Broken Age: Act 1 Reviews
For any fan of classic adventure games, playing Broken Age will be like wrapping yourself in a big, comfy blanket made of pointing, clicking, and a whole lot of laughs.
Broken Age is a unique game. It's made directly for and on the demand of a very specific audience, rather than for any publisher. In some ways it's surprising that - despite being traditional - it doesn't feel like a Lucasarts game. That's likely what backers wanted, and whilst those elements are there, this is a Double Fine game to the final letter. It's gentle, loving, and fun; not a Grim Fandango rehash, but the gaming equivalent of a petting a kitten. If your eyes are not welling up with sheer joy at such a thought, then perhaps Broken Age is not for you. For everyone else, it's probably already in your Steam library anyway.
Broken Age: Act I is a two-pronged success: it's a vintage Schafer adventure with a meta layer that comments on the game's crowdfunded roots.
Broken Age: Act 1 may be overly traditional, but it possesses plenty of artistry and charm that players will love.
Beautiful art style, well rounded characters, familiar humour, and heart. At first glance, Broken Age is a visually stunning, polished homage to the adventure games of the past. But it's over all too quickly, without enough challenges to satisfy, or enough innovations to drive the genre forward.
[W]e wholeheartedly recommend that fans of any form of fantasy storytelling, especially those who are fans of Pendleton Ward's style (who actually is part of the cast), must play Broken Age: Act 1. We have a good feeling that if Double Fine held off for just another year, the full version of Broken Age would have easily been a nominee for game of the year.
Still, a big part of me wishes I'd waited for Act II and played Broken Age in its uninterrupted entirety. It's smart to always leave the audience wanting more, but when a book is snapped shut in the middle of a story, there's a danger of the reader getting his fingers pinched. And mine, frankly, feel a little bit sore.
Broken Age is silky smooth, deliciously humorous, visually stunning and completely delightful.
Broken Age: Act 1 is all about the slow build. Slow isn't boring, however, and a wonderful job is done of carefully constructing the pace while keeping the audience amused. It's a strong start that concludes in a way that makes me desperate for more.
Whimsical, witty, and beautiful: this is a sumptuous adventure with all of Double Fine's usual care and attention lovingly lavished throughout.
If the first act truly is half of the game, there is some reasonable concern that Act 2 might need to be considerably longer to resolve everything without resorting to an overly-expository info dump.
Broken Age is charming, attractive, funny, and all-around entertaining. For fans of adventure games, it leaves little to be desired short of its second act. If that meets the standard set by the currently playable bit, Double Fine looks to have dropped a classic in its wake. Regardless, the experience of Act 1 is enough to recommend outright — don't hesitate to add this title to your library.
There will be some who perceive the game's specific design decisions as flaws, and they aren't necessarily wrong, but they were likely never going to enjoy Broken Age anyways. Broken Age falls into a very specific genre, one that rarely gets much attention anymore, and makes a strong case for why it should.
In terms of making people want to play because it looks beautiful and strange, rather than because it's an adventure game. Unfortunately the latter creates huge expectations, an albatross they hung around their own neck.
Indie studio's massive crowd-funding campaign results in a very enjoyable – if perhaps overly easy – point-and-click adventure game
You'll find a lot to like in Broken Age. It has a beautiful world populated by a colorful cast of characters and an alluring mystery that doesn't unfold in the way you expect it to. This is Double Fine Productions at its finest, and it's on track to finish strong with Act 2.
Not the revival of the classic Lucasarts form some would hope, but a great first instalment all the same.
Broken Age does a fine job of creating an outlandish world populated by interesting characters, but is let-down somewhat by its core gameplay. The style and story are both very strong and will draw you into the game; sadly however, adventure games are generally concerned with puzzle solving, and the puzzles found in Broken Age just don't test your little grey cells as much as one would like. They are logical and integrated into the game very well, but there is very little challenge to them. Hopefully, this is down to the game looking to get progressively harder as it goes on and Act 2 will be more challenging. As it is, Act 1 feels a little light.
Adjust your Grim Fandango-fueled expectations and you'll delight in Broken Age: Act One's brief glimmers of story and puzzle genius.
The Broken Age will win you over in minutes, and what it lacks in length or difficulty it makes up for in pure personality. From talking Spoons to a guru who makes people remove vowels from their names in order to attain true lighten-ness, it's a weird world, and you'll feel part of it in way we haven't seen since the lost age of adventure games.