Thoughts on: The Sexy Brutale and Epistory – Typing Chronicles

Sometimes it feels like the best gaming ideas are never getting re-explored despite being amazing. Sometimes some game developer thinks the same and re-explores a cool game idea. The Sexy Brutale and Epistory – Typing Chronicles are perfect examples of games that we should have more of.

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Disapprove: Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter

So, last time I told you how great the Crimes and Punishments is, how Frogwares have created not just the best game they ever made, not just the best Sherlock Holmes game, but one of the best examples of adventure games in recent history, if not of all time. For some reason, 2 years later they followed up with The Devil’s Daughter, which isn’t the worst game in their Sherlock Holmes series, but is very close to being one.

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In love with: Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

It took me much longer to finally get to Frogwares’ now not even latest Sherlock Holmes game than I anticipated. I actually bought it back in Warsaw 2 years ago, but had to ask Steam to remove it from my account, because it was a region locked Polish and Russian version or something along the lines. Still have the box, though, which contained the full walkthrough (which I didn’t use, however). And after finally finishing the game my first thought was – damn, I wish I had played the game earlier.

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Thoughts on: Silence, Full Throttle Remastered and Tiny Echo

It’s time for some pointing and clicking. I decided to give a shot to a sequel to a game that was pretty popular and a remaster of an old classic, but in between them, a tiny little adventure decided to give me an extra hour of adventuring. Let me tell you what I think of Silence, Full Throttle Remastered and Tiny Echo.

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Thoughts on: Mystik Belle, Detention and few other games

There have been quite a lot of games I was curious about, a lot of which turned out to be not what I wanted. A few, though, turned out to be amazing. Let me write some good things about Mystik Belle, Detention, Lode Runner Legacy and some non good things about Seasons after fall, Wuppo and Everything.

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In love with: Tales from the Borderlands

There’s been a lot of games by Telltale games. Way too many, I’d say. And that’s one of the main reasons I’ve stopped caring about the games they make. They started with pretty average and often boring to play (but fun to watch) adventure games with 3D controls and a lot of classic point and click adventure elements in. That didn’t work out well. Then they tried switching to “interactive stories”, and it didn’t work out at all (with the Jurassic Park game), yet the second try was much better and their Walking Dead series, based on the comic book series of the same name, won several awards and were lauded as a story-driven evolution of adventure titles. So they did what a lot of studios do after they find a success formula that works and made, mechanically speaking, the exact same game over and over again for the past 6 years. Sometimes, based on franchises that don’t even make any sense (Story-driven Minecraft? Really?). But I heard good things about Tales from the Borderlands, and last time I heard good things about the Telltale game, it was about The Wolf Among Us, and that game was really good. So, how about the Borderlands game without the bazillion guns?

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Thoughts on: Sylvio 2

Original Sylvio was a game that came out of nowhere and charmed me with its very unique approach to horror-themed action adventuring. Being centered all around the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) it went against the usual horror expectations – focusing almost entirely on terror, unease, tension and it was almost exclusively audio-based in how it evoked these feelings. Rare (and, to be fair, clunky) encounters with “enemies” weren’t horrifying and didn’t make you jump. Most things usually made you stop, slowly back away while trying to comprehend what you’re seeing and hearing. And while the action adventure elements with those rare action parts and physics-based puzzle solving, or the open map exploration weren’t always good and felt clunky, they added something very special to the game. The game wanted to be much more than it could, being a budget one man team product, but what it achieved was still good, unique and memorable.

Imagine my surprise at the fact that Sylvio 2 ditches everything but the basic audio analysis and exploration.

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Happy about: The Turing Test, Event[0] and Valley

Had a chance to play 3 first person adventure titles, all with different “adventuring” approach. Two of which dealt with questions of AI and morality and I wanted to end there, but then I also played Valley and couldn’t bring myself to play more of The Solus Project, due to all the “survival” elements in it, which I tend to not like. So, 3 is a pretty good number.

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Quick thoughts on Way of the Samurai 3 & 4

I’ve long been interested in checking Way of the Samurai titles, since they all looked like very curious attempts at mixing open world design which promises that you can “be whomever you want to be” with action adventure and choose your own adventure type non-linear storytelling. And they are. And turned out I wasn’t really in the mood for how exactly they implemented these ideas. But they are certainly a curious beast I want to write a bit about.

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