Legion

As you can see with the rather corny title, this game had a really good impact on me. At first, I had no idea what I was getting myself into with severed arms groping around over the rocks, and was furthermore confused with "her". Was she a monster? A godess? A spirit? As I got further and further into the game, it all made so much more sense.

The beginning of the game consists of you (or us) running around trying to figure out what the heck is going on. It is evadent that something is invading your home, and you have to stop it by using your powers and changing from object to object to solve the puzzle. This I think is the charm and attraction to the game. Like a good mystery story, you start with no knowledge of what's going on, and slowly gather information before *boom* this is what's happening! It's the mysterious way the author writes which makes the story attracting. The perspective of the character (well, character-s if you want to get technical) is very primitive but really thoughtful. (Spoiler - click to show) for example, the gun is to you just a metal rod with swirling energy. legion, is one of the best mysterious writing in IF and has such unique characteristics.

Puzzles in the game are fairly straightforward. At the beginning, the puzzles especially are designed to ease you into the story, which is nice because the style is alien. After, this though, expect slightly more difficult puzzles say low-medium. Most of the puzzles involve touching objects, and transferring from one object to another to get a better advantage, but there are all sorts involved. The sudden flashbacks were confusing and appear extraneous, but in the end are quite revealing. The puzzles really are briliant, and I'd love to say much more why I love them, but I would hate to spoil completely this well crafted gem. I will say that I enjoyed the many multiple endings that there were letting you try to find as many possible.

Although there are some annoyances which make the game a little bumpy, this game is amazing.

The first scene(s) in Legion are truly ingenious, one of those "What on earth is going on?" type games. It took me quite a while to figure out what was even possible, but I had fun exploring. There is basically one important verb that you can try on everything, and then reading in-game clues should give you some ideas of what else to do.

Once the game transitions into it's second section (signified by changes in the in-game color), it becomes a bit more standard, similar to Babel and the many games inspired by it. It uses some profane language, which is mostly appropriate for the nature of the person and the situation. The puzzles are still very good, the writing is still good, but the opening is so great that the rest of the game pales in comparison.

At the beginning of this game, I didn't know what was going on at all. Having completed it, I'm still not sure. And somehow, this is the coolest thing about it. You learn bits and pieces as you go along: for the first few moves, all you understand is that you're in danger and you have to hide, then when you explore a little, you come to understand where your enemy is and that you have to attack it, then - when the main NPC gets involved - the nature of the enemy becomes clearer, and so on. I very much got the feeling that my understanding as the player was progressing at the same rate as the player character's (characters'?) - including the fact that I still don't understand exactly what the PC is (are?) (a swarm of microbes? A planetary consciousness? Pratchett-esque Small Gods? Nature itself?) This is made all the better by the fact that the game never tries to spell out the answers to these things.

One of the first things I did when I realised that the PC could move through solid objects was to see what happened if I kept going DOWN - I was pleased to see that the mantle, core, and far side of the planet were all implemented. Details like this make me happy.