RIP Perry and A Vampyre Story
I just found out this afternoon that Perry died. :( I knew he was going to be going soon. He had rapidly deteriorated, which was hard to watch. I really didn't think he would make it through today. He will be missed, and I'll be sure to give Jax and Scooter lots of love because I'm sure they miss him too. :(
I finished A Vampyre Story yesterday. I'd say after all the waiting it mostly met my expectations of it, but I can't really ignore the flaws. One is that it has a problem with bugs. Like cutscenes repeating themselves and some animation errors. There are also a couple of bugs that if you ran into them, can make you unable to complete the game. Fortunately, I didn't run into either one of those, but I did download the patch about half way through just to be on the safe side. My other issue was the main character, Mona's voice. It can be really grating and irritating because it was so high pitched and whiny. Also the voice actor gave a rather unconvincing French accent. There were times her voice sounded Ok, but most of the time it was hard to listen to. I wouldn't at all mind if they decided to change voice actors, or at least have her work on it for the next part because it definitely needs work.
This brings me to my third issue, this game is incomplete. I understand it's the first part of a duology (trilogy?) but I felt they could have wrapped things up better in this part. There were also some pretty illogical puzzles thrown in, but none as bad as Secret Files: Tunguska (I know I'm going to be always be comparing illogical puzzles to that game now). Another thing I felt was weird (but the reviewer at Adventure Gamers felt was innovative)was the "keeping objects in mind" feature. This is hard to describe in words, but Mona won't pick up certain objects until later, but they still appear in your inventory. You can still use those unpicked up items on other items though. What you get is just some extra animation where Mona goes back and gets the item to use. In my opinion, that feature is weird and really a waste of animation. They definitely could used that extra animation they used up to make the game longer. Other than those flaws, I really enjoyed it. It was funny, but not as funny as say Sam and Max, the Monkey Island games, or well any other game that's focused on humor. The parts I found the most funny were Mona's constant giving names to inanimate objects, and also her continuous denial of being a vampire. Also Froderick was a completely loveable sidekick. As I said before, his personality reminded me quite a bit of Crow from The Longest Journey. The graphics and animations were quite beautiful. I think other games should take note of that. The secondary voice actors were also great, some of which were familiar because they were the same voice actors as certain characters in the Sam and Max games. For instance, Tim Talbot and David Boyll had recognizable voices. The music was also very well done, and very reminiscent of Michael Land's work from The Curse of Monkey Island and The Dig. That should make sense though because creator Bill Tiller, did The Curse of Monkey Island among other things with LucasArts. I think the music was done by a different person for this though.
Ok, yeah sorry I went all geeked out on the game. Bring on A Vampyre Story 2 which should hopefully be out by the end of this year. Now I'm downloading the fan-made freeware game Broken Sword 2.5 which is supposed to be set in between the events of Broken Sword 2 and 3. I think it's also a German game with English subtitles, but I'm not sure.
I finished A Vampyre Story yesterday. I'd say after all the waiting it mostly met my expectations of it, but I can't really ignore the flaws. One is that it has a problem with bugs. Like cutscenes repeating themselves and some animation errors. There are also a couple of bugs that if you ran into them, can make you unable to complete the game. Fortunately, I didn't run into either one of those, but I did download the patch about half way through just to be on the safe side. My other issue was the main character, Mona's voice. It can be really grating and irritating because it was so high pitched and whiny. Also the voice actor gave a rather unconvincing French accent. There were times her voice sounded Ok, but most of the time it was hard to listen to. I wouldn't at all mind if they decided to change voice actors, or at least have her work on it for the next part because it definitely needs work.
This brings me to my third issue, this game is incomplete. I understand it's the first part of a duology (trilogy?) but I felt they could have wrapped things up better in this part. There were also some pretty illogical puzzles thrown in, but none as bad as Secret Files: Tunguska (I know I'm going to be always be comparing illogical puzzles to that game now). Another thing I felt was weird (but the reviewer at Adventure Gamers felt was innovative)was the "keeping objects in mind" feature. This is hard to describe in words, but Mona won't pick up certain objects until later, but they still appear in your inventory. You can still use those unpicked up items on other items though. What you get is just some extra animation where Mona goes back and gets the item to use. In my opinion, that feature is weird and really a waste of animation. They definitely could used that extra animation they used up to make the game longer. Other than those flaws, I really enjoyed it. It was funny, but not as funny as say Sam and Max, the Monkey Island games, or well any other game that's focused on humor. The parts I found the most funny were Mona's constant giving names to inanimate objects, and also her continuous denial of being a vampire. Also Froderick was a completely loveable sidekick. As I said before, his personality reminded me quite a bit of Crow from The Longest Journey. The graphics and animations were quite beautiful. I think other games should take note of that. The secondary voice actors were also great, some of which were familiar because they were the same voice actors as certain characters in the Sam and Max games. For instance, Tim Talbot and David Boyll had recognizable voices. The music was also very well done, and very reminiscent of Michael Land's work from The Curse of Monkey Island and The Dig. That should make sense though because creator Bill Tiller, did The Curse of Monkey Island among other things with LucasArts. I think the music was done by a different person for this though.
Ok, yeah sorry I went all geeked out on the game. Bring on A Vampyre Story 2 which should hopefully be out by the end of this year. Now I'm downloading the fan-made freeware game Broken Sword 2.5 which is supposed to be set in between the events of Broken Sword 2 and 3. I think it's also a German game with English subtitles, but I'm not sure.