Simon The Sorcerer 4: Chaos Happens - played through
On the plus side, it didn't crash anywhere near as much as Simon 3D (although who can say how much of that was the fault of my failing video card). Doesn't have wide expanses of useless space and has generally more competent-looking graphics, although I don't remember enough about 3D's to say whether they hold up in the style department. Being 3D-on-2D means it avoids the issues that Simon 3D had being 3D-on-3D, for all that it shouldn't really score any points for that.
On the other sides, the voice acting is often terrible, and not just because the actors were different. It only pays lip service to the ending of 3D, although to be fair 3D only paid lip service to the ending of 2. Simon is annoyingly still a jerk, although I can't remember 3D well enough to judge whether he's more of one or not... the solution to 'getting a skateboard' probably beats out pretty much anything he could have done in 3D, though, and the events which happen later don't counteract it.
After completing the game, I checked over the manual and found that there was a hotspot display key I hadn't found, so this is partially my fault depending on how you look at it - but I was stuck for a while because I needed a knife or something similar and I couldn't find anything. Which is to say, I could at least find a kitchen knife, but Simon refused to pick it up. Ultimately the solution required a different kitchen knife which was inexplicably lying on the ground in a hard-ish to see location in a different area. (Noting that the incorrect kitchen knife was lying on a table in a kitchen.)
Ultimately I didn't get stuck anywhere near as much in the game as I did in 3D, which is always a relief. Can't tell whether the game was noticeably shorter than 3D or not - if it was, that could be the reason more than the game being friendlier. Definitely nothing approaching the level of 2's Wear Dog.
The roleplayers didn't show up, which was somewhat disappointing.
Out There Somewhere - played through
Short and dandy.
Didn't get all the collectibles, but I'm not planning on replaying to try for them - the central mechanic hasn't worn out its welcome by the time the game ended, but I feel like it would quickly do that once I started on the harder puzzle rooms.
Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space - played through
Awful.
I was playing on Adventure - Hard, Action - Easy. Not sure how the experience changes if Adventure is set to Easy.
Lots of issues with things being difficult to see, or not showing up in the hotspot detection, or being broken, or being absurd.
The hotspot detection, for some reason, briefly pulses across the outlines of (most) detectable objects. In a 3D game. Meaning you need to keep turning around and tapping the key. And it doesn't trigger if the last pulse is still considered to be happening. And the character makes one of a small set of 'helpful' comments each time which get old fast. And you have to hope that there isn't anything which is too far away to be visible or which is obscured by something else.
The worst parts that come to mind:
- Divining that you can walk up a very sheer girder the boiler room
- Having to continually provide distractions in the generator room. Having the character continually reference using the hand for this even after you no longer have it.
- Building a ladder up a pipe with pipe segments as follows: Take a pipe segment. Hold it behind the pipe. Fire a rivet into the front of the pipe. Somehow this a) attaches the pipe segment to the back of the pipe and b) doesn't lead to the pipe segment just swivelling downwards when you put your weight on it. Also you have to manually add each pipe segment separately.
- I haven't exactly done any climbing, so maybe this is legit and just seems really unintuitive. But you're climbing without any footholds and have to deal with your arms getting tired. You do this by taking the tired arm off the surface and just hanging there for a time with the other arm.
There is hardly any action actually in the game. It's always possible that having action set to easy removed a bunch of enemies, I suppose, but you don't have any worthwhile weapon to fight them with for the majority of the game. Furthermore, I died several times to the action sequence at the start of the cave, and when I survived I had completely run out of ammunition, so I have no idea how that ends up playing out in action settings above Easy.
