Blackwell Epiphany (2014)

I've played the opening section. It looks great - I think Ben Chandler is doing all the art now, so it feels a lot more cohesive. Again, would be nice to see him stretch out into higher resolutions, but I guess at least this way the series is consistent. There's lots of lovely polish as well, with weather effects, silhouettes of people walking around in their rooms in the distant windows, idle chatter between Rosa and Joey. You can even leave footprints in the snow, and if you spend too long walking back and forth admiring it, Joey notices and mocks you for it! The story starts up quite nicely - Rosa is an unofficial police consultant now and has been sent to look around a condemned building, you handle a ghost, see a shooting and get the start of some evil ghost-related plot, and then jump back to the 30s for a flashback with that duchess ghost who's shown up a few times.

I did find the puzzles themselves a bit fiddly, though, and got stuck far too often for an opening section (perhaps the assumption is that the game doesn't need to cater for new players at this point of the series, even in the tutorial section). I was mainly being held back by a lack of feedback on combination attempts or weird UI quirks (why have a 'use' option for Joey if he can't use anything ever, and have the only thing he can do - blow on things - be relegated to his only ever inventory item? Just make that the use option!). Also, there's the same old 'keep clicking through every note and then go back to every dialogue tree to see what's been unlocked' structure here.

Egg-timer update: the dreaded egg-timer is gone in this game, but the cursor is still active during cutscenes, which is very confusing! They never got it right, all the way to the end! Also, the portraits are really nice but also are massive (they take up like a fifth of the screen) so I find them even more distracting than usual. (Also, Joey is too attractive!)

Okay, I got to the point with this one where I was checking walkthroughs and then grumbling at the next solution so much that I gave up and just watched a playthrough. It's been a constant throughout the series, but they nearly all came down to just not having talked to everyone about everything over and over until a new option was unlocked elsewhere, regardless of whether there was a logical reason to follow a particular thread. Anyway, it was nice how this entry connected back to a lot of stuff in the earlier games and tied everything up fairly neatly. I don't think we ever got an answer to why certain spooks become guides, though, which I found a little frustrating!

Sidenote: Dave does some acting again in a couple of roles and is okay, but he cast himself as a Japanese person for one of them. Wouldn't get away with that now even in the world of indie PnCs, I suspect!

Broken Age (2014 - 2015)

Started on a replay of Broken Age. It looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous. The writing is really strong, of course, but I'd forgotten how gentle this game is, especially at the start, and that includes the puzzles. It's not as exciting a replay as other Schafer adventures. I have only just broken out into the hubs for both characters, though, so maybe I'm being a bit harsh.
I didn't mind the first half being easy when I first played, as I was enjoying the world(s) so much, but it's a little more noticeable on replay when you know exactly what's happening. I guess part of it is that the story revolves around two kids breaking out of a gentle, cloying routine, so the opening sections mirror that. You're not kicking down doors and smashing people's faces into bars or whatever.

Am into part 2 now and really enjoying it again. The build up of puzzles is really nice, it has a perfect oscillation of gaining new goals and finding their solutions. Plus, having all the different characters getting mashed up in different combinations and locations is really cool, bolstered with a load of story reveals.
The only thing is, I'm now stuck on the last steps of these sections for both characters! I'd really like to be able to solve it on my own, but I might have to resort to a walkthrough, which would be a shame. Can't remember if I had to use a walkthrough my first time playing it, but I don't think so! 

Okay, checked a hint through, and I probably would have solved it after a break and then coming back for a wander  - I had thought the 'tell a joke' puzzle was impossible to do with dialogue alone, but I just need to find the right combination apparently (I suspect I fluked it last time), and I didn't really think about where a till-then unused inventory item could help. 

Finished! The ending does feel a little abrupt - might have been nice for the villains to play more of an active role, and perhaps for Shay and Vella to get to do some more awesome stuff too (they were getting the massive ships to fire death rays and grabbers and stuff but again it felt a little indirect) - but a lot of the wrap-up is built-in already and any loose ends are tied up with the credits illustrations, so overall I think it's a cute, tidy way to finish it. Also would have liked a 'look at' function just to get more Tim Schafer writing in there, but never mind. Overall, looks and sounds gorgeous, loads of interesting characters and locations, and fun satisfying puzzles. It's not up there with DOTT, FT and GF, and it's hard to rate it separate from my experience as a backer with all the prior knowledge and everything, but it's definitely one of the better adventure games I've played.

Rating: gentle but great

Stick It To The Man (2013)

The platforming is bad and there are annoying pseudo-stealth bits everywhere that involve running away from baddies while also trying to grapple-hook out of their reach, and some of them you have to mind-read to get a sleep sticker to apply to them to put them temporarily to sleep, which is a real faff. It all adds that 'am I missing a puzzle or am I just not doing the platforming well enough' element, which is frustrating.
Otherwise, it's just running across the level and clicking on every thing to see what stickers you can get and then trying to use them on stuff in a way that feels like it might solve a puzzle. Oh, messing with the clowns enough made them get on with each other so one of them suddenly produced a smile sticker? I had no way of knowing that and did it just by mindlessly putting things on other things that kind of felt like they made sense. It's all very Amanita Design, just 'click everywhere until stuff happens'. It's one step of complexity up from McPixel.
The writing is all a bit too try-hard wacky and overwritten, it's like Schafer filtered through MCU writing. And, as reported, it really does feel very reminiscent of Psychonauts at every turn, with the artstyle and the psychic powers manifested as big glowing hands and a crazy lobotomist and a wild circus with an angry father figure and a bunch of g-men in trenchcoats chasing you and so on.

I'm going to give it a bit more of a chance, but first impressions are not great. Presentation is quite nice.

Yeah, played a bit more on this and gave up after skipping through a few long unfunny dialogues delivered in irritatingly wacky voices, and then getting stuck on a stealth bit where I have to do that nine-button-press sequence over and over again trying to figure out which of the two enemies is supposed to attack the other and at which precise pixel of their route it needs to happen at.

Rating: irritating, shallow and unfunny.

The Wolf Among Us (2013)

Started it. It looks great - the engine has been improved a bit, I'm playing it in 4K now, and it's drenched in 80s neon lighting. Along with the melodramatic title sequence, it's giving me Jessica Jones vibes. All the character designs are great, too, especially the non-human characters. The writing and acting is good so far, and the story is relatively intriguing. It does still have all those Telltale issues, though - some weird camera behaviour, inconsistent graphics quality, some characters looking near-identical, QTEs are still a thing, and the big issue of it pushing the whole 'your choices MATTER' thing without it ever being very convincing (at least, so far).

Finished episode 1.  They still have these bullshit 'next time on's at the end, am going to assume that if I quit out before it starts then I can go straight to episode 2 with everything saved when I return, but it's really bad UX to make that a thing I'm worrying about. Especially when I own the whole season. Just cut those out or make them optional.
The other thing that was really annoying me is the QTEs. They're so fiddly and confusing, plus they just distract you from whatever action sequence is actually happening on screen. Really can't believe they're still in here and still this bad. And regular gameplay-wise, the discrepancies between what you meant to do and what actually happens are still there. Otherwise, a fairly good Telltale. I'm hoping that I'll get more involved as the episodes go on, as with TWD S1.

Finished the whole thing. So, yeah, it has nearly all the same issues as TWD S1, though at least it didn't do shitty adventure game puzzles every now and again. The QTEs were infuriating, though. Also, by the end, I didn't really feel like I'd participated in or even really understood the detective story at all - I kept getting whisked away from places before I could look at everything, there was no really chance to put conclusions together, and then everything deflated into a 'well, the big group of baddies did it, obviously, but there's some quibbling to be done about whether the leader was really responsible' ending. There was also a twist at the end, but I didn't understand it and the internet seems to have decided it could mean two or three things but the point is that it's impossible to really know, which is the SHIT kind of twist. And I didn't feel as involved in it as I did with TWD by the end. Honestly, the more I think about it, the lower my opinion goes. It just gets away with a lot because the presentation is so nice. I'm deffo going to try the comics out, but I doubt I'll ever bother with S2 unless it gets rave reviews saying 'this is how Old Telltale should have done things'.

Rating: pretty but dumb; most of TWD's flaws but not as many of its highs.

The Inner World (2013)

Played a tiny bit of it. All very charming so far, a nice gentle start. It's presented well, although I have a few niggles like the character art style having that 'talented artist working in MS Paint' feel and a sneaking suspicion that the dialogue is either a translation or written and directed by someone for whom English is not their first language. I've chuckled at some jokes, but a couple have also not quite landed due to phrasing or delivery. Puzzle-wise, it's started small (catch a pigeon) but without being too dull - I've already got a worm drunk and used my naivety to haggle a garbage vendor down to zero, and regardless chasing a pigeon is much better than opening an email or whatever as the first puzzle.

Okay, played a little bit more. Was planning on playing longer but I actually got put off almost immediately by getting stuck on the very first puzzle - not a good idea to start the player off with something so close to moon logic - and then solving it and being given the goal 'find the girl' with nothing more than that to go on and a big opened up world, so it's going to be a case of looking at everything and talking to everyone until some puzzle strands coalesce. It's all a bit directionless and unengaging. The dialogue also continues to be gentle to a fault.

I slogged through the first section of this and can't be bothered to continue. The puzzles all feel completely arbitrary and disconnected from the story, the signposting is dreadful (especially annoying is the lack of feedback on interactions, outside of a few all-purpose sarcastic remarks - "that was a random guess, wasn't it?" being particularly annoying when the thing you tried made perfect sense) and some puzzles are only really solvable thanks to dialogue option icons which I'm not sure was intentional, the translation and readings from German to English are frequently wonky, and the puzzles are uninspired. I just got to the start of another section, where I've been dropped in a forest and not given any direction whatsoever so it's back to just wandering around clicking every interaction on every hotspot until I can figure out what random task I've got to work on (and presumably then have my character's achievement nullified by the game, which has happened every time so far). Just a very fiddly, irritating game with not much in the way of story or charm to get past the issues.

Rating: irritating.

The Journey Down (2012 - 2017)

I only have chapters 1 and 3 of the three, irritatingly, and it'll cost £9.11 to get the middle one, so I probably won't do that unless the first one is spectacular!

Started it. Very slick so far! Impressive for an indie game (though at nearly £30 for all episodes, it had better be). Great atmosphere, looks lovely, good voice acting and music, and I immediately like the scoundrel I'm playing as.
Small issues: the characters are a mix of 3D models and 2D sprites (slightly different method between cutscenes and gameplay, I think) and their animations can feel a little stilted and canned (and the very first character you see doesn't have a great face design, unfortunately, which didn't help); it's a single-click interface; the first puzzle was opening a panel then opening four clasps then opening another panel then pulling a switch (in the name of tutorialisation and nicely presented as part of a little story beat, but still, ugh) and now I'm looking for ladder rungs so I can actually climb a ladder in my house and get the story started - it's all very 'my first adventure game'.

Okay, had to find a book in a room (by clicking on five hotspots) then a little logic puzzle (AGGGH, though at least this one was very simple). Now I'm into a slightly more meaty puzzle, finding three missing parts (of course!) for my plane. It's not the most exciting thing ever, but it's a step up and it looks like I'll be tempting rats with cheese and all that good adventure game stuff to get them
Incidentally, this whole thing is very Grim Fandango. Apart from the 3D(ish) characters on 2D backgrounds thing, the characters all have Afro-Caribbean masks for faces, the whole thing is very culturally specific with the VO and music etc in fact, and there's talk of the underworld as an adjacent location, there are some gangsters involved in some scam about the way to get there, and the inciting incident is a woman showing up in the lead scoundrel's life who has some connection to it all. Obviously some of that is rather broad, but all together and with some other little specifics, it is clearly a huge influence.
Just a shame the puzzles are a bit bland. By this point in GF I'm clambering up the sides of skyscrapers and befriending demons and reaping souls in the land of the living.

Got a fair bit further with this, and yeah, the puzzles are just uninspired. I'm breezing through it without really thinking. I got to a point where I was finally stuck, so will pause here for now, but I just checked a walkthrough and the only reason I was stuck was that I didn't realise I could get in the plane I'm trying to fix. Now, I should have thought of this really, because they showed me in there in a cutscene and I know the lady is in there waiting for me, but I'd only ever been in there in the cutscene and then they take you back out of it, so it just instinctively felt like a non-gameplay space, plus it turns out you get in via a small hole in the top rather than the big but inaccessible door on the side, so I can see why I didn't consider it.
One puzzle I did like was very simple, which was that I'd been looking at a lovely ceiling fan a lot, thinking 'that's rendered so well, and it looks nice and chunky, great art design', and then at one point realised that I hadn't seen clues as to how to get a propellor anywhere, and instantly clicked that I'd been walking around under one the whole time. They cheat a tiny bit by not giving it a hotspot before the plane puzzle (I think), but that's okay, it helped the moment.

Okay, finished Chapter 1. Good enough to play Chapter 3 (I'll do it straight away, rather than stick to its actual release date in this chronological playthrough), but not enough to buy Chapter 2 (especially not for £9. Maybe if it had been one or two quid, just for completion's sake?).
So, yeah, presentation is great even though it's still very clearly low-budget. The atmosphere, the music, the acting, the visual design, all top notch. It's a shame they couldn't go a bit further with the animation at times, and some of the character designs feel a little cheap, but an impressive amount of cutscenes.
There's not much story to speak of, but that's intentional, and honestly they probably could have done with even less - just have Lina show up, buy the book and then ask to charter your plane. Then goons show up and start shooting at you as you take off and intrigue is created. In the meantime, you've used the puzzles to sow the seeds of the big bad electric company etc. Honestly, the 'meanwhile' cutscenes of the villains feel a bit like padding, and without them this all would have been a nice 30-60 minute intro to a full-length game.
As mentioned though, the puzzles are a bit crap overall. The only places I got stuck were a lack of communication on the game's part which, as with many adventure games' sticking points, I probably could have overcome by dedicating more time to just wandering around and double-checking everything but shouldn't really have had to. Like, I had no reason to go back and check all those bookcases a second time and find out that there's a book on herbs in there which also has some pressed herbs in it of the exact variety I need. I had no reason to think, when I was trying to get rid of a dog, that I should go use a fishing pole with a buoy which was an  ambiguous distance away from me because it had a crab in a cage on the bottom of it which I could use to scare the dog away.
There were some smarter ones, though, like a walk-in freezer that you can come back to and re-use for different stuff - at first you have to route power to the overhead heater to thaw the door out and escape, but later you can then re-route power back to the lower heater to use it to grill some bread. It's one of those nice Tim Schafer moments where you feel smart for using your learned knowledge to figure it out and you also appreciate the tidy layered design that went into it. There's another bit where you have to stop a lift halfway down (Grim Fandango!) so you can sneak up under a railway track and put something on it to get run over by a train. It's a nice FT/GF big-budget-feeling moment where you get to feel clever and cool. Shame there wasn't a lot more of that. For the most part, as I think I said about a recent game on this playthrough, it mostly felt like an idle-clicker for adventure veterans, like you see the matrix and it's all coloured keys for coloured doors. 

Started Chapter 3. They're trekking through the Lower World now, and it's basically Africa, it's well-presented and nice to have a change of scenery, even if some of the wide shots are embarrassingly low-poly and empty. You get to a mining station which is basically the petrified forest from GF, but it overall is taking in a wider range of influences (Tomb Raider 1, Monkey Island, FoA, Terminator and Avatar, Last Crusade). It's a double-edged sword, though, because having these characters out of their element robs them of the charming specificity they had in chapter 1; they start to feel more like video game characters. You quickly move to the city, though, and see the local chefs from Chapter 1 have been forced to move there to survive and there's a big street market with a fruit stand and street band and so on, and you start to feel the cultural idiosyncrasies again of African immigrants in a western city. It reminded me a lot of North East London. Also, we return to the great running bit of Bwana knowing everyone he meets - even when you jump in a bucket chain (GF) and wind up being held at gunpoint by some revolutionaries (GF), you get out of it immediately because you're mates with that one soldier in the Rasta hat. Normally in an adventure game, you're meeting everyone for the first time. Here, there's this lovely feeling of community, and any outsiders stick out even more. It's like Deponia except good.
Otherwise, all the same issues with the puzzles and the story (very simple goal - find the professor - is a bit overloaded by conspiracy plot).

Okay, finished. Not much more to say, really just scuppered by the puzzles, but also I didn't really feel driven to get through them by the storytelling either. This might be to do with skipping the middle chapter, but I don't think so. The actual beats of the story or really just there to give you the occasional long-term goal, which is fine except there isn't much characterisation to replace it either. You never get to know any of these people. The street market that I was happy to see was there purely to give you a fruit sticker, that's its sole purpose, and they don't take the opportunity to let you chat with the vendors or anything. I was actually on the verge of giving up but then it went into the final act which was a bunch of little isolated puzzles (one of them is 'you need to tell someone the name of this plane, you can see the number of the plane and there's a manifest that tells you what names go with what numbers', that's the level of puzzle we're dealing with here) and extravagant action sequences. While it's cool and impressive to have things exploding and car chases and gods fighting each other, it also does contribute to this feeling more like a Lego game.
So, lots of stuff to enjoy but also some fairly big flaws. (I suspect some of these problems could have been solved by having an Afro-Caribbean person on the creative team rather than a bunch of white guys. I guess they copied that from Grim Fandango too!)

Rating: buckets of atmosphere and charm, but some big design and narrative issues.

Silent Night (2023)

Really enjoyed it. It doesn't feel like classic Woo, it feels like a hyper-competent first-time post-Wick action director's calling card, but it has a lot of truly excellent action in it.

There's basically no story (it's near to the most stripped-down revenge plot possible), but that's the point.

Sidenote: the Christmas motif is basically non-existent outside of the marketing, I wouldn't be surprised if some producer asked for it to get mentioned a couple of times so they could justify ripping off Die Hard for the trailer edit.

Rating: this is the real b-movie shit.