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The Side Game sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 32 / 42
Date: December 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game was quite interesting and fun until the first eye-hand coordination ala FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS side game during a dream sequence that disappointed me greatly. I cannot, repeat cannot, and repeat again, CANNOT even attempt to come close at completing these things so this game was cut quite short for me and must give it a negative 100 rating.
Don't buy it if you want an adventure game. Buy it if you want an arcade game.
Joe

Very Poor Interface

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: February 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The graphics are ok, but the interface sucks. Every time you click the mouse, it blanks the curser, shows your character slowly walk across the screene, pick up the object, then puts your curser back up for you to click on something else. Takes FOREVER to play! After 10 minutes of play, I don't care any more what the object of the game is, I just want to play something else that responds faster. Unless you are over 60 years old and drive 25 miles an hour everywhere you go, DON'T buy this game.

An adequate effort.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: January 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I picked this game up knowing very little about it. I had played through another game by this studio, The Black Mirror, and while I had mixed feelings about the title I couldn't deny it had its moments.
This, unfortunately, is not as good as The Black Mirror. It is, however, an adequate adventure game for those of us who just need to work our way through a plot.
On the surface, the game has a lot of things going for it. The graphics are excellent, it runs well, and they set up a good and consistent style in their art direction. And the plot hook, that you may very well be in some Satre like afterlife, is quite promising. It reminded me of a cross between the TV shows "Lost" and "The Prisoner".
Unfortunately, the game suffers from several design choices that are just downright sloppy. For a start, almost all of the scenes have visual cues indicating an exit point at each edge of the screen. But all too often it has been implemented such that only one or two of these are actually usable, and even then you have to find a very specific point. Considering how small the primary game environment is, there is no excuse for making navigation this cumbersome. There is no sound track for the game, something that could have greatly complemented the good visuals. Instead, you are constantly bombarded by very loud, almost oppressive ambient sound effects. At first this is fine, but after spending 18 hours hearing the same wave-hitting-beach loop it gets ridiculous. The voice acting also is all over the place. Performances range from unenthusiastic to merely "reasonable", and some of the accents just sound fake.
Another major issue is the mini-games. In general I have no objection to mini-games in adventures. In fact I think they can quite often inject some much-needed tension. But this game seems to treat them as a method of slowing players down, and have difficulty levels that are so varied that I wonder if they actually bothered doing a beta-test before release. There is one ongoing mechanic where you need to tend to your physical needs: food, water, and bladder capacity, to perform demanding tasks. If you exhaust yourself by running everywhere or climbing up and down a rope too often, you'll find yourself having to stop and rest before you can do it again. For most of the game this is easily manageable and actually kind of a nice touch, but near the end it starts to fall apart. Aside from this there are 3 other puzzles that I remember. One is a fairly simple "direct the ball" puzzle to simulate trying to handle stress. This worked well, and was welcome. The next ones that followed, however, were ridiculously hard. In particular there is one which requires absolutely precise timing to execute that only gets more difficult the further you go. This in and of itself would almost be forgivable, except that once you do complete the blasted thing it turns out you have to repeat your performance two more times to get past it. This puzzle took me nearly an hour to complete, and left me ready to make one of the disks into a frisbee for my golden retriever. The final problem with the game is the ending. Like the Black Mirror, it seems like the writer simply changed their mind about what story they were telling once the end was in sight. Even worse is the fact that it seems to end with a personal message from the writer to the player, a wholly unwelcome intrusion and rather amateurish trick, suggesting they knew full well the game's story wasn't going to stand on its own.
Now that I've listed most of the bad aspects, it's only fair that I list the good. As I noted, the visuals here are excellent. One of the difficulties in the game is that most of it takes place in a very small enfironment that can be fully explored in about a dozen scenes. To compensate for this, however, every day of story-time presents you with a different camera angle, helping to inject a sense of variety and progress into the game. And despite the fact that it seems to have accidentally picked up another game's ending, the story throughout most of the game is quite intriguing. Skills that you accumulate doing puzzles, such as how to start a fire, can be reused later in the game instead of requiring you to learn something new. Also, there are quite a few characters here who are very well executed. Most notable in my mind is an old rather wiry communist from the early days of the Soviet Union, who seems to be one of the only people capable of coping with the island environment. If not for these I would probably not have bothered finishing the game.
I would recommend this game if you're fed up with FPS's and really need an adventure game to play through, but don't go in expecting all that much from this merely adequate title.

Next Life? Maybe in the next life.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'll never buy another European game translated into a U.S. format. Regardless of it's success as "Reprobate" in the Netherlands, etc., it is slow, confusing, and has a slew of bugs in the American version. BEWARE!

Yikes!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 14
Date: December 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really had high hopes for this game. The story line was intriguing. I was even prepared to do mild arcade games although they're not my favorite thing. I was not, however, prepared for the abomination that is in this game. All I can say to those who actually got through the whole game is" I am not worthy." Don't buy this game if you value your sanity or have high blood pressure.

Like watching paint dry....

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Isn't there any minus Star Rating? If there was, this game definitely deserves it!!! Made in the same gameplay as Indigo Prophecy (dialogues, puzzles and arcade challenges) it is the worst adventure game I have ever played. Indigo Prophecy was amazing - this one is the total opposite!
Totally boring (having to watch Adam walk around the island almost in real time is like watching paint dry - you even have time to go to the bathroom, brew some coffee or even cook... Walkthrough for this game is a must - so you won't have to walk around pointlessly guessing your next move (if it didn't take that long I wouldn't suggest it - but get the walkthrough before you reach for your pills!)
Some of the scenes are too dark for you to find items you might interact with or need later in the game - some of them are really in the Surrealist realm (there's no way you would guess that you might need something and end up dragging Adam back and forth).
The arcade-style puzzles are nerve-wracking; you're better off playing it on a n old PC where you won't worry about breaking the keyboard or smashing the screen. It takes forever for the game to load once you lose the arcade challenges and it takes forever to reach the challenge you last lost.
The characters got on my nerves most of the time and the dialogues are in bad english and childish.
Thank God I borrowed this game from a friend and didn't have to pay for it - a total waste of money.
My advice: If you must try it... borrow it!

Next Life

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The inner games are terribly frustrating and, quite frankly, unneccessary to the story. Would not recommend!

Just BAD

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: March 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is just plain terrible. It is increcibly boring. After about 2 hours of wandering around, you just don't really care about the game anymore. It has absolutely no point. The premise sounds interesting, but trust me, IT'S NOT.

Engaging storyline with beautiful graphics and some action sequences

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a great 3rd person adventure game with a slight flavor of action. If you have a complete aversion for timed, or action sequences, you may need to ask a teenager in the household to help you out occasionally. I had to call upon my son's quick fingers with one particularly nasty arcade challenge, but got plenty of reward for my persistence.

The world of the game is very immersive and beautiful. The story pulls you in and keeps you interested through most of the game. Yes, there are a few slow, perhaps even tedious passages, when you keep looking for a revealing conversation or clue in one of the 10 cabins on the island. The majority of the game play however is lively and interesting. One witty tool that helps avoiding the monotony of a fairly small island is the changing viewpoint of the same area with every new day. This little trick makes the island feel much bigger than really it is. Toward the middle of the game a brand new environment opens up without any repetition.

The graphic presentation of the whole game is simply beautiful. The depiction of the humans is very life like, perhaps the best that I have seen so far in a PC adventure game. The cut scenes are interesting, and frequently dramatic, with similarly outstanding graphics.

The voice performance is not the strongest part of the game, but in a strange way the imperfection of the voice acting contributes to the feeling of desolation on the island.

The puzzles are all solvable but not trivial thus they provide a good sense of accomplishment throughout the game.

My only minor complain about the game is a few "unfair" hot spot positions. I feel that in general, there was more "pixel hunting" than I would have liked. The players are well advised to frequently use the "E" key, which will indicate the exit sites from the scenes.

Overall, I think that most adventure game enthusiast will appreciate this game for its mood, story, and excellent graphics.

Horrible!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: March 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I mean this is a truly horrible game!. The video, graphics, and sound were SOOOO bad, I didn't last 10 minutes. I really wanted to loose myself in a fantasy world (a la Myst or Schism) and this had me more frustrated than a 70 hour work week. Do NOT buy this.

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