Review: Dreamfall
Quick update on life: No pain from my tooth, and it seems up to handling my chewing needs, for the moment. Still need to go back in for more work, I'm not going to let it go and then have my tooth disintegrate in a few months when the temporary filling gives up.
And now for the real point of the post: Dreamfall. I finally finished playing through The Longest Journey: Dreamfall and I figured I'd post a little about it. The few reviews I glanced at after playing, even the ones with low scores, were all fairly accurate. The gameplay, such as there is, isn't great. I blame the attempt to make it work for consoles. However, the art is very cool, and being able to wander through 3D versions of places from The Longest Journey is also quite cool.
Hmmm... maybe I should start somewhere else, though. If you enjoy Adventure games and haven't played The Longest Journey, you're missing something quite good. You owe it to yourself to play, and to the Adventure genre to make sure it earns some money so they might consider making more again. ;p If you like the story after playing it, then you might consider Dreamfall.
It takes place in the same world, though some years later, and the main character (most of the time) is someone else. Which is fine. Rather than being a 2D point-and-click type adventure, it's 3D. Which is also pretty reasonable in the end. If I didn't have a XBox 360 controller to plug into my computer, I don't think I'd have enjoyed it as much - the controls are clunky enough on the controller, but manageable to anyone who has played similar control-scheme games. Mouse-and-keyboard just felt like they were poorly conceived afterthoughts.
The worst part, though, is the addition of a combat system to a game that didn't need it. At all. And even that wouldn't be such a tragedy if it was a good system, fun to play with. It isn't. It's slow, and clunky, and just plain annoying. Luckily, it isn't used much, and the game pretty much auto-saves you just before and just after any given fight, so you don't need to deal with it much. Which leaves the adventure elements (inventory and puzzle solving) and the story. The Adventure elements are pretty rudimentary, but there's enough to make things fun and if they hadn't bothered with the combat these could have been expanded into a much nicer game. Unfortunate, but there you go. Which leaves the story.
If you like story, and particularly if you liked the story and world of the original game, you'll find this more than enough to keep you going, dealing with the combat or simple little puzzles enough to get to the next story segment, next conversation (the branching dialog trees were pretty neat, and some even matter in a small scope for what you do, though in the larger scope it's fairly irrelevant), next twist that comes up to prod you on.
Now if they'd only release the next game to actually finish the story already. This feels almost as bad as Soul Reaver. Worse is no one close to talk about it with. So play already, so I can talk to you about it later. ;p
And now for the real point of the post: Dreamfall. I finally finished playing through The Longest Journey: Dreamfall and I figured I'd post a little about it. The few reviews I glanced at after playing, even the ones with low scores, were all fairly accurate. The gameplay, such as there is, isn't great. I blame the attempt to make it work for consoles. However, the art is very cool, and being able to wander through 3D versions of places from The Longest Journey is also quite cool.
Hmmm... maybe I should start somewhere else, though. If you enjoy Adventure games and haven't played The Longest Journey, you're missing something quite good. You owe it to yourself to play, and to the Adventure genre to make sure it earns some money so they might consider making more again. ;p If you like the story after playing it, then you might consider Dreamfall.
It takes place in the same world, though some years later, and the main character (most of the time) is someone else. Which is fine. Rather than being a 2D point-and-click type adventure, it's 3D. Which is also pretty reasonable in the end. If I didn't have a XBox 360 controller to plug into my computer, I don't think I'd have enjoyed it as much - the controls are clunky enough on the controller, but manageable to anyone who has played similar control-scheme games. Mouse-and-keyboard just felt like they were poorly conceived afterthoughts.
The worst part, though, is the addition of a combat system to a game that didn't need it. At all. And even that wouldn't be such a tragedy if it was a good system, fun to play with. It isn't. It's slow, and clunky, and just plain annoying. Luckily, it isn't used much, and the game pretty much auto-saves you just before and just after any given fight, so you don't need to deal with it much. Which leaves the adventure elements (inventory and puzzle solving) and the story. The Adventure elements are pretty rudimentary, but there's enough to make things fun and if they hadn't bothered with the combat these could have been expanded into a much nicer game. Unfortunate, but there you go. Which leaves the story.
If you like story, and particularly if you liked the story and world of the original game, you'll find this more than enough to keep you going, dealing with the combat or simple little puzzles enough to get to the next story segment, next conversation (the branching dialog trees were pretty neat, and some even matter in a small scope for what you do, though in the larger scope it's fairly irrelevant), next twist that comes up to prod you on.
Now if they'd only release the next game to actually finish the story already. This feels almost as bad as Soul Reaver. Worse is no one close to talk about it with. So play already, so I can talk to you about it later. ;p