Apparently I'm Officer Dick

Or so says my Level 8 title. To celebrate, I'm blogging.

 

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Jane Jensen’s return to adventure gaming. At last!

After a long wait (at least for us american folk), Gray Matter is here. The demo was enough to show that Jensen’s classic style is intact, but only gave us a claustrophobic taste of what to expect in the game. Last night I took the time to go head-on into the full game.

All of the positives and negatives of the point-and-click system are here. 90% of the dialogue in the game is what would otherwise be inner monologue. It’s a very slow pace. I clicked on a steam vent to see what it was, waited for the character to walk all the way across the screen to go to the steam vent, at which time she gave me the ever-so-informative explanation, “It’s a steam vent.” There’s also a decent amount of reading to do.

It turns out that protagonist Samantha Everett is a budding magician, and there’s a nice “magic trick” mechanic in this title. It did require a read-through of her book of magic tricks, but taking the time to do so paid off, as a few of the moments later found in the first chapter immediately made sense. It seemed like a simple introduction to this mechanic, so I’m wondering if it will ramp up in challenge going forward.

While I’m getting the impression that the game may turn out to be rather easy, this is not a bad thing at all. You still need to use logic and think slightly outside the box to solve riddles, but there are some new features in Gray Matter that keep the “stumped” moments to a minimum. When entering an area, hitting the space bar will highlight anything in the screen that can be interacted with, making it easy to cover all bases quickly and efficiently. Plus, instead of offering a myriad of interface choices like “look,” “manipulate,” “walk,” and the like, everything is done with a single click and the cursor changes to whatever the appropriate action will be. This is good for a couple of reasons. For one, there’s less time wasted on the extremely slow adventure game pacing and more time getting things accomplished and discovering new information. For another, it allows for more effective scripting. What if the writer intended you to get some information about an object before you picked it up? Now, the game might force you to first “look” at that object, triggering your character to explain something about it, and only afterwards will the option be granted to manipulate said object. This could do away with the occasional random moments in games like these and give every action and object more meaning. When dealing with a game in which the story comes first and foremost, making sure that it comes off as the writer intended is paramount.

 

 

Some of the dialogue is hokey, but this is passable due to the occasional moments where it shines. There was a cutscene between chapters 1 and 2 that immediately felt much more well-written and made me more excited to see what’s coming up. There are some intriguing elements to the plot so far but, as expected, it’s basically just planting seeds right now. Honestly, off the bat, I kind of regret playing the demo first, as it spoils the first impression of one of the game’s main characters. But I feel confident that in the grand scheme, this will be the most minor of spoilers, and at least now I will know how to fly through that chapter when I get to it. All the while, the game is accompanied by a pleasing and unobtrusive piano soundtrack that adds to the atmosphere in a very nice way.

I’m interested to see how this story will develop. Like many novels would, it’s starting very slow plot-wise, almost too innocently. Jensen’s Gabriel Knight games had a tendency to eventually get violent and even gruesome. I’m wondering if this one will follow suit. It also looks like there’s a lot of game to be played. I put in a little over 2 hours and that was just chapter 1, and taking a quick glance at the table of contents of a walkthrough looks like there are 8 chapters, but a quick glance it was as I didn’t want any spoilers so I’m not 100% sure I read right.

It feels good to be playing a new adventure game that feels just like the old ones. On the other hand, it also looks a lot like the old ones. Honestly, I would love to see what someone like Jane Jensen would do with a big-game budget. Some of these developers are excellent storytellers but not the greatest game-makers. Here’s hoping we see the day where these games with incredible presentation join forces with masterful storytellers.