bought game off gog! first impressions

[Aeries]

Just bought game off gog.com. So far im really liking the storyline, and characters etc, think i'm nearing the end of the first episode.

Haven't used any hints yet, puzzles seem fairly easy, which i'm fine with, some aren't that realistic, crime scenes with no gloves etc! I like that there are lots of locations to explore at once and you seem to have several puzzles to solve at once like the old graphic adventures as some newer episodic titles are very linear. 

The graphics are nice, very walking dead, but i'm not sure why the un-animated comic book style cut scenes were used however when there are plenty of in-game cinematics which look the same and are animated with lip syncing, guess I'm not a fan of that style but i can get past it.

Rather a lot of glitches still remain for an episode that came out over a year ago? Erica sits behind her desk chair a lot and often starts floating in mid air while walking about!

Despite all the games flaws i will probably get past all of this if the story continues how it is!   

[KatieHal]

Hi Aeries! Welcome to the forum, and thanks for the feedback! I hope you do indeed keep playing

Some things like not using gloves at the crime scene were an intentional decision--we were going to have Erica using them, but it became awkward-looking and then we had to consider if we wanted to go through that every time she was handling evidence. In the end, that sort of heavy procedural wasn't what we wanted to focus on.

Enjoy the rest of the game!

[Aeries]

puzzle are getting harder, i've been stuck for like 2 hours arrrgh!!  im not going to use a hint, im going to finish one of these games without using hints!

a while later...aand im back on track, rant over!

Yes the lack of gloves doesn't really annoy me that much, was just an example without any spoilers, i think the biggest annoyance for me is the Erica sitting behind her chair bug and the glitches in general but yes story still holding it up.   

[Aeries]

update, after a little bit into the second episode there seems to be a lot less glitches in this one, no Erica sitting behind her chair and no floating in the air as of yet! i did notice a delay before animations which wasn't in the first episode however, maybe that was the result of some kind of fix? bit weird how the glitches are still in episode 1, as the glitches could put some people off or maybe gog got an early build of episode 1 somehow?

[KatieHal]

The episodes are separate builds, so fixes in Episode 2 may not necessarily have been made in Episode 1--we are trying to do that now that the whole game is out and we're able to go back and bug fix previous episodes, though.

[Aeries]

just finished it - wow probably the best adventure game I've played since Gabriel knight 2. Did definitely prefer it to Grey Matter though i did enjoy that....  and i only used hints once on episode 3 - that didn't help me so i went on you tube!

Really great gripping story, puzzles well integrated, most pretty straight forward with the interface kind of leading you at times as a hotspot will only show icons beneficial to forwarding the game etc which did make things a little easy at times but at least it kept things flowing and did still take me about 20 odd hours to finish - longer than most games these days!

Would have been nice to have fully animated cut scenes, it was a little distracting to suddenly not have any lip syncing, was this a budget thing or a design decision out of interest? Would be nice to have a "directors cut" at some point with fully animated fmv cutscenes!  Overall fab game. Looking forward to Mobeus.   

[KatieHal]

Thanks Aeries! So glad you liked it

The cutscenes: mostly a design decision, though it does help is save in the animation department. But our 2D art team is do very talented, we wanted to show off their work, as well as keeping the graphic novel aesthetic strong in the game.