It is at once the South Park game we've been waiting for since the series started 17 years ago, and a cluster of stupid mistakes and bad balancing that we'd hoped Obsidian had put behind them.
[I]t is a beautiful-looking and well-written game, in a way that adventures far too rarely see. It's a game that proves to me that I'm right to demand so much more from point-n-clickers that get eulogised despite their enormous flaws. It has restored my faith that the genre deserves high expectations, even if it occasionally fails to meet them. And it's a long, detailed chunk of hefty sci-fi, with some careful character work.
I had hoped that Act 2 would be the addressing of Act 1's shortcomings, and deliver on its strengths, what had seemed so heartfelt and novel. Instead it's an incredibly pretty, superbly voice acted, crap adventure game.
It's very simple to complete, and your interaction with the world is fairly primitive. And yes, sliding tile puzzles. But it also has a deeper story and much darker tone than you'd expect from the casual market... I rather enjoyed it.
It is, however, probably the most aesthetically beautiful game I've seen, and I can genuinely recommend it on that basis alone. The rest of the game, it's sombre tale, is well worth hearing, and some of the puzzles are really splendid. But every time you walk out of a door and see the vista spread before you, it's an effort not to gasp.
Chapter 2 is a big step up from the already decent Chapter 1, and delivers lots of rewarding answers on the plot, while introducing enough to make the final chapter worth waiting for, however long that wait might be.
It's beautiful, no doubt. The pixel art is wonderful, and the soundtrack is splendid. Looking at just the screenshots, I'd be reaching for my wallet. But the core game is just so tedious. By the fifth chapter, you're literally wandering through near-identical scenes of desert, and at this point I'm honestly wondering if maybe this is the point?
Moebius is an utter disaster of a game. An entirely unlikeable or vacuous cast, a contempt for women like I've never seen, and indeed almost equal contempt for men, gibberish puzzles, ghastly animation, flawed conceits, the stupidest plot idea I can remember, and the whole thing scored with lift music. It's as if the moustache puzzle from Gabriel Knight 3 got an agent, and a starring role as an entire game.
Hatred fails in every way. It fails to be a fun, entertaining game. It fails to be a technically competent release. And most of all, it fails to be a controversial, shocking experience.
So it's such a galling shame that the game lets itself down so badly. A collection of poor puzzles is frustrating (one in particular required me to email the developer to get past), but forgivable in this lovely daft genre.
Oscura is probably a good fun platform game with little originality, underneath its frustrations. But just now, those frustrations are covering it up too well.
If you're looking for a game to soothe your twelve-week-old snot-ridden baby to sleep at 5.30am, I can recommend nothing more highly. My boy stared at it like it was made of magic, and eventually drifted to blissful sleep. It's hard to deny this biases my opinion of the game quite significantly.
It's only £4, and I'm in no doubt that what felt to me like a cynical result didn't come from a cynical place. My guess is it came from too small an idea, too ambiguously delivered, created with a passion that doesn't reach the player.
It's enormously clever, and very often inspired in how it delivers this cleverness. But for me it was simply too fast, too busy stumbling over itself to do the next even more difficult thing, that it forgot to ensure I'd fathomed the previous.
It's such a colossal shame, but I am certain not one that should put you off playing Mind. The puzzles are genuinely great, and it's just so unrelentingly eye-warmingly beautiful, that it wins out. As visual, explorable art, it's masterful. As a puzzle game, it's rewarding and taxing. As a narrative, it's a car driving into a lake. But in this case, two out of three is really rather good.
Icons on the minimap don't match those on the main map. Characters piss mid-conversation. The jump barely functions. There's just nothing redeemable here. Frankly, it's damned rude to release a game in this state.
The story is a touch blandly presented, but hardly an important factor in the scheme of the game. It's completely novel, and that's a rare thing to say about any game, and even rarer to conclude it succeeds in its originality.
There is definitely a lot to be said for using adventure games to explore more mundane events. They don't all need a murder, or a ghost, or a time travelling robot. But I would argue they do need something more than real estate.
Take your time, play with the flora and fauna (although be careful, it's not all friendly), search out the gems (some are cunningly hidden), and enjoy taking your time. This isn't a game to rush, but to wobbily savour.
It is, it has to be said, okay. Quite good. Not that bad. Horrid words to give a nice game, but true all the same.