Recent reviews by The Jokulatrix

I enjoyed the game. There was some real cool levels in here, that I can't detail more without spoilers, but chef's kiss.

Definitely a game I'll be playing more than once through the years.

The developers looked at every decision they had to make this game, and asked themselves "How do I make this the most aggravating, unrewarding, obnoxious, horrible gaming experience possible?".

Don't believe me?

Unskippable credits. Unskippable credits with no extra scene or anything. Just....a little extra ♥♥♥♥ you to everybody who suffered through this monstrosity to the end.

A worthy end to the Longest Journey trilogy.

The game was beautiful, immersive, and ran great. The worst bug I had was a few flickering graphics in places, and a hole in a rock in Ge'en, but after struggling through Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, that wasn't even really noticable. The graphics were a neat mix of realism and stylization. People looked like how humans do, but just off enough to get a sense of artistic whimsy.

The story was predictable to a point, especially after the big reveal in the second game. I was confused by why the game was trying to act like we didn't know about the undreaming and who was serving it - but then book five added like 8 unexpected layers to the story, which finally made the story feel new and unexpected.

One of the characters was definitely a deux ex machina - but after thinking about it, all of her parts were written like a long love letter to the original The Longest Journey. And April Ryan always was "overpowered" in the sense that everywhere she went, it just happened to be the right time and place for massive changes to happen. I was worried this game would completely forget about the first game, and focus more on the second, so seeing so many callback to TLJ made me really happy, especially revisiting old locations with Zoe.

The new choices machanic was wonderful. I actually felt like I had a bit of say in what happened in the game, rather than doing action a + b to unlock cutscene c. It felt like every single choice I was making for Kian was running Arcadia into the ground, but after looking up the alternatives, it turns out 98% of the time I got the best possible outcome. This was just a really sad story. I don't mind tragedies, but I hope that if Ragnar or Funcom choose to return to . . . "Starcadia" . . . we can get some of the open-eyed wonder that was in TLJ, instead of the battered hopelessness of the Dreamfalls.

Red Thread Games has launched with a powerful debut, and I look forward to playing more of their games.

If I wasn't fully engaged with the story and in love with the world itself, I would never finish this game.

Gameplay-wise, this game is kind of horrible. The controls are wonky. It's difficult for me to react quickly to things, which sucks, because there are a few parts where having better control would have really helped. I can't seem to pan my camera up and down, which leaves me feeling blind.

Combat is frustrating and unintuitive. I know the lack of real danger in the first game made it a bit silly, but I'd rather that then this. It seems like the block button doesn't work, so its a contest of attritation between me and my opponents, and that's not fun. The camera facing the opponents didn't shift right, and moving was difficult. It also seems there's no runaway option, so even if you managed to get away from an enemy, your stuck in combat mode, so really, it's better to just die and try the whole scene over again. I don't think a game should inspire that emotion.

I've encountered several gamebreaking bugs. Trying to enter the emergency exit could be fixed by alt-tabbing out of the game. Getting stuck in hiding spots couldn't. Having to reload during those instances sucked the fun out of the game, especially when I'm supposed to be hiding from insta-dead monsters. I ran into bugs with the gate-puzzle scene with April, but at least I could outrun the insta-dead monster about half the time, and managed to strong-arm my way through it.

The story is interesting. Its a lot darker and more depressing then the first game. It feels like you're just floundering with no real ability to change anything. I'm hoping the last game makes all of this worthwhile. I wish somebody would explain things more for me. In the first game, they would mention things happening, and it would peak my interest, but they explained all the plot relevant things exhaustively. In this game, I would literally pay real money for somebody to explain, in plain english what the hell the Collapse was and what all happened then. Please? That just seems, iunno, kind of important to the plot, since it seems Stark works completely different now because of it, and it seems to be a direct result of the first game. But nah, sure, let's spend hours instead reiterating how the Azadi saved Marcuria from the Tyren.. Over and over and over.

So, as a game, Dreamfall fails. It's horrible to play and the story is just sad. As a story, I guess it's a necessary chapter in the overall tale of the Balance, and I'm hoping its all worth it by the end. So I can only recommend it as a part of the whole, rather than its own game.

An excellent game! Storywise, it's still one of the most engaging plots I've played through, with every character standing on their own as interesting and "alive". The graphics might not be laudable on its own, but I find them quaint and nostalgic.

The world is alive and fully-realized. You have this sense that things are happening around you, and every location has its own history and feel to it. Not everything is relevant to the plot, which is fun! I love reading fairy-tales and history, and having people mention things that happened prior to the story. I just wish there was more. What is the full story about the Venice riots?

Its weird that this game came out in 1998, yet diversity-wise, its far above what is available now. You have plenty of body types, not everybody's abled-bodied, you have gay and lesbian couples that aren't just the butt of a joke, and definitely no "queer coding".

Other than the Secret World, I would put this as my favourite game. It has no replay value, but its fun to go back and play it once a decade or so.

One of my favourite games - it's like all the best parts of classic Fallout and Morrowind combined.

Poorly balanced, unimaginative game. Good if you just want something to waste some time in while you download a better game or to check off a list of zombie games to play, but not worth anything on its own merit.

This is a survival horror game with some very good realism thrown in. You are a lone survivor of a cruise ship that washed ashore an island covered in zombies, skull-crabs, pmsing deer, and parrot-monkey teams. You have to team up with a few of the other survivors from other, eerily-similar accidents in order to get off the island. Pretty simple concept, yeah? Now let's throw in that you have to eat, drink, sleep, and you have a game that will suck hours out of the day like the piranhas do to your health!

PROS

1: Beautiful graphics that don't demand a lot from your computer. You can see moving grass and leaves and the paint that every female in the game calls a shirt in fine detail!

2: Engaging storyline. You really get sucked into the story of trying to survive this hellish place, as well as caring about the characters you meet.

3: REALISM! Wooo. You collect bottle to store water, you look in the grass for roots and hunt animals for meat. But don't keep the fresh meat too long - blood attracts the monsters! After a few days surviving by the skin of your teeth, your character is dirty, covered in blood, and looks about as exhausted as you'd probably be in the same sitaution. Considering you have to hack your way across four different islands several times to meet your objectives, this attention to little details serves to break up the monotony perfectly, while also presenting a challenge.

4: Intuitive crafting system that works! You collect rubbish from the strange shacks that cover the island, and use it to create weapons of mass destruction. Make a fishing rod to catch fish from the ocean. Designs a gun the throws daggers and shoots flames as well as bullets. Perfect your armour. HtS has it all!

CONS

1: The controls lag just enough to make getting out of the way quickly difficult, especially when the deer want to talk about their "issues" with you. This may also be my system, but ehhh. I'm still noting it. Also, the non-moving camera angle makes it difficult to gauge perfectly where you want to run, which makes reaching the next bridge before the pirahnas chew your legs into fine mist incredibly tricky.

2: There are three characters to choose from - two men and a woman. Pretty typical of a hack n' slash rpg. One guy is great as smacking things with a stick, the other is good with guns. The girl? Oh, she's really good at running away.

.................................................................................................................. >:I


All in all, I give it a 9.5 out of 10.