Gray Matter 7: Review

Yes! Jane Jensen is back! Although it's only about half as long, if that, of her classic Gabriel Knight games, Gray Matter has the intrigue, the gameplay and especially the storyline to immerse players once again into a Jane Jensen world.

This time her world is mostly Oxford, England, with Samantha, a multi-pierced, hardbitten refugee from America’s foster care program.  Samantha makes what living she can as a street magician, although she has an ambition to perform at the mysterious Daedalus Club in London, a mecca for professional magicians. Samantha’s clunker motorcycle breaks down in a thunderstorm just outside a looming mansion, Dread House, where she witnesses a girl who claims to be the “new assistant” run off. Samantha steps into her place and winds up sleeping in a luxurious bedroom, with a job.

Ah, but the job is the problem. The other major character that players will control is David, an embittered neurobiologist who lost his wife in a fiery accident two years earlier. Scarred from the accident and in constant mourning, David doesn’t like to leave the house where he works on experiments that he hopes might allow him somehow to connect to his dead wife’s spirit. He demands that Samantha recruit six students as guinea pigs in his psi experiment.

And that is the player’s first major task. Samantha uses her magic tricks to convince the students, a ploy she’ll rely on for the rest of the game. Playing David, meanwhile, follows more conventional inventory-based play.


But while puzzles are fun, it's the story that really shines.

The Story, the Story, the Story

As usual in a Jane Jensen game, it’s the increasingly sophisticated  and constantly intriguing story that keeps us playing. You may be surprised. It isn’t your usual of-course-it’s-all-psi plot (although it may turn out to be just that--or not). Jensen juxtaposes the skepticism of the girl magician with the (oddly) more credulous scientist. She builds these two characters, especially Sam, with some real depth. One simple answer just doesn’t apply to either. Plus, the six students, although one-dimensional, and a few other characters provide some nice suspects in the unfolding mystery.

While plenty of suspense abounds in the game, I found Jensen’s handling of the psi-or-tricks issue most intriguing. She gives strong support for skepticism while allowing plenty of leeway for psi. I doubt that devotees of either position will be disappointed, Jensen handles both possibilities with respect.

These characters keep us interested in their fate. Sam has serious never-say-die spunk, although I wondered how she could possibly be comfortable in her tight-tight-tight clothes. David, with his Phantom-of-the-Opera mask, easily could become a bit difficult for players to take with his constant moaning over his dead wife, except that Bernd Reheuser, who voices the character, delivers a magnificent performance, turning maudlin moans into heartfelt pain. But David is an adult, a rare character type in video games, and his trip outside in one of his chapters also gives us the best scenery in the game.

The apparently all-German voice cast actually does an excellent job, hitting the various English accents with enough plausibility for most American players, at least. Daniela Better-Koch voices Samantha nicely, although her performance pales next to Reheuser’s. It was a pleasure to play a game that didn’t make me wince at the voice performances.

Gameplay

Yet the game is short, perhaps about ten hours. That’s OK. We definitely get enough interesting play to make it worth the money. But after the GK series I certainly expected to spend much more time with it. I note that although it was published in 2011, the game takes place in 2008, reflecting the difficulties Jensen had in finding a reliable distributor.

Puzzles tend to be inventory based, although Jensen adds a unique twist with Samantha’s magic tricks. These have a bit of a learning curve (compounded for me when I couldn’t get the necessary magic book’s pages to turn), but once you learn how the tricks work, it isn’t too difficult to do them. Two or three could be learned for use with suitable victims outside the game. Samantha also has riddles to solve for the Daedalus club, and these are fun and eminently solvable, although the solutions are divided across different chapters.

I found David’s shorter chapters to be much the easier of the two characters, perhaps because Samantha has more to do with her Daedalus riddles. David seems to be mostly filling out the backstory, while Samantha advances the current mystery.

However, Jane gives us another magnificent game toward the end of the adventure. She invents an elaborate multi-layered puzzle in the basement of the Daedalus Club that will challenge, but probably not defeat, most players who keep their eyes open and their observations sharp. That puzzle alone makes up for the sluggishness of the game. It’s worth the price of admission.

Glitches

Although this is an easy game by classic adventuring standards, if you miss just the wrong item you can find yourself in trouble. I managed to put the lie to the manual’s assertion that missing an object cannot end your game. I found, or rather, I didn’t find, one object that’s essential to finish a chapter. When I went back and got the item, I still couldn’t advance because I’d already completed a conversation that contains the trigger to one of the plot threads, and could not re-enter that conversation to get the trigger. Gulp. Two attempts, following good walkthroughs, to pick up the action failed. I had to start the chapter over.

However, that was the only major glitch I found. Well, that and the infernal slowness of the game. Yes, I played on a computer that met only the minimum requirements of the game: Vista with 1 gig of RAM. However, the game should have played far more rapidly. Samantha especially seemed to move as though she were underwater. It was maddening at first, although I got used to it. Even double clicking to start a character running worked sluggishly. Samantha would run for a step or two after multiple clicks, then lapse back into her usual slow pace, although David usually responded more quickly. I’m certain the sluggishness added an hour or two to gameplay.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Artwork, especially in a lovely park, just stuns. Marvelous pastel drawings pull us in. Dread House looks good, as does what we get to see of Oxford. We get graphic-novel style cutscenes between chapters, reminiscent of the all-cartoon first Gabriel Knight game, The Sins of the Fathers.

Jensen gives players an optional brief tutorial at the beginning of the first chapter and that helps, as managing that inventory system is not self-evident. We have to make items active before we can use them, a step I sometimes forgot to some frustration in the heat of finishing the game. Most items disappear once they’re no longer needed, but it takes some time to scroll through the icons and then remember that there’s an extra step required to select the one you need before you can use it. Really, simpler systems have existed for many years.

Jensen divides each chapter into five or six different threads, each with points to earn, as in the GK series. Players can view the chart of their progress in each chapter at any time, and can access the map to jump to different locations as soon as they acquire the map. Once players complete all necessary actions in a chapter, the game advances.

Robert Hughes again does the music, and again, the music is wonderful. I’m sure I detected a reprise of some well-known and loved GK themes, especially in the final major puzzle.

A Winner: A-minus

Well, what else can we expect from Jensen but a winner? It’s possible that this game will help bring adventures back into popularity. The easy puzzles don’t hurt, as they allow more players to enjoy the game without major frustration.

Yes, the major flaws are the game’s sluggishness and the overly complicated inventory system, but we easily forget those when we get caught up in the story, the story, the story. That’s always been Jensen’s greatest strength, and once again she doesn’t disappoint. Gray Matter definitely belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting adventurer, and on the shelves of many new to the genre as well.

It’s absorbing, sophisticated, and just a whole lotta great fun.

Gray Matter 6: Finished!

Done!


Yes, that last puzzle is master-level stuff. Although much of it is just wandering around amid highly imaginative scenery until you find the right stuff, the mirror maze takes some figurin'. It's the only place in the game that I had to take brief notes. You do have to figure that out by yourself, but it's doable and has quite a surprise when you solve it. Mostly, though, the clues you get for the rest of the three-part (with subparts) puzzle are good.


Update: (Hmmm. Just checked the WTs--after I finished--for the mirror maze. There is something that didn't register with me. The clue works, but I found another way through--and not by luck. However, had I registered the clue I wouldn't have needed my notes.)


But HA! I figured out a Jane Jensen mega-puzzle without a WT, and that's always something to crow about.


I enjoyed the ending. Some reviews say that it's too brief and didn't explain everything. I was quite satisfied with it, and I thought it did explain everything, although some of the explanation relied on inference.


I will not reveal if my earlier speculations were correct or not. Play the game and find out for yourself.


All in all, highly satisfying. Lovely game, if too short and waaaay too slow, but the story is up to Jensen's usual standards. I will grind out a review in a day or two. Gonna be a good one with some quibbles.


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Gray Matter 5: Endgame? Already?

Short game. I've advanced to the last chapter already. It only has three threads, but I've read that the endgame is more difficult than the rest of the game. The Gabriel Knight endgames all involved action sequences, some of which were quite challenging. I expect the same here.


But first, I must say that the "C Railer Swoll" riddle was an anagram, but a devious one. Solvable, but when I couldn't do it with an anagram solver I was a bit lost for awhile. Hint: try stuff related to Alice in Wonderland (duh!).


David's Chapter 7 was far too short. Only got stuck once there, in the "lab" thread. But as that thread is all confined to the labs, it isn't too tough to click on everything and find the action item. The only real difficulty is figuring out how to manipulate the items on the computer you need to examine. The other threads were cinches, but they were interesting and I must say that it had a very nice cutscene at the end.


So, now we have Sam in Chapter 8, at the Daedelus Club in London, suffering misunderstandings. She and David still think all the incidents on campus were caused by trickery. The question is, whodunit? (Ah, but we know by now that it all was really psi!--don't we?)


However, for whatever reason, my game has slowed to a glacial pace. I exited and will get back into it, hoping that it will reopen back in its usual merely slow pace. Even with only three threads, this chapter probably will take quite some time to solve. We have to tie up all the plot threads, get David (I expect) reunited with his dead wife, get Sam situated somehow, and discover the culprit who's been spying on David and, perhaps inadvertently, causing all the psi stuff (I know! I know!). Then there's that malevolent force . . .


So, let's see if I know . . .


Update: Oh freakin' wow! I have entered a master-level puzzle in the basement of the Daedalus Club. Oh yeah, this is gonna take some time. Looks like it'll be well worth it though!


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Gray Matter 4: Time for Alice

Hooray! I did David's Day 5 almost without putting a foot wrong! Now I'm working on the Alice-in-Wonderland riddle for Sam in Day 6. But first, Day 5.


I remain impressed with the actor. Also, the artwork in this chapter is just spectacular. So far David's chapters are cakewalks, while Sam's are much more challenging, even though there usually are enough clues to send you to the next location in the thread. What's becoming very nice about this game is the same thing that was nice about the GK series: despite good puzzles and top-notch adventuring, the main attraction is the story. I'm really getting into the story now.


More ghostly activity happens in Day 5. Also, David remains absurdly morose three years after his wife's death. My prediction: David will die in the end so he can be with Laura. Most likely he'll sacrifice himself to save Sam from something, because we now know there's a malevolent force at work. I think Laura is either trying to warn David or she's trying to clue him in to the fact that she was murdered. But there's clearly someone with evil intent toward David, and we had a major clue in Day 5 that it's female. So that narrows it down to either Helena or Angela. Me, I'm thinking it's Angela, because she'd be more likely to have supernatural powers.


I really like what the game's doing with the fact that the scientist is the believer, and the street girl is the skeptic. Role reversals can be fun. The modern skepticism movement started with magicians. They know there is nothing paranormal because they know all the tricks. It was Houdini who started exposing mediums. They couldn't fool him for an instant. James Randi, a magician, allying with Carl Sagan and other scientists started the current movement.


It's pretty clear that the solution isn't going to be trickery here. This is a game, after all. Sam will become a True Believer. Still, I love it that the game is highlighting trickery.


I'm closing in on the "C Railer Swoll" Alice-in-Wonderland riddle. I know it's an anagram, but even using an anagram solver doesn't generate anything that makes sense. I've collected all the "pieces of gold" and have solved the rebus puzzle and I know what the next location is. Going there next. Because this really is a quite easy game (unless you miss something crucial), the solution may pop out at me once I get there. Onward!


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Gray Matter 3: Oopsies

Oh dear.


The Gray Matter manual says don't worry, you can't screw up your game by missing something.


Well, yeah, you can.


The thing I missed was right at the beginning of Day Four. I didn't pick up the newspaper in the kitchen. The newspaper is on the kitchen counter. If you take Sam to the kitchen, she'll talk to the cook and tell her she's going straight to Oxford and doesn't want breakfast.


There is a newspaper sitting on the counter. It is light gray. So is the counter. It's hard to see.

And the newspaper didn't even have a cat on it

I grant you, I did look at the newspaper at the beginning of Day Two. So I should have known to look for it again, right? Yes, but it's been several real days since I did that. When Sam said she was going straight to Oxford, that's where I went.


In other words, I did a stupid thing.


And yes, if you don't look at that newspaper, you can't finish Day Four, even if you go back and find it later. Period. End of discussion. Here's why:


The newspaper is a trigger for Sam to learn a new name--someone she's supposed to interview as part of her investigation. Without the newspaper you can do the Daedalus riddle, and you can do the section in the Neurology Dept. But without the newspaper, you won't trigger a discussion with Mephistopheles in the magic shop that sets up most of Sam's investigation. It starts the section "There's a plant in the house." When you leave the shop, one of the students films you in the street.


I went to the magic shop. I talked with Mephistopheles. But he didn't say anything about that thread. I bought magic stuff. I found the new riddle. I left the shop. The student filmed me.


When I realized the massive extent of my stuckness and decided I had to revisit all the hot spots last night, I didn't find the newspaper because it didn't occur to me to go back to Dread House. My bad, absolutely. But it turned out that my only 99% retrace wasn't the problem.


At that point I went to two WTs, which demonstrated the extent of my problem. I went back to the kitchen and read the paper.  That did trigger the interview, but nothing else.


I'd already been to the magic shop, you see. Going back didn't trigger any further discussion with Mephistopheles, so I still didn't get the trigger for the rest of the "plant in the house" thread.


I spent far too much time slogging (very slowly) up and down the corridors of the St. Edmunds dorm. You're supposed to talk to the proctors on floors two and three, but Sam always said "I don't need to talk to him now." The newspaper trigger leads to the Mephistopheles trigger. Without that, you don't have a "plant in the house" thread, and you cannot do more than half the chapter, with no remedy possible.

Moral: save early, save often (fortunately, I did).

Anyway, I started the entire chapter over, read the dratted newspaper, and everything's working fine now. It was actually rather amazing to see how much is left out without that trigger. It's also interesting to see that the game specifically guides you through the chapter, pretty much telling you where to go next.

Very interesting chapter. If you get the trigger. Again, I will check this out tonight to be absolutely sure that it's a design problem. I think lots of folks are going to miss that newspaper. Just sayin'.

I'm going to check this out again, because I still have that saved game and I don't want to accuse Jane Jensen, of all people, of faulty game design. If I'm right, then this indeed is a game design problem. Because everything hinges on finding that newspaper, the game shouldn't have let me out of the house until I found it. It doesn't have to prompt the trigger directly, by, say, having Sam say "Gee, I outta read the newpaper." She could just say, "I can't leave yet." Just limit the playing area until the player has found that crucial trigger.


People are going to be stupid sometimes. When we are stupid, we ought to pay by having major stucknesses. However, being occasionally stupid should not ruin the rest of the game. Stop stupid players like me not from stuckness, but from game-ending blunders. (I'm betting that none of the game's beta testers were as stupid as I was, so they didn't find the problem.)


Update: I checked back and still couldn't get the game to advance. However, I am by this time heartily sick of this chapter. I'll check back again with a couple of WTs later on to be absolutely sure I'm accusing the game rightly. I want to be wrong, but I'll wait till I've finished before trying it all again (I'm having too much fun playing again).


Up-Update: A second check following both WTs again resulted in no progress. Here's what happened: I had the crucial conversation with Mephistopheles before I found the newspaper, so I didn't trip the branch in that conversation tree that triggers the "Plants" thread. And yes, it is unfixable. Mephistopheles won't talk to me again, so I really could not complete the "Plants" thread. Only solution: start the chapter over.


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Gray Matter 2: Detective Work

Fun continues in Day Four. Spent Day Three with David, whom I enjoyed playing lots. Yes, the voice indeed is too old for the avatar, but I understand why they cast the guy anyway--he's excellent. Way good enough to overcome that little inconsistency. The character morosely mourns his dead wife and is trying to reach her ghost, whom he thinks is trying to contact him. That means that he's got abundant lines sighing about this and that item that reminds him of her. Tough acting job, but this guy convinces us that he really feels these emotions. It's probably the best voice acting I've heard in a game.


As to gameplay, fun happens in adventures especially when you hit a stuckness but find your own way out. That happened three times on Day Three, but the first time I got lucky and just happened to try a hot spot I was near, and presto! Got a little scene.


The second stuckness was much worse, and I think was intended to be. You have to find five items. The first four are lead-pipe cinches. The fifth one isn't difficult to find, but you have to refine the search with a multi-layered puzzle.


I overcame the third stuckness by just doing some classic adventuring: go around and click on every freakin' hot spot you can find. Fortunately, I started with one that made sense and presto! Day Three ended and I switched over to Sam again.


So now I'm in Oxford with Sam, investigating why odd psi stuff is happening. I've made some progress in the investigation and in Sam's latest riddle: Sam wants to get to the Daedelus Club in London--a mecca for magicians. She finds riddles from the club that involve visiting locations in Oxford, solving simple puzzles and finding items. Sam and I already solved the first riddle--easy stuff, except that I went crazy by not seeing an obvious thing in the last part of it. Easy puzzle unless you don't use your eyes. Still, I finally saw the last clue and everything came together. Very easy puzzle.


This second riddle is a bit different. The first riddle spelled out the next location you need to access all along the trail. This riddle makes you investigate that too.


Also, the other two plot threads I'm following have stalled.


So tonight I will revert to classic adventuring: I'm going to every location and hitting every hot spot, no matter how trivial it may seem. That will break me out of it.


In the meantime, I am so enjoying playing a new, quality adventure! Yay!


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Gray Matter 1: New or Nostalgia?

At last, finally, I have dug a hole into my time and can play the game we've all been waiting for from the great Jane Jensen: Gray Matter. Didn't know how much I'd missed her stuff! First though, the technical preliminaries.


Task Number One: getting the game to run at all.


I just managed to get all three of the Gabriel Knight games to run on my newly acquired vintage IBM Thinkpad running Win98SE, yet am having trouble running this brand new one on my Dad's Vista machine. It's supposed to run on XP, but it won't "initialize" in my Virtual PC (first time I've seen that problem and I don't know what to do about it). So, the Vista machine it is.


It does run, but this PC has the bare minimum requirements for the game. This is one power-hungry adventure. Main character Sam does everything so slowly it's like she's underwater. Also, Sam is a street magician, and her magic tricks are an essential part of the gameplay. I had trouble with them because I couldn't turn the page in the magic book, a necessary step. Went to a WT just for that and learned that perhaps I was leaving out a step (one not mentioned in the manual), but I also turned off some Vista stuff to free up more RAM. Whichever one worked, finally I'm able to just barely get through that magic book. (Update: it was the RAM, not leaving out a step. I've done plenty of tricks since without that step, and the pages turn, but with difficulty.)


So, all those frustrations aside, I'm now used to the glacial pace and am enjoying the game. So far the puzzles--except for those first magic tricks--aren't terribly tough. Actually the magic isn't all that difficult, you just have to get used to the procedures for doing the tricks. You can see all the hot spots in each scene by hitting the space bar, although I'm not sure that's good adventuring! Great for beginners though. The voice acting is quite good, although Sam could step it up just a notch. David is terrific so far, except that his voice sounds far too old for his avatar, who appears to be in his 30s.


But there's a good in-game tutorial, which is necessary because the controls are a bit more complicated than I'd like, although once you get used to them they're fine. The graphics are excellent, although I'm not sure I really like the comic-book cutscenes. Oddly, The Lost Crown's grayscale looks more realistic than these nicely rendered full-color pastel drawings.


My first impression of the game is that it seems to throw a bit of homage to Gabriel Knight 1: The Sins of the Fathers, from waaaay back in 1993. It has that comic book style, the character's talking heads appear in a dialogue box on the bottom of the screen, and the main character (Samantha, so far) has the same kind of rebelliousness as old Gabriel. No midi music though. Jensen's husband Robert Hughes did the music and as always, it's excellent. Other similarities to the GK games are playing two characters, a rogue and a scholarly type, and a point system. So, although this is a new game, it's a bit nostalgic for me.


At any rate, I've finished Day One and appear to have gathered in most of the points available. Think I'll do a bit more tonight.


On Tuesday, I may just drop into Best Buy and pick up a couple of gigs of RAM. Dad's 'puter needs it anyway, and I suspect it'll make the game run much better. Meanwhile, I'll slog on. Good thing adventures are slow games!


But golly, it feels good to play a new, top-of-the-line adventure again!


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