Yoomurjak's Ring

To quote the game's website:

The municipality of Eger, a picturesque town in Hungary, was looking for alternative ideas for promoting their town in order to present its treasures and to attract tourists in an unconventional way, making also use of Gárdonyi’s popular book, ’The Eclipse of the Crescent Moon’, which won the Hungarian version of the Big Read competition.

And Private Moon Studios did just that. 600 panoramic views and 30 actors make this one of the largest -- and longest -- FMV games I've ever seen. The game is in Hungarian, with English subtitles that get progressively less spell-checked as the game proceeds, but are always good enough to allow solving the (sometimes very cryptic) puzzles.

A moment ago, I wrote actors, and, as far as I can tell, nearly all the people involved in this game are professional actors. There's none of the things that reveal amateur actors that I noticed. One pet peeve of mine is the unfinished sentence pause: Actor A begins a sentence, and Actor B is to talk over them; but A finishes his half-sentence, there's a pause, and only then does B begin to speak. A classic mistake, and I was delighted not to find it in this game (although the subtitles inform me that Hungarians say "Bye" when greeting each other and "Hi" when taking leave).

The only person sticking out is the villain's goon: apparently, rappers are as talented actors in Hungary as everywhere else. But seriously, he's supposed to be threatening, and he's physically imposing and in-your-face enough to make up for the lack of acting chops. Not really a problem.

The game is as much an advertisement for the city of Eger as it is a mystery game: the protagonist, grandson of the AGON series' main character, arrives in the city with mysterious clues and is quickly drawn into an epic quest for the titular Ring of Yoomurjak, which means following hints all across the city, solving puzzles, getting help from the world's most patient tourist information lady/love interest, and making what is apparently the only taxi driver in the city filthy rich.

There are about 45 minutes of video in the game, and the rest is filled with gorgeous 3D panoramas of almost the entire historical city center of Eger, as well as several other locations. Things that can be clicked on are sparse and only available in the main areas, of course; but it is also refreshing that the game does not force you to wade through 500 pages of "interesting" historical information at a time in order to locate puzzle hints and Educate the Player^TM. There is history to be imparted, but it happens gradually, and infodumps are rare (and usually happen in conversations with others instead via static text). It does the job well -- It made me want to go and see the city for myself, at least.

The puzzles you encounter are similar to the ones found in the AGON series: expect decryption, locating clues, and putting them together to further the story. The game eases you into this, then gradually ramps up the difficulty until you're visiting multiple locations to put together a single clue, dabbling in heraldry, and taking copious notes for cross-reference with other things you've seen. The penultimate clue-gathering section is massive, and was unfinishable for me without resorting to a walkthrough.

The story is nicely plotted out, and is a bit reminiscent of the "historical fiction" genre made popular by, inexplicably, Dan Brown; it weaves the real history of Eger and Gárdonyi’s book with the story the development studio came up with, and does so well (also, the writing is better). I don't really want to go into any detail -- the game is best enjoyed unspoilered.

The list of recommended FMV adventures was short before the second wave came about: Gabriel Knight 2 is pretty much the only pure-FMV entry, and then there's a few games that use FMV, but not exclusively, like Zork: Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor.

Yoomurjak's Ring is more of an FMV/First-Person hybrid, similar to the two Zorks, but having a protagonist with a face and a voice makes interaction more believable, and grounding the puzzles in the real world makes for a more cohesive story.

Also, you get to learn Hungarian! Kössönöm!

Buy it here.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

There's nothing at this point I can say about Monkey Island, so I'll just quickly summarize the points that I think went wrong in this remake (assume everything else went right!):

• Stan's voice is horrendous.
• You can't skip single lines of dialogue in the new-graphics version.

These two, it turns out, are closely related. I switched to old-style graphics to make the ship purchase puzzle bearable.

Other than that, well played, LucasArts. The earlier release of older games onto Steam was pretty lame -- what self-respecting adventure fan doesn't have these? -- but the Special Edition shows that, unlike certain other companies*, LucasArts are interested in their customer base.

* Yes, this means you, Vivendi. Dumping crap versions of Sierra collections onto Steam because you noticed someone else makes money that way? Sod off.

Tales of Monkey Island

It's a Monkey Island game.

It's 3D but has mouse controls.

It has no insult combat.

Go buy it.

Gobliiins 4 short review

After the downfall of Sierra, I'm sure nobody expected there would ever be another instalment in the popular Gobliiins series, and yet, here it is!

Designed by the original games' designer, Pierre Gilhodes, and published through a small studio, this foray into 3D is charming and unpretentious, but cannot hold a candle to modern 3D titles in the looks department. Sound, as always in the Gobliiins series, is incomprehensible semi-instrumental mumbling (think the grown-ups in the Peanuts cartoons), and there's a nice soundtrack to boot.

There's really not much to say: if you liked the old games, you'll like this one, although some puzzle solutions are really over-used; if you see "soft earth", you know what's coming. All the other staples of the series are there: silly animations, exact timing, coöperation between the trio.

Some of the levels are particularly imaginative, like the one that takes place entirely in a newspaper that's being read on-screen, or the bonus level.

The game's a bit on the short side, but I can't not recommend it.

Die Höhlenwelt Saga

Ah yes, an OLD-school adventure. And part one of a series. Guess what was never made!

Höhlenwelt Saga is one of those games that gives you a limited resource of something (money, in this case) and makes you figure out ways of acquiring more, or optimize your path such that you never run out. I never found out what happens if you do run out, but since you need to park your flying dragon for 3 credits every single time you land it somewhere, and go through the same inane "here's my dragon"/"can I have my dragon back" dialogue every single time, I would suspect you're screwed if you don't read about more ways to make money in the walkthrough find out what to sell to whom in order to make more money BEFORE you run out.

The plot? You're this space traveller who met his true love, but then she ran off with this other guy, so you're trying to track her down. And then the other guy, Cal, turns out to be a robotic savior of some kind, and directs you to the titular Cave World, which is a world that's part fantasy, part sf (you have alien invaders with advanced technology, but also dragons and magic). The author of the game was an acclaimed German fantasy writer, and used to write text adventures, so the world works pretty well for the most part, although there are some baffling things the protagonist can get away with, like: throwing pies in alien soldiers' faces; throwing exploding stink mushrooms at alien soldiers; and other insolence.

The way dialog trees are implemented is also somewhat bizarre: you can keep looping around until you happen upon the correct line of reasoning to get information (or someone to do something for you). This despite the game claiming that your dialog choices can have longer-lasting effects on the game (they don't). Furthermore, apparently "How is business, kind Sir?" will get you a tongue-lashing from a businessman, while "Heidau, dude, whassup yo?" will not. Ooo-kay.

Also interesting but slightly creepy is your "true love"'s reaction to seeing you -- she mostly remains coldly indifferent, sometimes even hostile, throughout, until the very end where you can coax her into a kiss with the right choice of dialog. And the main character will happily flirt with any other moderately attractive woman in the game, so there must be something I'm not getting here. Or the author.

So you travel around the place collecting stuff. Sometimes, you go back to the same place only to find new stuff there, and the protagonist even comments on this. Note to game authors: this is lame.

And, of course, while you manage to achieve the goal of this game, it ends on a cliffhanger that was never resolved. Apparently, so do the novels, since the author died mid-series, and wasn't famous enough to get Brandon Sanderson to complete it.

Overall, however: not a bad game. Too bad it's German-only and most of my audience won't get to play it.

Schizm, a repost from 2002

Note: this isn't as much a review of Schizm as a rant about what I didn't like. And it's been quite a long time since I've been so annoyed by an adventure game as I was by Schizm (the last time must have been "Rent-A-Hero", which is probably the single worst adventure game I've ever played in my life), so read ahead at your own peril.

How to make the ultimate annoying adventure game:

Make every movement in the game a cutscene. Cut up longer movements into small pieces so the player has to click more often.

Do NOT make these cutscenes skippable. Play them every single time. In the DVD version, add additional movement scenes that hold the player up EVEN LONGER, like jumping fish or buzzing bees.

Make sure, for total playing time, that the player has to run across half the world and back for every single puzzle. In fact, since there are two player characters the player controls, make sure he has to RUN EACH OF THEM ACROSS HALF THE WORLD AND BACK SEPERATELY FOR EVERY SINGLE PUZZLE, PREFERABLY SEVERAL TIMES. Ensure getting from point A to point B takes at least 15 minutes of real time.

Since there's more space on the DVD, make sure to add a few bonus puzzles which involve EVEN MORE POINTLESS RUNNING AROUND, not to mention additional uninterruptable cutscenes which require you to flip the DVD over twice.

While speaking of flipping the DVD over, make sure the installer pops up when you switch to side A, killing the game in progress. In fact, make sure that Alt-Tab or incoming ICQ messages or any other disturbance kill the game in progress.

Add completely gratuitous play-against-the-computer puzzles. Require the player solve several of them in a row without being allowed to save inbetween. Then repeat the same puzzle later, only make it even MORE ANNOYING. Make the hints for puzzles extremely obscure, not to mention hiding them on the other side of the game world.

Add puzzles relying on sound. Make the sound as unintelligible as possible, just in case. Add lots of red herrings as well, so the player has to try everything at least five times.

Grr.

A Vampyre Story

This game has, first and foremost, the same problem as "Al Emmo," which I don't own and never plan to: the protagonist's voice is incredibly grating. A faux French accent, which drops out randomly, delivered in a high pitch. Yargh.

A Vampyre Story is the first new game by Autumn Moon Games, a company founded by ex-LucasArtsies, with Bill Tiller at the Helm. And I mean "first" -- the story ends halfway through and indicates I should wait for AVS2. Given the track record of games with cliffhangers that are never resolved, I don't hold high hopes, but I'm willing to be surprised.

It'll have to be a more positive surprise than AVS1, however, which was pretty mediocre for the most part. It starts out with a few good puzzles, then bogs down in the mid-game with a gigantic try-and-retry potion mixing puzzle (at which point I started using a walkthrough), then descends, as the second halves of adventures so often do, into nonsensical puzzles.

You play as Mona, a French opera singer who's been turned into a vampire by Baron Von Shroudy, whose love for her she rejects. So he locks her into his castle until she changes her mind, with only a smartass bat for company. Mona, however, refuses to acknowledge that she is, in fact, a vampire, finding ever more bizarre explanations for her behavior, or (like any good politician) simply ignoring reality. Naturally, Froderick, her bat companion, comments on these fugues as much as on anything else in the game; fortunately, the voice actor is vastly superior to Mona's, or the game would become entirely unplayable.

The hallmark of LucasArts games was humor, and while Telltale nailed Sam & Max, AVS never really gets off the ground. The jokes are either juvenile (probably to appeal to a younger audience), dark (and often, but not often enough, funny, but not for kids), or most often simply fall flat spectacularlylamely.

The major new mechanic in AVS is having "ideas" in your inventory -- Mona's not going to drag this shovel around all game, but she knows where it is, and if you want to use it, she'll automatically go grab it, bring it back to the current location, and use it. Unfortunately, this is done via multiple cutscenes, which are randomly either skippable or not, and even when they're skippable one has to hit the space bar an excruciating 5 or 6 times. Every time. At one point, you have to click an object to get its idea first, then click the idea on something in the same room, which you can't even leave at that point, which generates another idea, which you can then use on yet another object in the same room. That is, maybe, a bit too much.

On the positive side, the locations are beautifully drawn and have useful shortcuts, mostly avoiding that other staple of second halves of adventure games: running across the entire game world multiple times to do boring fetch quests. Even better: the right mouse button skips directly to a new location if you click it on an arrow. Less good: the right mouse button also brings up your inventory, so you have to make sure you're NOT on an arrow if you want that.

As it is, I can't really recommend AVS if you want side-splitting comedy and an actual ending. I'm hoping, though, that this first excursion by Autumn Moon will teach the company the dos and don'ts of adventure gaming (though, shouldn't they already know?) and that the second part will be more interesting.

If it ever turns up.