At first I really thought this game was going to be a winner. But as I continued playing, certain choices made by the game designers really started to bug me. I played on the medium level (Challenge) because I didn't want "fewer objects to find" (Easy) or fewer misses allowed" (Gamer). I wasn't happy that the game penalized me for misses at all -- especially since there were some matches which should have been legitimate, but which were considered "wrong guesses" because the game designers hadn't thought of them. For example, given the words Cup and News, I saw a toilet paper roll and associated it with Cup (paper cup). But I was penalized because it was supposed to be matched with News (newspaper). Why weren't both considered correct? (There are other scenes in the game where an object matches both keywords, and the game recognizes this and adds the object to both keyword lists.)
The problem with valid matches being penalized seemed to get worse toward the end of the game, to the point where the only way I could be assured of a good score was to replay the chapter until I'd memorized (or written down) what the correct answers were. That's no puzzle. That's rote memorization. I wouldn't even care about the score because I play games for fun, not because I want to be graded on my performance. But unless you want the bad ending, you need to worry about the score and replay scenes where your score isn't good enough. By the end of the game, the word matching had definitely become more frustrating than fun because I couldn't trust the game to recognize valid matches.
Another problem I had was with the graphics quality. Some objects were just impossible to recognize. If you don't know what an object is, how can you hope to match it with anything?
The story and most of the voice work were certainly above average, but they should have provided subtitles. There were times when I couldn't understand the speech even after replaying the cut scene several times. Illy's over-processed "ghostly" voice was almost impossible to understand and I probably only understood about 20% of what he said. I also wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending I got. It may have been the best ending, but it obviously left things open for a sequel.
I don't think I'll replay this one on "Gamer" mode (the hardest). The story was interesting the first time around, but I'm not interested in sitting through it again -- especially with the hit-or-miss validity of word matches. Give this Review a KudosReport as Inappropriate
magfan
Posted on Jul 5, 2009, 9:48pm
3 Stars
User Review by magfan
At first I really thought this game was going to be a winner. But as I continued playing, certain choices made by the game designers really started to bug me. I played on the medium level (Challenge) because I didn't want "fewer objects to find" (Easy) or fewer misses allowed" (Gamer). I wasn't happy that the game penalized me for misses at all -- especially since there were some matches which should have been legitimate, but which were considered "wrong guesses" because the game designers hadn't thought of them. For example, given the words Cup and News, I saw a toilet paper roll and associated it with Cup (paper cup). But I was penalized because it was supposed to be matched with News (newspaper). Why weren't both considered correct? (There are other scenes in the game where an object matches both keywords, and the game recognizes this and adds the object to both keyword lists.) The problem with valid matches being penalized seemed to get worse toward the end of the game, to the point where the only way I could be assured of a good score was to replay the chapter until I'd memorized (or written down) what the correct answers were. That's no puzzle. That's rote memorization. I wouldn't even care about the score because I play games for fun, not because I want to be graded on my performance. But unless you want the bad ending, you need to worry about the score and replay scenes where your score isn't good enough. By the end of the game, the word matching had definitely become more frustrating than fun because I couldn't trust the game to recognize valid matches. Another problem I had was with the graphics quality. Some objects were just impossible to recognize. If you don't know what an object is, how can you hope to match it with anything? The story and most of the voice work were certainly above average, but they should have provided subtitles. There were times when I couldn't understand the speech even after replaying the cut scene several times. Illy's over-processed "ghostly" voice was almost impossible to understand and I probably only understood about 20% of what he said. I also wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending I got. It may have been the best ending, but it obviously left things open for a sequel. I don't think I'll replay this one on "Gamer" mode (the hardest). The story was interesting the first time around, but I'm not interested in sitting through it again -- especially with the hit-or-miss validity of word matches. Give this Review a Kudos Report as Inappropriate