Murdered: Soul Suspect Design Review

Murdered: Soul suspect is a third person ghost game putting you in the shoes of ex-criminal now detective Ronan who is murdered in the opening cut scene in Salem Massachusetts. Now dead, Ronan must figure out how to stop the killer with the help of a teenage girl. Unsurprisingly this game has links to the infamous Salem Witch Trials. I've played the Blackwell games by Wadjet Eye Games and this game is quite similar although in this game.

What I liked:


Feels exactly like what a ghost game- The game's overall mechanics such as the ability to work through normal walls but not ghost walls, influence people to do things and even possess cats. It just feels right.
Solid voice acting- Very spot on solid voice acting.

What I didn't like:
Straightforward- The game is a bit too linear and straight forward. I realise this is a staple of the adventure genre but the puzzles and investigations were a bit too easy to solve. You just need to spot all the evidence and answer a simple quiz. Wasn't really challenging.

Very short- The game is very short and can be completed iin 5 to 6 hours.

Too many collectibles- You have these collectibles you can collect to get narrated ghost stories and if you miss one, you won't be able to get the story. And there are a lot of them! What's worse is that there is no radar and some are only available in missions so if you miss them you can't back for them!


Combat- Adequate but sort of pointless because you have to creep around and 'stealth kill' demons. If you get spotted you have to sprint away. Most other reviews mention this and it really is boring.

Map- This game lacks a map unless you pre-order. Which is silly. To be fair, the town area isn't big enough to really need a map and never really got lost but deliberately chopping off the map and making it 'pre-order' just doesn't sit right.




Lack of innovation-The problem is not what it does in my opinion, the problem is that it never truly expands on the gameplay to become something more. Both the Blackwell series and Episode 5 of Tales of Monkey Island where Guybrush gets turned into a zombie and ghost does more to push the ghost adventure game genre in terms of puzzles way more than this does. For example, why not have the ability to travel into the ghost past? Or have lots of interesting side quests?  It's strange to think that these two lower budget games can be compared favourable to a AAA game like this by a large corporate like Square Enix.

Conclusion
Overall I enjoyed Murdered Soul Suspect as I enjoy adventue games. Its an enjoyable interesting if straight forward adventure game and worth my time. Its worth a few bucks (like in the recent Square Enix Humble Bundle where I got it from) and its an interesting tale. I would love to see a real large ghost city where you play as a ghost detective and have to solve many more mysteries and side quests than the handful here. Unfortunately it didn't sell well so I doubt we'll get a straight sequel. Maybe someone might be able to make a spiritual sequel (pun totally intended).

Redshirt: Game Design Review

Red shirt is a game which crosses a parody of Facebook with Star Trek. You basically play a crew member, a red shirt that has to get off the station before a certain number of days elapses or else be killed in teh imminent disaster.

Many of the reviews I read mentioned the shallow gameplay and repetitiveness of the experience. After playing and finishing the game once through I have the same impression.

Too much text and information- The layout is immediately overwhelming and somehow very distracting. Because  The actual information relevant to gameplay is scattered around the entire screen and it doesn't feel correct. I feel that a cleaner more attractive interface would have made the game feel more exciting.

A good example is the screen giving information on your what happened while you are at work. There's a lot of information about what happeneed and what your workmates feel about you all squeezed into the side of the screen. In a game like this, all this information is required and important as it affects what actions you should take

Too shallow to be a social simulator but too long to be a parody- Playing a Paradox Interactive like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, is a complex game of social interactions, backstabbing and betrayals. These games are true strategy games which span generations and years. Unfortunately this game feel like it lacks the depth, content or reactions for that. There are lots of activities to partake to boost different stats but it all starts to blur a bit. Yes, there is some backstabbing and deaths when crew members get killed during missions but I soon got over them by working and buying stuff or making new friends. Despite having you work in the game, you can only interact on Spacebook so it doesn't really even feel like you're a crucial part of the space station.

This game is relatively long per play through. Personally I would have stopped playing after 1 hour but I thought I would at least try to finish one game properly. At the end of the game there are some stories to tell about how you pulled off some good strategy or managed to negotiate through a tricky situation. Because of the nature of redshirt, I just didn't feel invested in it as much as I would have liked to be. I didn't see any visual changes, just more text telling me I was getting better.

I feel that if it had taken a more roguelike approach like Strange Adventures in Space where games were meant to be finished in 20 minutes or less with funny and significant decisions rather than stretching each game out for so long I suspect it might actually be more fun.

Conclusion
I can't recommend Redshirt unfortunately, the social simulator part of this game is too shallow, the graphics make it too impersonal to really care and as a humourous take on Facebook, its way too long to be fun. You're probably better off just buying a Paradox Interactive game instead like Crusader Kings II or a Firaxis game like Civilization.

Clock Tower 2/Clock Tower Playstation: Game Design Review

Clock Tower 2 (Japanese name) or Clock Tower (US release) is an adventure horror point-and-click game for the Playstation. It's a sequel to the original Clock Tower on the SNES. The first game was not released for English speaking countries hence the slightly different title. As before, the scissorsman returns and this time you have to try and figure out how to stop him for good.

What  I liked
Sound- Once again sound plays an important part in the game and the disquiet and ambient noise only heightens the fear. Silence is just as important as noise.

Horror- Like in the first game, you can only run and hide and occasionally ambush the Scissorman. That's pretty much it.

What I didn't like

 Very short- The game can be finished in about 40 minutes if you know what you're doing.

3D graphics aren't particularly exciting- Unfortunately the graphics haven't aged well compared to the 2D sprites of the original SNES horror.

Missing a single item or item can change your entire game- A great deal of the problem with the game is just how Japanese it is in game design. Even missing a crucial item which isn't particular special can mean your entire game is screwed or changed. There are hints in the game you can find and they are useful during replays but the fact that you sometimes don't even know why you're getting a certain ending or what requirements need to be fulfilled to get a 'good' ending is very annoying.

For example at the start, if you want to play as Helen you have to talk to someone once, if you want to play as Jennifer you have to talk to the same person twice. This doesn't really make any gameplay sense. The dialogue itself isn't related to choosing a character, it's just a comment on the other characters. You'll only know this changes your character choice if you collect a hint at the beginning. The hint is viewable in the main menu not in game either so you can only see it if you quite the game!

Missing replayability- In the original Clocktower there was some replaybility as the story itself would randomise certain events and rooms. In this game, that has been pared down somewhat so replaying the first parts of the game are pretty much the same. It's only the last scenario that has any real changes and most of them are fairly minor.

Conclusion
Clocktower 2 is still a scary game and some real good atmosphere going. If you enjoyed slow Japanese horror, you should definitely try it out. If you don't already like the genre however I would recommend you play it once through and just check out some Youtube videos of the multiple endings.

Keepsake: Game Design Review

Keepsake is an adventure game where you play a girl who arrives at a magical academy for her first day only to find the academy mysteriously locked, closed and empty. It's up to you to figure out what's happening.

It's not really an inventory based game. It's closer to a collection of puzzles wrapped in a story. You do pick up a few items and need to solve puzzles to win some of the items but will automatically use them at appropriate moments.  The game has a good inbuilt hint system that starts off giving you vague hints and becomes more specific and will even solve the puzzles for you if necessary!

The game starts off well, with some good puzzles and an interesting plot. A lot reviewers commented on the second half of the game being as really bad. The puzzles in the second half aren't too difficult when it comes to figuring out what sort of puzzle it is, the problem is that they are just too complicated and tedious! The high difficulty is the only major complaint I have about this game.

Consider for example a puzzle where you have limited moves to get a puzzle piece across a grid. You know what you have to do to solve the puzzle by carefully rearranging and swapping certain pieces. However there are so many different pieces that the brain power required to solve the puzzle is simply too taxing for your average adventure gamer!

There's a particularly annoying garden puzzle where the switch  to change the seasons in the garden is 3 or 4 rooms away making the puzzle ways more annoying than necessary. If it just had a difficulty slider of some sort, it would have made the game much more fun. As it stands, the hint system helps negates the difficulty of the game since you can just by pass the harder puzzles.

The other minor complaints is the fairly short length of the game, voice acting could be better and the lack of characters in the game.

Overall I actually enjoyed the game. It is a fairly good adventure game and it would rank amongst one of the better efforts except for the annoying puzzles in the second half which completely ruin any sense of progression. Recommended, but only if you enjoy adventure games.

Black Mirror: Game Design Review

Black mirror has consistently received high praise and promised to be a horror adventure game . Sitting down to play however, I found it to quite disappointing. There are some spoilers in this design review so reader beware.

Good:
Graphics and atmosphere- The game is quite beautiful and has a good graphic style.

Good interface- If you've already looked at something and the description has already been read out and has no further use, it will not be selectable again. I quite like that system because it reduces red herrings and  lets the player know that the object is no longer necessary.  I quite like this system and I think a similar system should be adopted in most other adventure games.

Bad:
Terrible pacing and poor atmosphere that promises horror but never delivers - Terribly dragged out and nothing really horrifying happens in the game until about 80% way through. There's a lot of atmosphere and potential for atmosphere in the game considering Samuel is suppose to be the evil one. Yet aside from the strange dreams Samuel has and some death scenes, there wasn't really much horror in the game.

A key idea that the developers could really have developed would have been to have the supernatural slowly invade reality reflecting upon Gordon's slow mental breakdown. Perhaps create a few scenes where Gordon and the player are uncertain are even real yet have somehow impacted the real world. And then rather than claiming 'it was a magical family curse' all along, leave the ending somewhat ambigious. Perhaps the trauma of losing someone has caused Gordon to completely flip or have an ending where he either commmits suicide and redeems himself or ends up in an insane asylum.

Main character is unlikeable - Samuel Gordon seems boring but I suspect that it was a deliberate 'bored nobleman' persona. Bribery and throwing rank around seems to be one of the key character traits and is often available as a 'first solution' to many problems and puzzles. Samuel comes across as an uncaring aloof rich noble person with very little feelings of guilt on his actions. That being said, this contributes the boredom in the game.

I think there was an opportunity to create a complex character here but because of the lack of opportunities to showcase his more human and caring side; it is very difficult to like him. There just isn't a sense of empathy or tragedy surrounding him despite a tortured past. I think delving into his past a bit more and understanding what made him leave in the first place and turned him into such an angry person might have been better.

Bad puzzles and one dead end - Most of the puzzles are really boring. Mostly fetch quests where people just give you keys or items. There are also two puzzles requiring you to exit out of the game and try and find information on things in real life. The first is on the order of the planets of the solar system which is something which you can easily google or look up in a book and fairly obvious from the puzzle setup.

The second however, is the horoscope and requires to know the order which they appear in. The puzzle linked to this however is in the form of a sliding puzzle and it's difficult to know exactly the order of the horror scope. It's a real difficult puzzle as a result because nowhere does the game hint at the actual order.

Finally there is a dead end with a gun and a wolf which I found infuriating. I thought we had left out dead ends back in the early 90s?

Conclusion
Promising but never delivering on that promise or horror and action, Black mirror just isn't fun or interesting or atmospheric. I would personally avoid it and spend your money on some better adventure games like something from Telltale or AGS adventure games like the Blackwell Trilogy.

Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortal

Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortal is an adventure game by White Birds productions that was founded by the developers responsible for the critically acclaimed Amerzone and Syberia series.

Overall, it's actually relatively fun straight forward. Here are my impressions from a usability and design perspective

Way less pixel hunting and hotspot finding - Previous Games by studio founders such as Syberia had a problem where certain piles of rocks and debris which looked like background objects ended up concealing important items. Thankfully they seemed to have learnt their lesson. There are one or two situations like that but usually it's pretty obvious.

Story is interesting but the story is really a side story to the main plot - You play the son of Nikopol who has to save his father. Unless you've read the comics a lot of the motivations of the characters just aren't well explained especially what's happening in the middle and end of the story. How for example are the gods involved in this whole thing? How did Nikopol get possessed? Personally I strongly feel that a game should stand on its own two feet or be explained enough. It would have been better if the game was a retelling of the events of Nikopol or had come with the original comics it was based on. I have the Steam edition so not sure about the boxed edition.

Surprisingly short - Compared to some other adventure games, there are very few locations and the game can be finished in an afternoon.

One or two puzzles are a bit too complicated - One of the major puzzles is a rotation puzzle. You do know what you have to do but it's just really hard to figure out the exact steps. Unfortunately most gamers don't have time to sit there figuring it out so it would have been better if there was a difficulty slider for these  puzzles of some sort.

Conclusion
Overall, as long as you treat this as a side story to the game, it's not a bad game. I can understand where people thought it was a good adventure game but I'm surprised they gave a game with such glaring problems 8 or 9! Especially a game with such a confusing narrative if you weren't familiar with the source material!

Indigo Prophecy: Game Design Review

Indigo Prophecy is an action adventure game created by a French studio Quantic Dream that also made the well-received Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Indigo Prophecy tells the story of Lucas Kane who becomes possessed and murders a man. The game switches mostly between him and the detective's pursuing him. It is simply put a riveting and a must play game.

In retrospect and from a strictly interface and game design perspective, the interactivity is actually as minimalistic as any other adventure game, perhaps even more so than normal. Generally the interactivity is aroud Resident Evil level. In Indigo Prophecy, you can interact with only handful of objects and the game practically locks you in an area consisting of one or two rooms. Aside from one or two sequences, you really only need to combine object A with object B in most cases and this is very straight forward. It's pretty clear what you need to do most of them. Yet I (and many others) found it very enjoyable more so than many other games. The only difference from other action games is that being that the actions the player performs on the controller or keyboard are more related to what they see on screen. i.e pushing a door open requires to player to push the the joystick forward as if they were pushing the door open.

Reading the walkthrough after finishing the game, the game is extremely linear and while you can affect minor portions of the story, there are less than a handful of optional scenes you can unlock.

Upon reflection I wondered why exactly I and other reviewers enjoyed the game so much. How can a game which is so linear get such a high metacritic score? There are several very polished aspects of the game which I can identify.

Attention to detail - The rooms you walk around in aren't just boring corridors or generic rooms. The rooms give you clues and hints as to the lives of the people living in them. In other words atmosphere.

Easy to use interface - The interface is extremely easy to use and only requires several buttons. It almost never gets in the way of what you're trying to do.

Strong Storyline and good editing - Every single character you encounter and can talk with reveals something interesting about the game world or plays an important part in the story. Just as importantly the game is well-written and maintains good pacing.

Lack of interaction - As a player I was never really stuck in a location for long. In most cases the lack of things to do meant the action I did try would reveal to me more about the world or advance the story in some way. Most actions were significant in the sense that I was always uncovering information or advancing the plot. Lack of pixel hunting was a big thing for me.

Problems
There are however a number of glaring problems with the game.

Action sequences and mini-games - The main weakness of the game in my opinon were the quick time action sequences using the PAR system. Basically, during certain action sequences or mini-games you push the twin joysticks on your controller up down left or right as directed by the game. The actual onscreen action was really cool especially later on in the game with the matrix style action sequences but I felt it really disconnected me from the game. Here are a couple of examples: There is a morgue sequence in the game where Carla observes the coroner examine the body, you have to press the sequences in order for Carla to understand what the coroner is saying. Completely immersion breaking in this case, what does pressing the up down left right have to do with understanding the coroner's medical terms? Maybe a better way would have been a dialogue where you question the coroner based on wounds you find on the body or something like that or where you have to manipulate tools and the corpse to get the answer.

Another example are the vision sequences where you see through the eyes of one of the other characters in the game. As before you have to follow the onscreen instructions which have absolutely no bearing on the dialogue heavy vision sequences. It would have been better instead to actually take control of the other character or have some sort of puzzle sequence where you have to figure the order of the dialogue or piece together the evidence in a logical fashion.

So what would be a good action sequence in contrast? Well one game sequence that I thought was done really well in the game was a scene in which the female detective enters the police department archives but suffers from claustrophobia and you slowly and carefully have to go through the archives and solve a puzzle by moving some shelves. The game switches to first person perspective You can hear her breath as she gets more tense and while walking have to carefully reduce her fear through button presses. I have to say it was an extremely effective sequence despite the fact that nothing really happened. It really conveyed the sense of helplessness in a very effective way. This was repeated in an asylum later in the game which really upped the ante and was just as terrifying. More so because you were trapped with insane patients.


Lack of interaction - Despite saying lack of interaction helped the game I also believe lack of interaction is also one of the the game's minor but glaring weakness. This isn't so much a problem during timed scenes or action sequences such as the opening scene where you have to race around doing things but during the normal exploration sequences, I don't understand why there couldn't be more interaction, more chatting and more things to do in these slow paced areas. I would have to liked to be more of a detective and investigate but the exploration bits really start to decrease the further you go into the game which is a shame really.

Linearity - I really enjoyed the story but I was expecting major multiple plots depending on who you sided with. As it turns out there really aren't multiple plots to the game. Just one over arching plot with very minor details changed as a result of your actions. I think its better to have a well-polished well written character drivenlinear adventure game like this rather than a adventure with plenty of plotlines but lack of focus. Still I hope that future games by Quantic will capitalise upon this basic formula and create games which do have major diverging plots in the gameplay and therefore more replayability. Unfortunately the most recent game by Quantic, Heavy Rain, as I understand still suffers from this problem.

Overall I enjoyed it and any story driven action gamer or adventure gamer will enjoy this.

Jolly Rover - Game Review

Good game and nearly all of my comments are exactly the problems raised in this article by the Adventure Gamer's review so this is more of a short game review than a game design review.

There really only two issues I have with the game that I would like to add:

Artwork palette is dull - It needs brighter colours or a more unique artstyle and direction. Any screenshot of the game just lacks punch which is unfortunately.

Spot highlighting system doesn't quite work sometimes - Highlighting hotspots is a good idea unfortunatly some of the larger items have one or more part to them so you might click on one part of it without realising you can actually click on another part of it. There aren't that many items which have this problem but it is worth mentioning because there are some items you need to interact with to advance the game.

Overall I enjoyed the game despite its short length. It's well put together and fun.

The Path: Game Design Review

The Path is a horror which I recently mentioned in my recent games are art guest post which I found I hadn't yet reviewed!

So here's my impression of The Path. I'm a bit divided over whether to recommend the game. let me explain why.

Design wise the first problem with the game is that it doesn't tell you how to accomplish the 'goal'. Now I had read about the game before hand in the reviews and knew that I had to leave the Path to truly experience the game. The first time I chose a character, I spent about 40 minutes trying to figure out what to do. I knew I had to wander off the path but I didn't realise what to do to trigger the 'bad' endings.

Finally I figured out that to do this you have to go to a location and NOT move for several seconds to interact with your character's personal 'wolf'. Of course, this required lots of unlearning as most games will have an 'action' button to allow you to interact with objects in the environment but the game never explicitly tells you to NOT move. I wasted nearly an hour on this. Once I figured that out, progress was fairly quick.

Every girls losing' story goes like this:
1) You wander off the path
2) You can visit or discover various significant important places (this is optional)
3) You have to meet your personal wolf
4) You awaken just in front of grandma's house tired and go through grandma's house, what you see depends on how many optional places you discovered.
5) The girl meets defeat.

The entire game is metaphorical and atmospheric and well crafted in that respect. However, aside from the annoying 'not moving' learning issue which I think really needs to be explained better, the game part of this game is a bit too easy and not very exciting at all. It feels more like a collection of short horror mini-episodes combined with a bit of item hunting then a proper game. Rather than exploring possibilities, there is really only one 'Path' in the game.

From a gaming critic's point of view the atmosphere is top notch,the sound and graphics convey exactly the way it should be on the other hand I feel that the artistic nature almost feels like a step back in many ways. No real dialogue, implied characterisation, spooky effects and a distinct lack of interaction.

As a gamer, rather than revelling the interactive nature of the game medium it seems to try and live up to the expectations of the 'art world' rather than trying to aspire and utilise the best tools of the medium (interactivity). I think games like Gabriel Knight, American Mcgee's Alice, Grim Fandango, Indigo Prophecy, the Thief series and the Resident Evil service do the genre a better service in this respect.

For me The Path although good in some respects feels like a warning sign to game developers: "Don't try to live up to art for the sake of art". Otherwise, what you get is a game with good animation, good atmosphere but limited shallow gameplay. Weighing your other available games, the normal price of The Path of $10 seems quite expensive for a game you could finish in less than 3 hours compared to other horror games like Amensia: The Dark Descent.

I have also played the other two games by the creators; The Graveyard and Fatale and they pretty much suffer from the same problem as this game. I'll probably go into detail into them in follow up post.

Sam & Max + Strong Collection on Sale

There's a sale going down at Telltale games where you can get Strong Bad + All 3 Seasons of Sam & Max for.

If you already own them you can also get 3 seasons of Sam & Max for $20 or each season pack for just $9.95.

Really good bargain for those adventure game lovers!

I already own Sam & Max Season 1 on DVD and Strongbad so I'm probably going to purchase the 3 season pack to complete my collection. Although I think I'll be able to hold out for a Christmas sale or something. Maybe...

Tales of Monkey Island Season 1 Review

I grabbed the entire season on the $5 special and managed to play through the entire season in about a week or so.

Overall I quite like the new season. For me, although I played the first Monkey Island when I was ten, I didn't really understand what I was doing (I used a hint book I borrowed from my cousin) nor the funny dialogue except for the sword insult fighting. So I replayed the first monkey island about a year back and played and finished the second after I did that. Monkey Island 2 in particularly seemed way hard than 1 and completely sucked the joy out of the game for me in many ways.

Is the humour of the new series comparable to the first two games? I think the tone of the games has changed a little from the original but overall it delivers the same sort of feel I got from the original games. I think the easier difficultly also made the game much more accessible and enjoyable for me.

The very awkward controls which have been covered enough by most reviewers so I'm not going to say too much about them.

Anyway, here's a short summary of what I thought of each episode (some minor spoilers):
Episode 1: Solid intro the series. Travelling around the jungle was a annoying. Overall okay but not great.

Episode 2: Disappointing episode compared to the rest. The siege itself was broken fairly easily. I was hoping for more excitement, more explosions and puzzles. The intro to Episode 2 sets up Morgan LeFlay as a major rival but she only makes an appearance at the beginning, in a number of cutscenes taking place in different locations from Guybrush and the end of the game. I think plot wise there could have been more interaction between her and Guybrush to make it more interesting.

Episode 3: Now this is what turned a solid series into an excellent series for me. Completely new location, new characters, Murray the talking demonic skull, interesting fresh puzzles and just overall more punch and interactio, especially the rivalry between Morgan and Guybrush.

Episode 4: A very fun episode would have been as good as episode 3 if not for the fact that you are back on the Flotsam island in the exact same environments again. Sigh. I also think the court room sequence could have been done in a more Phoenix Wright style to spice it up a bit. Otherwise it's pretty much a standard talking sequence in a single room. I actually quite enjoyed the maze sequences in this one and its a good example of mazes done right.

Episode 5: Overall good solid ending to the series. Reviewers commented that walking to each location when portals were open was annoying and I have to agree. Lots of good puzzles and overall solid ending very enjoyable but ends on a bit of a cliff hanger and lots of loose ends. Also, I think the underworld could have been a bit more interesting and detailed similar to Grim Fandango.

Overall

Overall a solid adventure game series which I enjoyed. As mentioned earlier, environments are a bit too repetitive and I personally think that Telltale seasons at 5 episodes a season is too short.

My favourite episodes in order of ranking are:
Episode 3 and 5 tied
Episode 4
Episode 1
Episode 2

If you're an adventure gamer I'm sure you'll be pleased. I bought it at US$5 and I certainly got my money's worth. I say a fair price would be around US$15.

I can't wait for Season 2!. It just can't come soon enough!

Tales of Monkey Island: Only US$4.95 until Monday

A great deal for those adventure lovers, to celebrate the 'Talk like a pirate' day Tales of Monkey Island is now going for only 4.95 US. Check it out here! This weekend only!

Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Series

Just finished all five episodes of Strong Bad and thought I would share what I thought of them. This is the second Telltale series I've played, the first being Sam & Max Season 1 which I also finished.

Strongbad's Free Episode
Just something worth mentioning, I've never spent any amount of time with Homestar Runner so I had no understanding of who all the characters were except for Strongbad who I knew as the main character. My first game was Episode 4 Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective which was made free for a limited time. Unfortunately this epiode featured Strongbad making a spy movie further confusing me as to who the characters really were as they sometimes referred to themselves as the characters in the movie and sometimes as themselves. I've not watched spy movies either so a great number of jokes and references were not clear to me.

I don't think Episode 4 was a good introduction to the world or characters as a result and I think its something they should have thought of before using as a promotional episode to entice potential buyers to purchase the game. It made me somewhat reluctant to purchase the series even when presented at US$5 at the recent special.

My second episode however was Episode 5: 8 Bit is Enough which was made free for one day only and that really saved my opinion of Strongbad particularly as I'm a retro gamer and really understood lots of references being made. It remains my favourite episode out of the entire season.

Good
Mini-game with every game - Each game also had a simple retro style game which is funny.
Fairly clever and funny puzzles - Most of the puzzles are your usual quite interesting and I personally found the to be pitched at the right level.

Bad
Doesn't take advantage of the PC format to deliver better art direction - This is clearly a design choice but comparing this to Sam & Max's art direction, Strong Bad's creators seem content to simply create and realise their flash drawings in 3D. There is definitely a certain minimalistic charm to it but I feel they could have aimed higher or otherwise included more content in the game to make up for that. Take for example, Episode 3's map and film narrations everytime you conquered another 'land' or Episode 5's 8 bit environments patterned after various period in computer gaming history. more of these additional parodies could have made the game feel more exciting especially as Strong Bad normally walks around the exact same major areas in each episode. The main areas being his neighbourhood which unfortunately mimics the American suburban landscape.
Some secrets and clothes are time locked and you can only get them at certain times forcing you to replay the entire episode to get them - I don't think this is a good way of increasing replayability and it's even more annoying as some of these secrets require you to perform actions such as using two completely unrelated items together.
Game script needs even more optional jokes and funny sayings similar to Time Gentlemen Please! by Zombie Cow where nearly single combination of items will elicit some of clever response by the characters.
Requiring online verification could pose a problem for those without internet connections.

Conclusion
Overall, its a solid entrance into the adventure game market and if you're already a fan of Strongbad and the Homestar Runner series by all means buy it. The Strong Bad games are actually very well done and logical and I've actually had a great deal of fun. It originally retailed at $US30 Short length of each episode makes me feel that US$30 isn't enough. I bought it at at US$5 special and it was certainly worth the laughs but I don't think you should be paying more than say US$15 for the entire season.

Enter the Story: Les Miserables

Enter the Story: Les Miserables is now free! Looks interesting. Check it for free here. You can read a review of it here.

Syberia Collector's Edition Review

Pro's
Amazing Artwork
Good plot
Good characters
Fairly good voicework

Con's
Syberia 1 itself was fairly short and you really need Syberia II for the story to finish it properly
Some puzzles are way to hard
Puzzles are uninteresting
Doesn't take advantage of the unique mechanical theme to deliver true mechanical puzzles.
Pixel hunting problems particularly
Kate can't 'teleport' to different locations

My overall impression:
I was very impressed with the artwork, character and plot which were all tightly woven into the story. Unfortunately what let me down was the actual gameplay/puzzle part. Puzzles are either very simple or just perplexing. When combined with the fact that some hot spots blend in a bit too well with the background art it make them rather poor. Why didn't they create some really cool self-contained mechanical puzzles like The Incredible Machine? I'm really not sure.

Also you can't skip to locations and have to slowly wait for Kate to run or walk back to where you want to go.

About the 'Collector's Edition'
Surprisingly there aren't many reviews on what the Collector's edition is. Well, the collector's edition itself combines the adventures on a single DVD and includes a making of video. That's it. The case itself is made of paper as well. Overall it just feels more like 'Syberia Budget Edition' rather than something to be called the 'Collector's Edition'. It is priced as a budget title but I was hoping for something more. Maybe a compilation of artwork or something or even just additional wallpapers on the DVD?

Personally, you may as well buy Syberia 1 and Syberia from GOG.com because at the very least you can get some better extras like the soundtrack.

I do recommend that the adventure gamer buys it because it is still awesome story but the poor puzzles make me rate this entire adventure a 6.5/10.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth Review

A spin-off of the main Phoenix Wright series, Ace Attorney Investigations places you in the shoes of Phoenix Wright's counterpart Miles Edgeworth to investigate and solve a number of mysteries. If you liked the Phoenix Wright series then by all means get this. If you didn't it won't change your mind.

Two criticisms come to mind when I play this which I think can be applied all of the series.
1) Doesn't really make use of DS touch screen features in investigation. What happened to using the microphone to blow away dust and using the touch screen to run tests?
2) No extras after you complete the game. Not even a picture gallery!
3) No real courtroom scenes

Still it is fun and the characters are just as loveable.

Tex Murphy 1 + 2 Free for a limited time

GOG is currently offering Tex Murphy 1 + 2 for free. until 24th Dec or a special alternative gift if you've already purchased the game. You just need to register for GOG to download it.

Time Gentlemen Please

Time Gentlemen Please an indie adventure game is now only half price (about $NZ3.60) so if you love funny adventure comedy games, buy it now! Don't forget to follow the instructions and put in the code! It's only half price until Modern Warfare 2 comes out.

The Shivah - Free for a limited time

The Shivah, an adventure game where you play a Jewish rabbi to uncover a murder mystery is now available at Wadjet Eye Games for free for a limited time! If you're an adventure game fan, definitely get it. Its slightly under 90MB and features full voice acting (I think). It's good fun and apparently made quite a splash in 2006 when it was released.

Nethernet Officially Dead

The Nethernet is finally dead as proclaimed on the official site.