Gateway 2: Homeworld

I really enjoyed this first Gateway and I thought this one was much better.

Between playing the two games I read the book, and the stories of the games are different enough I feel like they are different stories just set in the same universe. And if that was the intention, that's a pretty fun way to make a game and maybe more games should be like that.

I'm giving it five stars, but it's not a perfect game. The first game was actually a bit more ambitious by having the big Gateway asteroid to explore between the levels. The closest this comes to that is the Heechee homeworlds. And they are quite fun and interesting to look around in, but they are contained to their portion unlike Gateway in the first game.

The story this time though is much better with a cyclical plot that takes you back to one of the first areas, which is something I always like, and the alien planets more interesting this time, especially the planet with with these crystal snake things that communicate with telepathy and provide the most original puzzles.

I would have liked the NPC's to be more interactive. They are just there to provide info dumps like NPC's in modern games. In a lot of infocom games the NPC's actually did things both to help and hinder and sometimes both as with the Thief in Zork! I'm not sure why designers decided to stop with that. There was some intimation that your character might have romantic feelings for another character, Diana, when they mentioned her again in the final cutscene, and I was like, why? She didn't do anything useful at all and just went away and hid during the climax. Why should care about her?

So, yeah, as I say maybe not as ambitious as it could be, but in many ways it's just what I like to play, and if you think you'd like it you should try it.