I've mentioned in the past that I have a subscription to the google + account of Indie Game News, wherefrom I get a lot of my favorite Pak Watch featured games. One thing I have noticed about Indie Game News is that they report a lot about point and click adventure games. For this reason, I have paid more attention to that particular genre of late, and It has piqued my interest. I pitched the idea of playing an adventure game to Jane, and she was really into the idea. I review the best rated games at Adventure Game Studio, and settled on Blackwell Legacy. Jane approved of my choice, and we started playing.
So far, so good. The writing and voice acting is solid, though it takes a minute to get used to the sort of stiff flow of conversation that happens by necessity when you control the flow of scripted conversation. It's really fun to play two-players, putting our heads together and solving puzzles.
That said, the game falls into the same problem so many games fall into: when you can't solve a puzzle, and you just click on everything in one location, go to another location, click everything there. Go back to the previous location, click things, talk your way through every conversation tree. Check gamefaqs. The answer is just some small detail you neglected, and thank god the game has begun to flow again.
When it is flowing, Blackwell legacy has interesting characters and a compelling story. I happily anticipate the next time we get to play it.
-D
I fell into the pitfall of clicking everything and trying everything in my inventory on everything that looked potentially interactable whenever I go back through "Shadowgate." I'm sad that point-and-click games, in the traditional sense get a bad wrap and are labeled as a casual game, like it's a negative connotation. Then there are games like "The Walking Dead," "Alone in the Dark," and the "Professor Layton" series are all essentially point -and-click adventures.
ReplyDeleteI should get back into playing them too.