trappings of adventure games, which most people here don't. If you are lukewarm-cold on the genre, then pass on all of them. I think I've bitched about this before but Adventure Gamers has gone downhill dramatically. The main editor is a fucking asshole who argues with posters and gets defensive whenever anyone has the slightest disagreement. Check him out being a dick in the 2013 Aggie awards comments when people points out the discrepancy of Gone Home getting so many awards by the staff when the clear winner by readers (people who actually play games) was only nominated for one category which it lost.

Claiming a traditional adventure is the “definition” of adventure is so wrong, it really doesn’t merit explaining why.

Heaven forbid there should be a variety of games to choose from. If it ain’t 1993 all over again, I guess it’s not an adventure!

Honestly, people.

I understand that narrow-minded people who only want us to cover the type of games they like are the source of endless whining. That’s about as much as I care about anyone’s personal agendas and arbitrary genre distinctions.

But thanks for your insightful staffing advice, and for your singleminded negativity in an article designed to honour the year’s best games and the designers who made them. Whatever would we all do without contributions like this.

And that's just the first page of comments. When RPGCodex has a more welcoming and less caustic adventure game section than you, you have fucking issues to work out.