Platform: PC

Like a gazillion other people, Doublefine Adventure was the first Kickstarter that I bought into. It was scheduled to come out two years ago. During the delay I started playing many other more modern adventure games to get me in the groove again (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here). It’s finally out (at least the first half of the game is out), but how does it stack up against other adventures?

Well the game looks fantastic. The hand-painted art style and character design is reminiscent of other Doublefine games like Costume Quest and Psychonauts. Doublefine has a tendency to make games with a great art direction but lackluster game-play. Fortunately, the point-and-click adventure game mechanics are pretty well established and Broken Age doesn’t stray too far from the tried and true formula.

If I have any complaints, it would be that the game is too simple. In many cases, just clicking down every path of a dialogue tree will get you an item you need. Most of the actual puzzles are fairly logical and involve using an object how you would expect to use it. The challenge is just to collect all the needed objects. I guess being too easy is not a bad thing. It’s better than having to rely on a walkthrough. But I would have preferred a little more challenge and perhaps an in-game hint system like Telltale uses in their games.

In the end, the low difficulty can be forgiven since the story is so well done. The two parallel narratives work well against each other. Each is filled with unique characters, strange environments and a touch of sly humor. I don’t find the writing to be the laugh fest that many reviewers are claiming, but it’s cute and clever and never dull. I hope this does well beyond the just the Kickstarter backers. We need more adventure games.

Update: ACT 2

Ok, so here we are a year-and-a-half later and Act II has finally been released. If I were to rate the game as a whole I would probably drop it to a 7 or 8. The second half of the game ups the difficulty of the puzzles by a notch, but loses much of what made the first part’s story so interesting.

There were a few horrible adventure game sins committed where the answer to a puzzle relied on information that the current character couldn’t possibly ever know. And, unfortunately, that faux pas was about as close to inter-connectivity we got between the two character’s worlds.

I didn’t dislike the second act, but much of the magic was lost. Oh well, this Kickstarter got me playing all sorts of other adventure games like the (far-superior) Blackwell series and Telltale games.

Infinite is a worthy successor to the original BioShock. It’s not so much a sequel as it is a re-theming of the game with a new story, new environment but much of the same game play. The cloud city of Columbia is simply beautiful and filled with visual and sonic detail. There’s something to look at around every corner.

Once the killing starts the game really begins to shine. You are still shooting with your left button and casting magic powers with your right but in much more open, vertical spaces. Battles flow nicely and are never too unfair (I finished the game on hard difficulty) and the new system of sky-rails adds another wild element to the action. My only gripe with the game mechanics is the return of the “vita-chamber” life restore system. I hate, hate, HATE this system. I would rather just have check points and if you die, you die. The revival system just doesn’t make death seem that consequential.

The main draw of the BioShock games is their stories. Infinite does a could job of building up the characters and the mystery up until about two-thirds the way through when a dimensional-travel plot device comes into play. Things just get confusing and you stop care about what happens since you know if a dimensional hole might open up and just fix everything. They try to tie it up with a bit of a twist ending, but it doesn’t really make sense like the twist in the original BioShock. There’s no thinking back to earlier parts of the game thinking, “Oh, yeah. That’s what that was all about.” That said, I immediately started a new game the moment I finished the first one.

Another game that came bundled with my new video card. I had never played a game in this series because I assumed it was some sort of military sim. It is actually a third-person stealth game, and a very good one at that. While shooting everyone you see is always an option, you are mostly out-gunned and very vulnerable to attacks. I would usually opt to stay in the shadows, moving from cover to cover and performing knockout take-downs. This sort of game-play style is very satisfying to me, like when I play the spy in Team Fortress 2.

There is a story here too. It’s a ridiculous plot involving random terrorist attacks across the globe until the U.S. pulls its forces out of somewhere-else-o-stan. It’s not the most creative plot, but it gives you enough to go on and does a good job of setting up the main villain as your adversary.

I was surprised by how much I liked this one and I may go back and try some of the other games in the series.

More episodic point-and-click adventure from Telltale Games. This series is definitely geared more towards younger gamers but there is much charm and witty story telling to keep older players entertained. If you enjoyed the movies and shorts, this is just like another cartoon in the Wallace and Gromit series. I thought the first episode, Fright of the Bumblebees, was the best and there is a nice bit of characterization and story that carries over from episode to episode. It’s not quite on par with Sam and Max but it’s still a worthy modern adventure game.

I played the first Assassin’s Creed several years ago and, while I thought it was an okay game, I was never compelled to continue on with the series. It was just too repetitive and item collection driven. The only reason I have AC4 is that it was bundled with my new video card. Black Flag is an absolutely beautiful game and it’s no wonder EVGA bundled it with my GTX660 as a way to showcase that mid-range card’s capabilities. Ever since the original FarCry I have been a sucker for games that are set on tropical islands.

At its core it is mostly the same game as AC1 but the narrative is much more focused. The missions, although similar from one to the next, aren’t the exact same quest over and over. There is actually a story-based point to most of the challenges you face. The mindless item collection is still part of the game, but looking for pirate booty sorta makes thematic sense here. The combat has also been streamlined but is ultimately kind of disappointing after experiencing the pure elegance of Batman: Arkham City’s excellent fighting system. Thankfully, avoiding combat and stealth are a big part of the game.

Oh, did I mention naval battles? Ever since reading all of the Aubrey/Maturin novels I have wanted a naval combat video game. Old Ironsides on the Apple ][, despite its simplicity, actually came close to capturing the feeling of the chase and ship-to-ship dueling. AC4 takes it one step closer by adding the hand-to-hand, yardarm-to-yardarm fighting that would decide the battle in the end. The combat is still very twitchy and too fast to be a true naval combat simulation, but it is really fun.

Like most things in this game, even the naval battles start to become a bit tiresome after a while. My advice to anyone picking up this game would be to stick with the main missions and ignore most of the side quests and collecting. The current-day framing story is a waste of time and should be ignored as well.

Contract J.A.C.K. is billed as a prequel to the super-excellent shooter No One Lives Forever 2. What we really have here is a modest set of stand-alone expansion levels for NOLF 2. It uses the same game engine, graphics and features a new main character but really not much effort was put into the story or game-play. While there are a handful of funny character interactions, mostly this is a linear, run-and-gun shooter. Don’t play this one expecting any of the dialogue or varied game-play that made NOLF 1+2 two of the best PC games ever created. J.A.C.K. is okay, I guess, but would rather play NOLF 3 instead.

When I heard that this game featured Michael Biehn as the main voice actor I was intrigued. When I saw that it was an over-the-top homage to eighties science fiction and action movies I had to have it. The game doesn’t disappoint in the nostalgia department. In addition to the neon Tron-style art direction, there is tons of cheesy dialogue, 8-bit cut scenes (including a power rock training montage), and an incredibly cool synthesizer-based soundtrack. In terms of story, the game has nothing to do with FarCry other than it using the same game engine and open-world mechanics. There is a good balance of stealth and good old-fashioned shoot everything gun play. This sells for cheap and is well worth the low price despite its short game length.

The first Darksiders was a blatant rip-off of (some might say “homage to”) the The Legend of Zelda. While it maintains much of that formula, the sequel feels a little more like its own thing. There’s more of an emphasis on acrobatic platforming complete with pillar jumping, vaults, wall-running and… er… okay it’s a rip-off of Prince of Persia this time, but who cares, it’s a formula that works!

The game keeps pushing you along from one puzzle room to the next and along the way you earn more and more advanced tools for passing obstacles. There’s still the pop gun, portal gun and hookshot thingy, but now you can also split into two characters, control ghosts and do a little time travelling. These new skills make for a couple really brain-twisting puzzles near the end of the game.

There is still quite a bit of hacking and slashing between the brainy stuff. A few of the battles are fun, but, for the most part combat is repetitive and uninteresting and can be reduced to spastic button mashing. The first game was a tad more sophisticated in its fighting controls.

As for the story, it just as convoluted and unintelligible as the it was in Darksiders. There’s a bit less of the bible fan-fiction feeling here, but still, I never really gave a crap about anything that was going on. The dialogue sounds like it was taken word-for-word out of the Lord of the Rings screenplay. Just replace “Mordor” with “The Corruption.”

This game has been on my back burner for quite some time now. I play a little here and a little there, but it never really got its hooks in me. This was Telltale’s first foray into episodic point-and-click adventure games and it shows. There is no over-arching story to tie the episodes together, solving the puzzles is mostly just a matter of clicking on everything in your inventory and they threw in a bunch of item collection nonsense to make up for the limited gameplay options.

If you are a fan of the web cartoon it’s worth playing if only because it is probably the last we will see of Homestar and the gang for a while. There are some pretty funny moments and there are also some clever twists on various video gaming clichés and there’s even some self-aware parody of adventure game annoyances. However, once you have played the first episode, it seems like the same thing over and over. Alright, Chapmans, you’ve made your computer game, now get back to making cartoons!

While Invisible War was not without its merits, it really lacked the depth of the original Deus Ex. This third installment attempts to amend some of that and bring the series a little closer to its RPG, stealth-centric roots. For the most part it succeeds. The levels offer all sorts of play options and paths. Also, the third-person perspective stealth system works much better than the hiding in shadows ever did in the original game.

Personally, I think the original is a tad bit overrated. I attempted to play it a again before diving into Human Revolution and found it doesn’t really hold up. My God that Hong Kong level is unbearably tedious and boring. There’s a point in Human Revolution when the game frees you to start exploring a more open environment. I immediately started to get panicked flashback of my hours spent backtracking through the dull streets of Hong Kong, but. thankfully, there are quest arrows that guide lazy modern gamers back into the action.

The story as something to do with kidnapped scientists and anti-cyber augmentation zealots. Once the Illuminati were brought into the mix I tuned out the narrative and just concentrated on getting through the levels undetected. Tightly plotted and understandable narratives are not a hallmark of this series.