The Black Mirror might go down for me as the worst, most obtuse adventure game I have ever played. The only reason I am continuing this mess is because of nostalgia. I borrowed the game from my local library once when I was in school (couldn't finish it then, of course). So I wanted to finally revisit this game.
I love the back story, the mysterious atmosphere, but fuck me if Future Games isn't one of the dumbest adventure developers ever. And they don't even have the excuse of early graphic adventure people in the 90s, when this was still a new genre (graphic adventures, that is, text based ones have been around since before the 80s)
Most puzzles force you to revisit rooms to pick up items, you can't interact with them before an arbitrary point in the story has been reached, often something as pointless as a passing remark in a line of dialogue. It forces you, multiple times, to just wait. Pass like 10 minutes by walking around, before it allows you to continue. And there is this fucking abomination:
Behold the mouth of madness. A random sliding puzzle. This is the final state, the starting position is totally random, can even literally be unwinnable, according to some people. I found a save game just after it, luckily.
I know that Black Mirror 2 and 3 weren't made by this same group, are they any better? Might as well delete the entire Black Mirror bundle from my acount, once I am done with this, if not.
The Black Mirror might go down for me as the worst, most obtuse adventure game I have ever played. The only reason I am continuing this mess is because of nostalgia. I borrowed the game from my local library once when I was in school (couldn't finish it then, of course). So I wanted to finally revisit this game.
I love the back story, the mysterious atmosphere, but fuck me if Future Games isn't one of the dumbest adventure developers ever. And they don't even have the excuse of early graphic adventure people in the 90s, when this was still a new genre (graphic adventures, that is, text based ones have been around since before the 80s)
Most puzzles force you to revisit rooms to pick up items, you can't interact with them before an arbitrary point in the story has been reached, often something as pointless as a passing remark in a line of dialogue. It forces you, multiple times, to just wait. Pass like 10 minutes by walking around, before it allows you to continue. And there is this fucking abomination:
Behold the mouth of madness. A random sliding puzzle. This is the final state, the starting position is totally random, can even literally be unwinnable, according to some people. I found a save game just after it, luckily.
I know that Black Mirror 2 and 3 weren't made by this same group, are they any better? Might as well delete the entire Black Mirror bundle from my acount, once I am done with this, if not.
Darkside Detective is a collection of 6-7 short stories and the humor's pretty good. Decent puzzles too.
Broken Age was great albeit a little disappointing in part 2.
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Yeah, I dropped it too. Must say that I have also lost interest in its sequels. I went to look up the developers, Future Games. Apparently, The Black Mirror was their big hit, and all their later games sold like shit, until they had to close up shop in 2011. Can't say I'm sad for them, if the rest of their games was designed like this, it was only ever a question of time. It would been so easy to have a skip function for some of these insipid puzzles. I mean, do they think anyone wants to spend 30 minutes on sliding puzzles? Or maybe introduce a difficulty level, where on easy you just don't get to do those puzzles? Monkey Island 2 did that in 1991, and this came out in 2003. It's like they wanted to make this as hardcore and off putting as possible. Well, Mission fucking Accomplished.
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They have decen bundles from time tp time but this one has 2 games i wanted and getting each for usd 2 is a goood deal in my book
There is Time Hollow on the DS.
Yeah, the art isn't great but that dialogue is incredible. It's up there with the best comedy in games, not that there's much competition.
There is Time Hollow on the DS.
It feels like a spiritual sequel to Shadow of Memories, and was made by the same designer, Junko Kawano.
I only played the first one. It was decent.
Yesterday Origins is the second one. Yesterday is the original one, it came out in 2012 or so. It was also called New York Crimes in some territories I believe
