I own chapters 1-5, it's just chapter 6 I'm missing. How weird, don't know why I'm missing that one - maybe because it came out 3 years after chapter 5 and I'd already got the others in a group by then. This whole episodic gaming thing really sucks when they sell them individually. It's like finding a book series in a charity shop with one missing. We'll have to see if I get through all 5 chapters and want to buy the last one!
Started. I'm going to leave it for today, as it's a (intentionally) directionless 'you're just futzing around the house' opening so it's not something to jump into and play the hi-octane opening sequence. It's really nicely presented so far - all the art is photographic so it looks unusual and really sharp, everything's nice and crisp and minimalist, and the dream sequence opening was a cool way to go. The only issue really is the weird choice to have some hotspots only show up when you wave an inventory item over them.
Finished the first chapter, and it's entirely mundane puzzles right up until a bit of intrigue at the end. Just reading letters, calling estate agents, having stilted conversations with your wife. But the puzzles are just silly stuff thrown together, like using baby oil on an elevator to get the doors to open all the way, or pissy little logic puzzles. Also, it was made in Flash and it can't quite handle the adventure game stuff. And it was really short, yet the chapters cost more than the BTDT+TGP bundle each. I'll have to see how it goes from here, though - maybe it's not really fair to judge the chapters individually despite the release schedule. The first two did get released together, for one thing.
I'm onto chapter 3 now. My definite overall impression of this is 'great presentation and atmosphere, bad game design and storytelling'. It all looks and sounds gorgeous and the dream worlds are really cool. But pretty much all the puzzles are either dull busywork or irritating logic puzzles and pixel hunts, the dialogue is really clunky, and the storytelling is out of whack - not only did it take far too long to get to anything interesting, the real world puzzles have all been wacky and the dream world puzzles have been mundane 'put the dishes in the sink please' stuff, plus there's no real differentiation between the presentation of the two realms, the real world feels pretty much as odd as the dream one.
Okay, I got partway into episode 5 and gave up. but frankly I was tempted to way before that. Nice presentation, bad puzzles, and very clunky dialogue (possibly because the devs are Swedish) which inexplicably gets praised in every review I've read. Destructoid's said "There’s a real believability to Victor and Alicia’s married life; at one point Alicia asks her husband if he would like “the truth or some appeasing bullshit” in relation to a simple question." That's not believable dialogue! No one talks like that! And the rest of it is the protagonist having incredibly didactic conversations with dream people about how he was scared of having a baby but now he's cool with it (peak video game dadification). If they'd got a better writer in to polish it up and they'd either replaced or removed most of the puzzles it might have been great. Apparently episode 6, which took years to arrive, did remove a lot of the puzzles and basically let the player click through to get the story resolution. I skimmed through a video and it looked like there was some cool stuff in there. Hilariously, it ends with a Radiohead quote but credits it to Thomas Edward Yorke so it looks more like they're quoting an 18th century poet! Like, guys, you've come off pretentious enough already, don't sweat it.
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