The plot develops in Moebius. Lucky for me there's lots of history (yay!). For those who don't like history, it's OK, you'll be spending almost all the time in the modern world. But we're trying to find out (this isn't much of a spoiler), if modern people might be similar to historical figures.
While I continue to believe the game would have worked wonderfully in full-motion video, the cartoon characters look pretty good, except for the main character, who really does look just pretty bad. He doesn't look like a human. His sidekick, once we meet him, looks just fine, and the other characters are OK. But to have our main man looking so weird, well, it's weird.
Still, the gameplay is really fun, to me at least! It's Jane Jensen's normal mode: earn points by finding clues. Go into close-ups and hit a big "Exit" button to return to the regular screen. While her puzzles will madden many they are doable and you feel good when you crack one. As usual, you won't need a WT if you click on every possible hotspot in every possible screen. Eventually you'll hit the right one, so use that spacebar (or the target icon in the upper left corner) to find them all.
The scenery is really pretty nice. Here, for example, is a shot from Malachi's balcony in New York at night:
New York View
I'll admit that the coffee puzzle in Paris had me ready to go to a WT. Hint: you have to put the coffee down in a special place to do what you need to do with it. Look for coffee places, maybe?
So here's a daytime scene from Paris, or, well, close to Paris:
A nice hotel
Frequently you'll have to go back to other scenes to get inventory items, and as I said in the last post, I think that's good. It adds complexity and it's more realistic than, say, picking up a ladder and carrying it around for an hour until you need it, as is usual in so many adventure games. I like it. Most reviewers didn't. They are wrong.
The music! Of course it's done by Robert Holmes, Jane Jensen's husband. I only noticed on my second day of playing that the incidental music in the background is either exactly the same or remarkably similar to the original Gabriel Knight game. I like that too!
In this game I think Jane has gone much further in character development than she's done before. Our main character, Malachi, isn't really a very nice guy at all. None of Jane's characters are perfect, but they were at least likable. This guy almost isn't. He's consciously superior and makes snide comments about the decor wherever he goes. He sneers. He's really not very nice. Yet, he's brilliant and he's our hero, so it'll be interesting to see if he has any character development in the end. I'm rather enjoying that these characters, especially Malachi, are closer to real humans than you ever encounter in games. Adds depth.
I almost missed one of the most important, and lengthy, cutscenes in the game by solving a puzzle when I inadvertently had the sound off on my computer. Had to not look until it was done, then quit and get back into the game and re-solve the puzzle. Pretty easy puzzle this time, fortunately.
I will admit that the coding puzzle in Reichart's office defeated me. I went to the WT. I just wasn't in the mood to trudge through that at the time. But I did manage the puzzle box!
I did run into what I thought was a glitch that was going to stop the game. I've made it to Chapter 6 (fortunately there are seven chapters this time so I've got lots of gameplay left). I was in the Senator's office talking about an email and I got into a loop that kept repeating. There did not appear to be a way out of it. I thought my game was corrupted. I went to the walkthrough on Gameboomers, read the relevant section and that gave me enough information that I got out of the loop. Whew! But the game has hiccuped on several occasions. All this might be a problem on Steam, of course.
So I still ought to have lots of fun to come. This is good, because it's distracting me from some other problems. I need this game right now. Probably I'll finish tomorrow, and then get back to my Kirkus job, but I'm so glad to find this real adventure to play right at this time!
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