Broken Age Reviews
Broken Age is a shining example of the point-and click adventure genre, and is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. The gameplay delivers on a tried and tested recipe and while it doesn't take any risks, the rewards are in the story, visuals and voice-acting. The pastel-style imagery and playful characters are truly memorable, and the stellar voice-cast deliver a script full of laugh-out-loud moments. Another Tim Schafer classic.
Broken Age is a faithful callback to the Golden Age of point-and-click adventures. While this holds in back in some respects, the game was a joy to play with fun puzzles and a captivating story.
Puzzle solutions are always a few short minutes away and long gone are the genre's nonsensical conundrums that have plagued gamers for years.
An adventure game with warmth, humour and heart, Broken Age is a joy from beginning to (almost) end. Easily among Double Fine's best.
By the end of Shay and Vella's stories, I may have had a tear slide down my cheek. It was not a tear of sadness, but of joy.
I said at the end of my act one write-up that I could see Broken Age being the game that defines Double Fine. I still think that to be true, but unfortunately, it isn't as glamorous an image as I had first imagined it to be.
But a really, really pride-inducing 5/10
All in all, Broken Age is a fun, well-executed adventure game with a gripping storyline and tons of humor, marred only by its cumbersome puzzle design.
A beautiful, charming and often funny adventure with lovable and believable characters. The gameplay, however, can be a little repetitive, but as a whole, Broken Age is a love letter to point and click fans and an artistic triumph.
Everything about Broken Age should have been fantastic but the lack of puzzles and a lame plot that edges too heavy on the exposition turns this into a decent, but extremely disappointing package.
Against all odds, Broken Age has proved to us that adventure games are all but dead, and that Double Fine and Tim Schafer still have the ability to surprise, astound, and humor us.
Broken Age: The Complete Adventure is a Double Fine title unlike anything before it. While it has its problems and inconsistencies, it's worth playing through once just to see Shay and Vella overcome the odds.
Broken Age is exactly what Schafer fans expect, which makes it an automatic success. The creativity and imagination is here in spades, the strict adventure style is prominent throughout (and it doesn't deviate; there are no ill-inspired action sequences, for instance), and that atmosphere and charm ties it all together. You could say some of the puzzles get a little tiresome and the lack of direction is annoying at times.
Tim Schafer's warm, humanist adventure is a game of two halves, but its triumphs outweigh the flaws.
I don't regret contributing to this journey in the least, and frankly, I feel like the first half of Broken Age is very much worth experiencing. And that's how I'll rate it—as an excellent first half with a middling second half. What a shame.
Despite long stretches of anger-inducing logic in Act II, Broken Age as a whole is a poignant and clever adventure game that is worth playing through, even if it never lives up to the promise of its midpoint.
Despite the large wart that some of the more hardcore puzzles present, however, Broken Age remains a beautiful game, overall. Yes, it has its blemishes and frustrating personality flaws. Deep inside, though, Broken Age is a good guy — or girl — with its heart in the right place. Give it a shot if you like classic point-and-click adventure games.
Clever, funny, and beautiful to look at, but this is a game of two halves and the second one is such a peculiar tonal shift in terms of gameplay that even the story suffers as a result.
The usual point-and-click caveats are present here: some puzzles are so obvious as to feel like filler material, one or two so esoteric as to drive the player to frustration. The division of Shay and Vella's worlds can sometimes make what is actually a sizeable game feel artificially constricted, particularly in the first act. But these are minor quibbles compared to the mix of delight and unease that a playthrough of Broken Age evokes.
Though there were plenty of puzzles with outlandish solutions that left me unimpressed by their logic, my grousing never caused me to lose sight of the fact that "Broken Age's" esprit is charming enough that I could imagine returning to it again.