The Big Adventure Playthrough - MISSION COMPLETE

[Ben X]

Grim Fandango - I decided to play the remastered edition this time, and I'd recommend playing the original via SCUMMVM for anyone new to the game who is willing to put in the effort. I had to put the character rendering back to original mode anyway because when you put super-sharp hi-res models on top of the old backgrounds, suddenly the backgrounds look really crappy. With the old pixelly models next to them, they look nice and crisp and detailed! That fixed, everything looks lovely and the art design is great. Especially next to an abomination like Sanitarium. I also went back to tank controls because I was finding the camera-relative controls a bit confusing for some reason, perhaps because I've played the original version so many times, so that's both the big selling points of the remaster null and void for me. Sadly, they also brightened the backgrounds up, reduced the contrast, which lets you see more detail but flattens them out a fair bit. The new music also gets a bit overcooked at times, they put too many new horns in and it gets overbearing, and  the new bits of live music recording don't sound that much better to my ears. Mostly in the cutscenes where you only have an overall volume setting rather than the discrete voice/music/sfx ones. There are a couple of other little annoyances with the remaster, like how they've slapped UI on top of certain views when the entire design is based around having no UI at all (except dialogue trees - they never solved that one), and even diegetic UIs like Don's computer display look worse. I swear the remaster is buggier than the original was (or even is via SCUMMVM now), too, with more weird navigation and music bugs, stuff like that. So the only benefit is the special features, which you can probably find elsewhere (the commentary is half interesting half waffle, the concept art is gorgeous, and iirc the making-of doc is good too).
Anyway, the game itself is still great. Really funny, well acted, great writing, music is gorgeous. I always forget how huge it is, it's very impressive. Also how tough the puzzles can get! It's not that they're unfair exactly, but certain information only gets conveyed once or has to be inferred. It probably reaches the same height of difficulty as MI2. I've played through this game many times and I still can't just solve it on autopilot like I can with DOTT, S&M etc. It's fun how after Year 2 it goes back into smaller chunks again, and lets you manipulate and destroy loads of big stuff. They really make use of the 3D. There are a few more puzzles with fairly ropey signposting and even some locations which are hard to notice in those later sections, though. A few more lines of dialogue could have fixed them, bit of a shame. It does stay great all the way up to the end, though, and that finale where they have a great big action sequence jumping over rooftops but then pare it down to just a greenhouse in a meadow of flowers against a night sky is masterful.
Excellent game, the only issues are some dodgy signposting and some bugginess which may or may not be Remastered edition only. I'd actually be very interested to see a remake of this where they recreate it in Unreal 5 or whatever so the entire thing is super hi-def and all proper 3D lighting and effects and stuff, but they make it as faithful as possible to the original.

[Ben X]

Nelly Cootalot in Spoonbeaks Ahoy - a game by now-famous-ish Alasdair Beckett-King! I tried the freeware version and it still looks great (possibly even better than the HD version, with its big chunky fuzzy lines) but there were too many quirks running it on Win11 so I've plumped for the HD version with ABK voice acting turned off. He's done a really good job of uprezzing it while retaining the charm. The animation is a bit smoother and so looks a little more Flash-y, but it's barely noticeable. Regardless of version, though, it's still instantly charming and funny and really well presented (outside of a bit of AGS glitchiness). Just a lovely chill sweet little game.

It was actually a bit longer than I remembered, really nicely structured to keep widening out a little bit more. Fun and funny all the way through too, puzzles are clever but not too difficult. Except one last one where you have a Full Throttle-y magnet control pad puzzle thing and it's a bit irritating, but I just fluked it in the end!

It's very good and I really hope the sequel isn't shit.

 

Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! are classics, obv.

 

Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures - I was surprised to discover that this series may be, of what I've played, the best thing Telltale ever made! Or right up there, anyway. They've got the feel and presentation of it pitch perfect, the models have little sockets in the pupils and fingerprints in the clay and stuff, the music's great, there's lots of little gags and references to past adventures strewn around, and the little Britain atmosphere is just right. It's really fun padding around as Gromit, frowning at stuff. Two tiny quibbles are that it's a shame they couldn't get Peter Sallis in and the soundalike they got is 90% there but not 'Marty soundalike' level (he was at 100% by Vengeance Most Fowl, I thought), and that they've lowered the frame rate for facial animations to match the original stop-motion which is a great idea but they've taken it a little too far and it looks a little jerky now.

The puzzles are good fun and quite inventive (fittingly), but surprisingly tough! I kind of assumed these would be aimed at a younger audience and relatively easy, but I didn't breeze through it. The boss fights were really good as well, and again very W&G. Funny writing too, and they got all the little things right like doing the VO in England and doing the music with live instruments. Seems like Aardman was fairly heavily involved as well, judging from the credits. Two more tiny quibbles are that the signposting is sometimes a little obtuse (the usual one-click Telltale issue exacerbated by controlling a mute dog!) and there was some minor glitchiness (camera switches acting a bit odd, mostly). The biggest compliment I can pay to these is that they really do feel like they could be one of the (good) shorts.

It does take a bit of a dip in episode 3 (of 4). The presentation is still charming and funny, but clearly their monthly schedule started catching up with them as there are a lot more bugs present, and the puzzle design is lazier - a lot of riddles and sliding tile puzzles. Worst is the signposting is a lot weaker, so I often wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing or what my options were. For the first time with this series I resorted to a walkthrough, partly because one puzzle was a 'you have three golf clubs and two starting positions, and each combination has a different effect, and you need to get the effects in order' thing that I couldn't be bothered to get a notepad out for, and partly because a combination of bugs and bad signposting made it very unclear what club-swapping I could and couldn't do, what was and wasn't having an effect etc. Even after I'd used the walkthrough to get through a section there were a couple of puzzles that I didn't understand the logic for. Half the puzzles were still fun, though - I really enjoyed getting a golfball to the right hole by putting an address sticker on it and whacking it into a postbox!

So, bit of a shame, but episode 4 was really good again! Perhaps a tiny bit easy, but it did ramp up a little as it went and had a fun 'murder mystery' structure where you had to find a motive, weapon and witness for someone getting bonked lightly on the head.
A hidden gem, my most exciting first time play in this playthrough! I'd love to see Skunkape remaster these to get them looking at least up to Wrong Trousers standard.

[brkl]

I remember enjoying Grand Adventures way back. Bought it again for a few bucks from a Steam sale. Maybe I'll play it again one day. I was amused seeing Wallace's voice actor was the same in the film, which is really good too. Better than anything since A Close Shave.

[brkl]

I kept thinking they used a similar police station in the new film as in the game, and I was wrong, but it speaks to how credible and fitting the little world in Telltale's game was.

[Ben X]

Ha, yes, I was watching Vengeance Most Fowl hoping to see some shared world with the games!

 

The Walking Dead S1 & S2 - I previously gave up on this series very early, about halfway through S1E2. I guessed the twist immediately, but apart from that I can't remember exactly what it was that turned me off. I remember being frustrated at my choices not reflecting the subsequent character action (that video game classic), and maybe also what would become the Telltale standard of 'visual novel interspersed with perfunctory adventure game puzzles', but I wanted to give it another go.
Season 1 definitely looks nice and the presentation is slicker and more cinematic than the previous Telltale games. It also has good acting, generally good writing. The comic-style engine works nicely. There's some minor jank but at a level to be expected from an AA indie. But those design issues that I previously bumped up against are definitely still there. Regarding the branching, I saw Sean Vanaman say in an interview one time that the fact that the game let you choose something, even if it has no effect, is the important thing; the game doesn't seem to agree! It opens with a big title card telling you how your choices matter and the game will change due to them, and it's constantly giving you "[character] will remember that" notifications. But I don't agree either - this game leans a lot more towards visual novel than point and click adventure, and in those games branching is key otherwise you're just clicking through a book. Having a line of dialogue change slightly depending on a choice you made here and there doesn't really cut it - and even then it gets stuff wrong a fair amount. It has that theme park ride feel, where you're funnelled along, you get told which characters to talk to and when, and occasionally something scary pops out at you. Plus the aforementioned choice/result discrepancies, the infuriating QTEs, and the way that there's urgency in every single conversation you have but when you're in a danger situation suddenly the game comes to a halt and refuses to continue until you get through some mundane, pared down linear puzzle. And to top it all off, it ends with a 'Next Episode On' which I'm not sure if I'm safe to quit out of without losing game data so I just have to mute and look away from! 
However, I tried to accept the game for what it is and get further along, and by the end of episode 3 I was starting to be won over. There's lots of cool ideas and moments, and I genuinely like Clem and Lee and have opinions on the other characters (even if some of them are cartoons whom I'm happy to kill as soon as I get the chance). It's just, there always feels like this big disconnect between what I want to do and what I can do or what happens. Plus a lot of the puzzle stuff is really fiddly and out of place old-school adventure game stuff (like - get this train carriage uncoupled, there are three tools a minute's walk and ten mouse clicks away and you can only carry one, so the solution is... just walk back and forth trying each one until you get it).
I was definitely enjoying it more by the end. I don't know if they were doing less of the annoying stuff or I was just getting used to it or better at navigating it as quickly as possible, but it distracted me less from the storytelling. I was really involved, every death and decision was gut-wrenching.

With Season 2 I was more enthusiastic to get into it, but had a similar arc as with the first season! It very much has the same issues, especially the QTEs which are just such a shit execution of the idea I cannot believe they haven't done anything about it. Same with the way they constantly ask you to walk a character down a path but then have the path askew to the camera so you have to keep tapping the character to the side every few steps. How did someone not immediately say "this is shit, just make it so the camera always lines up so all they have to do is hold down W"? It made a big deal of keeping my S1 savegame and then wiped the slate clean as quickly as possible, which I thought was pretty funny. Otherwise, the same 'theme park ride' feel and disconnect between what I want to do and what happens.
But it is nicely presented and at least just lets you flow through it for an hour or so then ends. I was initially planning to take a break between episodes, but I actually ended up playing the next two episodes immediately - it's pretty addictive! If they could just fix the QTEs and stop constantly pretending that my choices are doing much, it'd be amazing. I like that they're flexing a little now, too, with a different commissioned song over the credits of each episode, and relatively big name VAs like Michael Madsen and Kumail Nanjiani. I'm thinking about why I've enjoyed TWD more than The Wolf Among Us, and I think it's really down to the basic zombie apocalypse setting being perfectly suited to this structure. Or rather, they developed this structure for this setting, and applying it to different IPs and story types without changing it just doesn't work. The regular life or death decisions and simple moral or pragmatic choices of a zombiepocalypse are at just the right pitch for these games. (I found out later that TWAU underwent massive rewrites after the success of TWD to make it more like that game.)
Again, by episode 3 I was engrossed. Also, I swear they make the QTEs less annoying as a season goes on, but maybe that's because I'm more willing to put up with them in the same way that I blank out the 'X will remember' stuff after a while.
I've never cried playing these games (I guess I might have done in S1 if I hadn't known exactly what was going to happen), but I did well up at one line of dialogue in this season. Just a totally inconspicuous, basic line, something like "You don't have anything to apologise for, I know you didn't mean it", but the great acting and all the character investment from the surrounding scene and episode and season(s), suddenly made this older-than-her-years kid comforting a broken man so powerful. There really is some very good writing and acting in these games, and the direction and animation and stuff can often overcome the technical and budgetary limitations to do some really nice stuff.
After playing, I put season 3 on my wishlist and messaged Nick on his Discord to let him know how much I enjoyed the season, so clearly I was won over! I was thinking while playing season 2 how it'd be great to follow Clem through her whole life as she becomes different zombpocalypse archetypes - the kickass loner who helps out some folks against a threat and then disappears off into the wilderness (will she be a benevolent Mad Max type or more of a Shane?); the barricaded community leader (will she be a peaceful democratic type who inevitably loses to chaos, or a benevolent dictator who turns into a Sadistic Asshole Community Leader?); maybe she tries to find a cure at one point, maybe she does her own Lone Wolf And Cub thing except now she's the Lee/Logan/Mando/Theo Faron type (will she live or die?). They'd have to change things up a bit each time, I don't think I'd want 4 more seasons of the exact same thing, but it would have been incredibly cool if they pulled it off.

[Ben X]

Broken Age - I backed the Kickstarter, so this is my second playthrough. The writing is really strong, of course, but I'd forgotten how gentle this game is, especially at the start, and that includes the puzzles. It's not as exciting a replay as other Schafer adventures. I didn't mind the first half being easy when I first played, as I was enjoying the world(s) so much, but it's a little more noticeable on replay when you know exactly what's happening. I guess part of it is that the story revolves around two kids breaking out of a gentle, cloying routine, so the opening sections mirror that. You're not kicking down doors and smashing people's faces into bars or whatever.

I still really enjoyed part 2 again, though, the build up of puzzles is really nice, it has a perfect oscillation of gaining new goals and finding their solutions. Plus, having all the different characters getting mashed up in different combinations and locations is really cool, bolstered with a load of story reveals.
The ending does feel a little abrupt - might have been nice for the villains to play more of an active role, and perhaps for Shay and Vella to get to do some more awesome stuff too (they were getting the massive ships to fire death rays and grabbers and stuff but again it felt a little indirect) - but a lot of the wrap-up is built-in already and any loose ends are tied up with the credits illustrations, so overall I think it's a cute, tidy way to finish it.
Also would have liked a 'look at' function just to get more Tim Schafer writing in there, but never mind. Overall, looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous, loads of interesting characters and locations, and fun satisfying puzzles. It's not up there with DOTT, FT and GF, and it's hard to rate it separate from my experience as a backer with all the prior knowledge and everything, but it's definitely one of the better adventure games I've played.

[Ben X]

Metal Dead - this was great! For the first half I had it pegged as light fun, a mild recommendation, but it keeps escalating (literally, with a neat 'keep getting access to higher floors in the skyscraper' structure) and including so many fun and exciting moments that by the end I was loving it and gutted that the more ambitious sequel seems to have puttered out ten years ago. Very funny, lots of cool low-fi action, a funny/helpful response for everything. It's actually very Ben There, Dan That: scratchy black outline art; black-on-red stylised opening titles; zombies; two bantering Spaced-ish best mates. Also, it's made in AGS and went for the same control scheme/UI set-up. Not that I think they ripped us off or anything, it's just got the same vibe and presumably shared influences.
A few little annoyances: it doesn't have a fullscreen option, and they made the odd choice to put black bars at the top and bottom of the 4:3 screen, so it's postage-stamped on my telly; it has enforced achievement pop-ups, which I find a little irritating on principal but at least it's all within the game's artstyle rather than a Steam overlay; early on it has you pick up your friend's decapitated zombie head, which becomes a permanent UI fixture for you to talk to and get advice from at any point, which is a nice Dan-style-sidekick idea, except the game explicitly labels him "Hint System" which suddenly makes it feel very clunky and unwelcome.
It's weird going back to this retro level of adventure game as well - no VO or even hotspot labels. But that stuff's fine as long as the writing and design is good, which it is - I chuckled a lot, and paused on a few puzzles without getting utterly stuck. The presentation's nice as well, with DooM '93 pastiche heavy metal and a fun Shaun Of The Dead style opening where you're in a car barrelling down the empty motorway as your friend mows down the occasional zombie just to watch them splatter over your windscreen.
Recommend picking it up if you ever have the itch for a few hours of BTDT style fun.

[Ben X]

Life Is Strange
Thoughts after playing chapter 1:
Really enjoyed it. Such a breath of fresh air after Borderlands to have something where I'm in control most of the time, there's actually some sort of mechanic there, and I actually give a shit about what's happening. I'm already totally invested in the characters and the mystery. It's a little clunky in places, painfully sincere and hipsterish, but that fits perfectly with these 18 year old art students. The writing is fairly subtle, and where it isn't then it still feels like it's the 18 year olds being cringey or the tone being slightly heightened and Twin Peaksy. And seeing a montage that felt more like Magnolia than Smokin' Aces was, again, very gratifying.
Only a couple of small negatives for me.
Firstly, it could do with more detailed and expressive character models - they give the whole thing a bit of a painterly look which helps cover stuff up but the faces are all pretty low-res and static, and no hair physics, which is all a real shame when it's such an emotion-centric story and you spend so much of it looking at people's faces. I'd love to see a very subtle remaster of this that just fixes these issues. (I found out soon after that there actually was a remaster done a few years ago, and it looks terrible. Glad I didn't get forced by corporate fuckery to play that version.)
Secondly, the time-rewind puzzles can be a little fiddly. A lot of the time they're really satisfying and fun, but a couple of times I was irritated, especially when there was an element that didn't get tutorialised till later but was kind of necessary to understand at that point, or the boundaries weren't communicated completely clearly.
I'm not convinced right now that it branches any more than a Telltale game (although there were some decisions that I totally bypassed because I didn't bother to look in a certain spot, which is quite cool - apparently I failed to save a bird's life, no idea where that was!), but perhaps stuff will snowball later. I'm hoping the town setting with its reusable settings and cast will help there - easier to spend budget on branching that way.
Really, the best review I can give is that I want to play the second episode right away.

Thoughts after finishing:
On the whole I really enjoyed this. It does enough to hide the fact that it's basically just a fancy visual novel, the time puzzles are often fun and cool, the story is perfect Twin Peaks/Donnie Darko pastiche, the branching has at least some heft to it (a few big options and lots of little ones, plus puzzles with multiple solutions), and I cared about the characters. I found myself laughing along with them when they poked fun at each other, rather than laughing with the writers.
There were a few flaws aside from the stuff I mentioned previously. Though most characters looked fairly different, three of the teen girls had very similar, almost bland faces. The clothing and hair has to do a lot of heavy lifting in differentiating them (plus, to be fair, the writing and acting). There is the occasional lack of polish - how soon you get a hint, or how far back you have to keep rewinding, or dialogue playing just as you're about to do something and getting cut off - though nothing major. And the ending was a little bit of a let down - the murder mystery gets solved around the end of 4/start of 5 and then it pretty much moves on to dealing with the time travel stuff and gets trippy, which is a good choice, but the trippy bit indulgently goes on too long (a real shame, the sequence would have been super-effective if every moment was cut in half), it has an annoying stealth section which, even though you can save-scum through it using your powers, is exactly what I don't want to be doing at the climax of this game, and it eventually gives in and does that 'vignettes on floating platforms in an empty space' thing from every game dream sequence ever.
And then the story ends too ambiguously and, though this may be due to branching stuff, abruptly for my tastes. They don't explain or resolve the time power stuff and they never address the possible romance between Max and Chloe which seemed to me like the third pillar of the story! By the end of it, I was starting to wonder if I'd imagined that element, especially as apparently a large majority of players got Max to kiss some boy near the end of it.
It wasn't awful or anything, it just didn't measure up to the highs of the rest of the game. And, hey, maybe the sequels will solve this stuff. Much like with TWD, I'd gladly play more, and if I get through this backlog and they show up on sale I'll likely grab them. Overall: clunky in places, but wonderful.

[BigJKO]

On 1/29/2025 at 1:48 PM, Ben X said:

There's lots of cool ideas and moments, and I genuinely like Clem and Lee and have opinions on the other characters (even if some of them are cartoons whom I'm happy to kill as soon as I get the chance).

 

Even our very own Doug Tabacco?! #SaveDoug

[Ben X]

Ha ha, if I recall correctly I liked Doug and decided to save him but was scuppered by the UI and accidentally saved the other person instead, so poor old Doug got munched.

 

Speaking of TWD, I played S3 and also really enjoyed it but with the nagging feeling that it was just more of the same and the hope that they mixed it up a bit for S4.

[Ben X]

The Preposterous Awesomeness of Everything - very funny! An early game by Joe Richardson who does those Terry Gilliam animation style adventure games, with a similar photomontage style. I really enjoyed the Orwellian allegory and the presentation was really striking and full of fun details. It's basically a Garden Of Eden type set-up where people quickly start wearing clothes and voting between two near-identical candidates for a PM (Project Manager) to build them a rocket to escape their planet. I will say, it is a bit of a shame that it's all a little clunky UI-wise and while the puzzles aren't really meant to be challenging (which works fine here) a couple of them are a bit shitty. You do have a hint character for most of the time, though, so I never got bogged down. It's also a shame that big blocks of text in pop-up windows are used for most of the satire and that there's no speech, as delivering more of the satire via dialogue would have helped, I think. But overall I laughed a lot, and it reminded me a lot of my Twine/Cwine game 'The Often-Ending Story' (which I originally wrote for the Idle Thumbs newspaper!) in that it's a satire where you have no idea where it's going to go next or when you're going to get a funny death (and then plonked back to a reasonable restart point).

 

Sidenote: apparently this features a cameo by PewDiePie (I suppose comprising wholly of a mangled up photo as one character's face and maybe a couple of grunts). This was released in 2016, which I feel like was probably at a point when PDP's awfulness was broadly known and Richardson should have known better, but maybe I'm wrong on that. Plus apparently once he saw the game PDP stopped returning Richardson's emails, so that's pretty funny.

[BigJKO]

On 09/02/2025 at 6:14 PM, Ben X said:

The Preposterous Awesomeness of Everything - very funny! An early game by Joe Richardson who does those Terry Gilliam animation style adventure games, with a similar photomontage style. I really enjoyed the Orwellian allegory and the presentation was really striking and full of fun details. It's basically a Garden Of Eden type set-up where people quickly start wearing clothes and voting between two near-identical candidates for a PM (Project Manager) to build them a rocket to escape their planet. I will say, it is a bit of a shame that it's all a little clunky UI-wise and while the puzzles aren't really meant to be challenging (which works fine here) a couple of them are a bit shitty. You do have a hint character for most of the time, though, so I never got bogged down. It's also a shame that big blocks of text in pop-up windows are used for most of the satire and that there's no speech, as delivering more of the satire via dialogue would have helped, I think. But overall I laughed a lot, and it reminded me a lot of my Twine/Cwine game 'The Often-Ending Story' (which I originally wrote for the Idle Thumbs newspaper!) in that it's a satire where you have no idea where it's going to go next or when you're going to get a funny death (and then plonked back to a reasonable restart point).

 

Sidenote: apparently this features a cameo by PewDiePie (I suppose comprising wholly of a mangled up photo as one character's face and maybe a couple of grunts). This was released in 2016, which I feel like was probably at a point when PDP's awfulness was broadly known and Richardson should have known better, but maybe I'm wrong on that. Plus apparently once he saw the game PDP stopped returning Richardson's emails, so that's pretty funny.

oh nice, I’ve been following the development of his latest game not even knowing he’d made similar games before. His newest one is out now, by the way: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1739900/Death_of_the_Reprobate/

[Ben X]

Already on my playlist along with The Procession To Calvary, ta!
And in fact, I just played through Four Last Things (the first in his Gilliamy trilogy) in a single sitting and really enjoyed it. It's very funny, it looks lovely (obviously the classical art helps, but it's all well chosen and composed and animated) and the puzzle difficulty is well-pitched. It's just a nice fun hour or two wandering around a rambunctious medieval town and getting up to mischief. The storytelling is, again, really on point. The only negative I had was that I had to check a walkthrough due to a couple of poorly signposted elements (there's no hotspot highlighter and the density of the art means that occasionally you can miss that a door or person is interactive) and a couple of irritating timed puzzles. I definitely recommend the game, but I also recommend checking a walkthrough (or a hint guide if you can find one) if you've been stuck for more than a few minutes! Depending on your view of game pricing, though, you may want to wait for a sale as it's £8 and fairly short.

[Lechimp]

Yeah, I had a good time with Four Last Things too. Haven't played the sequels yet

[Ben X]

Minor self-correction: Death Of The Reprobate is on my wishlist, but I don't own it so it's not part of this backlog-buster!

 

And on a similar note, I played Life Is Strange S2 episode 1, only to realise that I don't own the rest of the season! I wish Steam made that stuff clearer but I guess that's one way to trick you into getting invested and buying the rest. It's currently £25 for the other 4 episodes, so I won't be breaking my backlog-buster rules to get them, but I was tempted, as the first episode was really good.

 

The storytelling is great, strong direction and voice acting, and the user interface is really slick - just nice little things like being able to fiddle with stuff on your desk while Skyping your friend, that kind of thing, all really intuitive and detailed. The story is cool, too. Feels a little more X-Men than the first one, but I'm glad they went with different characters and stuff. I'd be assuming it's only a spiritual sequel, an anthology thing, if it weren't for the fact that it asked me about decisions I made in the first game. Well, 'decision' singular, actually, which was pretty funny - the impact of all my decisions through that whole game can be summed up in one question! 
As with the first one, though, the character faces are really plain and under-animated, it's so weird. It's almost like playing with Barbie dolls.

It definitely felt less cheesy than the first one - playing a Latino kid in the US in October 2016 gives it a little more heft, with old text messages as people got bummed out about the election, or making all the 'right' decisions when you're on the run not to shoplift and still getting in trouble because rednecks assume you did anyway and make comments about building the wall. Plus you spend a lot of time outside, rather than walking around dorms, and it all looks really nice and feels expansive; I'm sure there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, but it's very effective at making you feel like you could wander anywhere and maybe get lost in the woods. It kept all the good stuff, though - it's really nice to be back in that LiS vibe, where you can choose to sit and chill looking at clouds with your brother and just let that roll for as long as you want, and getting the main musical motif on the score every now and again. The only thing I'm missing from the first season is that the powers haven't really played much of a role - there was one puzzle in the whole thing (escape from a room) and it didn't involve the powers at all, plus it's your brother who has it and so far it's just mild telekinesis, which could be cool but doesn't seem to immediately lend itself to interesting puzzles and storylines like in S1. Also, there's none of the operatic spookiness, there's no magic storm incoming, you're just two kids on the run. Again, more X-Men than Twin Peaks, and as much as I'm a little worn out on TP-inspired games right now, the vibe was definitely more intriguing. Having said that, it's cool that they're going for a different tone per season.
Oh, it was cool to have a chat while overlooking the destroyed Arcadia Bay at one point, too!

 

So yeah, have wishlisted it in case it goes on sale for a price that I can't resist, or for a time when I get through all the games I own that I have an interest in playing and can justify splashing out on new ones again. Back to the backlog!

[Ben X]

Played a very short game that I got in one of those huge Itchio charity bundles a while back, The Supper. It's by Octavi Navarro, who did some art on Thimbleweed Park and has made a bunch of little cartoony dark comedy horror adventure games. This one is a mash-up of Monkey Island 1 and Sweeney Todd, it's got lovely art (a slightly more cartoony version of the old Lucasarts style, which is refreshing amongst all the Sierra pastiche art that is so prevalent in modern indie adventures), some nice animations and tunes, and a fun dark vibe. The only negatives really are that it's very short and easy (basically a compliment, as I would have liked more of it!), that the UI is sometimes a little too streamlined for its own good, and that it would have been nice for the twenty or so narrator lines to be voice acted. Tiny nitpicks, though, in a very fun little game.

[Ben X]

Played The Procession To Calvary, the second Gilliam-y game by Joe Richardson, and it was very good! As always, good storytelling, funny, and fun puzzles. Had a few different endings, too. Not much to say about it that I didn't already with Four Last Things, but 3 more hours of the same great stuff!

 

And that's basically me up to date! Backlog busted!