Some biggish changes with this one. Firstly, there's volume control, and it's even got separate main and voice sliders! The art style is a bit different, I think it's Ben Chandler. The main art is a bit more simple and cartoony, while the portraits feel about the same as they were, perhaps a little less stylised than before. It all looks very nice, though it's an interesting shift for the franchise art to get more simplified - my immediate gut response is that it feels less serious. But I've only played through one room, so it's a bit early to know. The audio seems improved - the VO is immediately a lot crisper and it seems like there's more sound effects too - footsteps and the like. The internet functions have moved to Rosa's smartphone, which is a great idea - no more trekking back to the apartment. I'm trying to remember how common smartphones were in 2011 - I guess this is right around the time that they started to become the standard, so in 2009 it might not have felt like a natural design choice. It's really interesting to play a franchise that goes through those cultural milestones, like watching The Simpsons and seeing them get their first computer, flatscreen tv etc. The game starts off in media res, with a haunted yacht case, which is a fun way to kick things off. Hopefully it'll keep the adrenaline up for a little longer than the previous one. Sadly, the portraits and the ever-present cursor are still present, and Joey's still being a prick (the first thing he says is to criticise Rosa for using the phrase "I'm coming aboard", I have no idea why). Hope we get to condemn him to Hell by the end of the last game.
Got a bit further with this. The storytelling is definitely slicker - the opening ends in a (very low-budget!) action scene, then it segues really smoothly from that to the titles to a tv news story to Rosa in her apartment. There was also a nice little twist that completely caught me out. There are more snazzy effects as well, like rippling river water and undulating portals, plus the backgrounds have a bit more pizazz to them, with reflective surfaces, more interesting lighting schemes and stuff. I do think the character sprites are a bit too cartoony, and it looks like Ben added more detail to them for the final game. Also, apparently the portraits originally were a lot more cartoony too but they got changed to match previous styles in a later update - definitely a good idea because, doing an image search, the originals feel really out of place.
Alright, putting it down for now. It definitely does feel like the best one yet, although it still has some of the same issues - despite the promise of the 'Rosa goes into business as a spiritualist' set-up, that gets dropped straight away as the story just falls into her lap again, and there are still big chunks of 'walk across town from one character to another over and over, unlocking one new dialogue option at a time'.
Finished! So, turns out the sprites were done by Ben but the backgrounds weren't, which explains the discrepancy. So, this one felt a lot meatier than the rest. It's There are some puzzles that I found a little unfair but at least there's a good mix of them, it's not all dialogue-tree/clue based. The game is longer, and the story got into psychic conspiracy stuff as well, setting it up for the final game, which is cool. (Doesn't look like Joey will be evil after all, and in fact the last puzzle of the game is to save the day as Joey by negging Rosa as much as possible!)
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