Reviews by dutchmule
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Nice atmosphere and writing, but way too underclued, September 10, 2013This game is indeed very peculiar; the main character is refreshingly pretty much the opposite of a "regular" PC (strong personality and language, very much unlike what a player is used to or would want to play as), and the whole game has its own tone, vocabulary, etc. that forms, I found, a somewhat believable worldview (which makes the PC a very well-written character). And even apart from the PC's personality, the author's writing is great: his descriptions are particularly worthy of note, since they manage to convey a lot of information in a few short sentences.
The main gripe I had with the game was that it was severely underclued. I had figured out a few things, but not all of them, so I was stuck for a while and then resorted to hints, which made me go a bit further, and then I was stuck again. At this point I had to look at a walkthrough for ideas, I found something, I did it, and then I got stuck because of an object I didn't have. So I just restarted and followed the walkthrough ; and looking at the actions you have to do to reach the "optimal" ending, I would have never managed to figure it out - some of them are literally read-the-author's-mind. So yeah, underclued + cruel = a very frustrating experience. This is a shame, by the way: the story is neat, and with a bit more hinting or more descriptions or less of that cruelty, this would have made a very enjoyable game for its whole length, instead of getting increasingly frustrating towards the end, which just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Well-crafted horror game, May 13, 2013The plot of the game is not exactly original - you have to enter an old theatre because you forgot something inside, and end up being trapped inside -, but the setting is really great : the horror is shown with little subtles touches, sounds, apparitions, and increases as the game progresses. The theatre is vast, with a lot of areas to discover or unlock, and as the game goes on those areas are more and more dark, empty and dangerous. The descriptions are well-written and coherent, which makes you really enter the game.
There's also some puzzles : they are fair and not really difficult, but not really easy either. I really liked the bits of paper you find in some places, which tell you another side of the story, and finally give some answers near the end (and are quite fun to collect). The implementation is very good and polished (I must say I didn't find any bug), and the parser provides quite a lot of responses. There isn't a lot of NPCs, but it's not important here because of the genre.
The game is quite long (more than two hours, at least), but I found the ending quite unsatisfactory : the author builded a nice and peculiar atmosphere in this theatre, but ends with a too classical (at least for me) theme (I won't say I don't like the theme, but the author could have carried on with an atmosphere of his own rather than going on with (Spoiler - click to show)a seen-before Lovecraftian style). Apart from that, it's a solid game, with a very good setting.
Punk atmosphere, but punk implementation!, July 7, 2010This is a short game about a boy in a strict Catholic high school and its "adventures" as a punk rebel wannabe. The writing is quite good, conveying a nice atmosphere in the dialogues and the cutscenes, and making the PC and its friends quite believable. The puzzles are OK, quite simple and somewhat entertaining, but sometimes suffer from guess-the-verb problems (but since English isn't my native language, I may be wrong). My main reproach is the implementation: there are some bugs and typos (as well as some whitespaces missing here and there), not many interactive objects, and the characters are also sparserly implemented, with only a couple of one-line answers; it's light, fast and sometimes not very-well executed -- as a punk gig could be. In a nutshell I liked the theme, the game was quite good, but a bit empty and lacked a better implementation.
Great characters, but I'm not sure about one-word commands, December 13, 2009I really liked this game, and for a lot of reasons : the setting (early 20th century with some interesting differences) is original, and its description and references were very efficient in drawing me into this world ((Spoiler - click to show)hysteria diagnosis or expeditions to the north pole are such references I found very much immersive). The duo of detectives works really well : the characters are charismatic, quite antagonistic and their exchanges are often humorous (with a totally British sense of humor, which I like very much!). There's even (Spoiler - click to show)a bit of romance between those two, very subtlely and nicely displayed by the author. The story in itself is not extraordinary, but I found it okay nevertheless, and to my mind it quite fitted the tone of the game. I admit I would have preferred a longer story, because I ended up wanting to spend more time with those characters! (but maybe a sequel is secretly planned ;)
But I cannot talk about this game without mentioning the unusual parsing system: it consists in one-word commands, such as "door" or "corpse". I understand that it's been a parsing system that's quite new and interests people since Blue Lacuna; the attempt to make a whole game not only using this system, but revolving around it, is quite bold! However, I must admit that I need more than what this game shows to be totally convinced by this system. It may be easier for some readers to click on words to interact with them, but it seems to me that it's reducing interactivity and a sense of freedom. Actually, in this game, you can also interact with words that aren't underlined, a fact I liked when I discovered it because I felt that freedom wasn't so much reduced after all. But on the other side, you can make the character perform actions you'd never thought of, and thus you can win the game relying on a "lawnmowering strategy" and without understanding the story: I find this fact not very satisfactory (at least in a normal game you have to figure out the verb, and so you have to deduce first what you have to do). (Actually, it's a little bit the same reproach as the one with the ">TALK TO X" conversation system, because in a way both systems are similar) For instance in this game, (Spoiler - click to show)you have to deduce from the clues in the deceased's room the way he was killed: I had no idea, and just typed "explain" several times because the word was underlined, and the character ended up saying "it was a giant octopus on wheels", altough I was very far from deducing such a thing! (but let's face it, it's hard to create a puzzle in which you have to make the player guess that it was a giant octopus on wheels). To avoid such a "lawnmowering effect", maybe that puzzles that require a series of actions in a precise (and logical) order can be a part of the solution, because it's more difficult than finding the only action that would make the story go further, and I think it encourages the player to figure out what he has to do and how first. (just an idea)
To sum up about this system, I'm not convinced that it's bringing something more or something different to the game; actually it makes it easier, substracting the need to understand what you're doing and why to solve a puzzle or to advance in the story. But I'm not formally opposed to it, and I hope other games in the future will go further enough in the use of this system to show me new and interesting things that the system can bring: but to me "Walker & Silhouette" fails to bring those elements (it's easily forgivable though, because the system is quite new and unexplored).
In conclusion, while I'm not very fond of the parsing system, I found the game very enjoyable. And I'm starting to think more and more that, judging by the quality of every of his games, C.E.J. Pacian will soon become a major author.
Well-done, but..., June 14, 2009I must admit I'm very puzzled. When you enter the Endling Archive, you uncover folders, notes that you can read, thus unlocking other notes. I really liked this mechanism.
At first I thought it was an introspective, autobiographical game, but I figured out a few minutes later where the author was going ; and then, nothing. I reached a state where obviously you can't unlock notes no more ; and I said "That's all ?".
Two possibilities : either it's a puzzle (I don't think so, I tried everything on my keyboard, and the author declares himself "tired of hard puzzles"), either that's the end of the game, and I'm really, really disappointed. The story is good, the writing is great, emotional, melancholic at times ; the system is orginal, and even if it's not exactly interactive, it's a good fiction. But the author had to continue ! I mean, with such a beginning, such a way to tell the story, the author could have made the game a long and very powerful story !
I give it three stars for the writing and the game's mechanism ; should the author had carried on this game would probably have had one or two more.
Way too short !, June 14, 2009The story told in the game is quite interesting and original ; unfortunately, the game is way too short. You have two or three puzzles to solve, and that's all. The descriptions are also wrong sometimes - typically, they describe an object you have taken ten turns ago -, and there's a lot of cutscenes (I mean, compared to the length of the game). Too bad, because the story could have led to a much more developed game.
Good and funny game, June 9, 2009The concept of the game is quite funny : it transposes the movie Being John Malkovitch into the interactive fiction world. I saw the movie before, and when I played it I could see all the references to this (odd) movie ; however, because of an imperfect knowledge of IF classics, I missed some other references to other interactive fiction games (the author provides a list of those references at the end of the game). The game is quite funny in itself too ; the story is linear (not a drawback for me though), and you can sometimes have the impression that you are watching a movie ; the implementation is good (though (Spoiler - click to show)you can take the copier in the early scenes because you can take it afterwards...). Not exactly a classic, but certainly a great game.
Très bon jeu, mais trop de bugs !, January 14, 2009C'est un des très rares jeux français de cette longueur, et techniquement la première fiction interactive originale française dans l'histoire récente !
Le jeu est très bon, de surcroît, avec une bonne ambiance dépeinte par l'auteur, et des personnages crédibles et plutôt attachants. Les énigmes sont toutes cohérentes avec le monde, et en général il suffit de bien réfléchir pour en trouver la solution - rien de trop dur, ce qui ne gâche rien. Le monde décrit est tantôt familier et tantôt intriguant, et assez riche, avec une tension qui monte plutôt graduellement dans l'histoire, du suspense et des secrets qui se découvrent au fur et à mesure...
C'est malheureusement au niveau de l'implémentation que le jeu perd sa cinquième étoile, qui en aurait fait un "must-have" absolu francophone. En effet, les bugs sont plutôt nombreux : pas mal de rtrue qui manquent, un personnage mort avec qui on peut toutefois toujours parler, beaucoup d'objets manquants, des directions parfois mal indiquées (est au lieu de ouest devant le Sacré-Coeur, ou devant Beaubourg, par exemple)... (Spoiler - click to show)Et une petite protestation devant une énigme où l'on est censé attendre 34 tours - on nous dit d'attendre, certes, mais 34 tours, c'est long, et on en vient à soupçonner un bug !! Puis le jeu aurait pu aussi gagner en interactivité, en intégrant quelques actions et réponses supplémentaires. Quelques petites fautes d'orthographe, mais sur un jeu aussi long c'est pardonnable.
J'ai fini approximativement 70% du jeu, mais suis arrivé à un moment où je me suis retrouvé bloqué, me faisant perdre ma sauvegarde... C'est dommage, j'aurais bien aimé voir la fin !! Un très bon jeu, qui gagnerait grandement à être débuggué proprement.
Drôle, difficile, court, et bon !, January 7, 2009Dans ce jeu, vous êtes un geek, et devez finir de construire une machine dont vous ne connaissez même pas l'utilité... Le jeu est plutôt court, et est très bien écrit : les références à l'univers geek sont omniprésentes et le ton drôle (voire très drôle !) sans être lourd. L'appartement a beaucoup de recoins à fouiller, et on trouve beaucoup d'objets dans des endroits incongrus... Plusieurs fins sont aussi possibles. Seuls bémols : il faut plusieurs essais et plusieurs morts pour trouver la solution de l'énigme principale (mais je conviens que donner des indices aurait raccourci le jeu et sa relative difficulté), et les salles ne sont pas assez bien décrites - on rate certains objets, et on est parfois obligé de deviner leur présence... Mais à part ça, un bon jeu qui vaut pleinement la demi-heure que vous y passerez.
Un monde étrange au ton lovecraftien..., January 6, 2009Jeu court mais très bien écrit ; l'ambiance y est très particulière, étrange et déstructurée, ainsi qu'inquiétante, notamment grâce aux nombreuses références à l'univers de Lovecraft qui parsèment le jeu et au ton très "lovecraftien" qu'emploie ici l'auteur. Quelques puzzles, rien de bien méchant mais pas non plus trop facile. Le seul point qui cloche est l'implémentation et le polissage, car il y a plusieurs bugs (mineurs), quelques fautes d'orthographe et les descriptions sont parfois lapidaires : on apprécie toujours de pouvoir regarder chaque élément du décor si l'on bloque sur une énigme... A part ces quelques imperfections, c'est un bon jeu.
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