Recent reviews by dani.jz

This is where it's at. For its relatively high price tag, you'll get the smartest, and probably most fun game of the decade.

While far from perfect (at this point, Unity seems to have been a wrong decision at project kickoff), it's probably the best thing that has happened to computer games since Tetris. Think Minecraft, and space simulation. :)

Like Minecraft, it's open ended, vast and teems with possibilities. Also like Minecraft, it exposes an impressive API for modders and plugin writers to utilize, and there are mods out there to change the entire solar system, to replace stock physics with a more realistic one, to build giant robots, whatever you want.

As you start, the game puts you in a lead role of a space program on Kerbin - an incredibly dense planet roughly 1/10 in size of Earth, with the same G value at sea level, inhabited by little green people who, by the looks of it, aren't very bright. It never ceases to be endearingly humorous, while commanding quite some investment of your time in learning about actual space exploration, and stuff like orbital physics.

You don't have to hit up the Feynman Lectures to enjoy the game, but you might actually be tempted to. Whether carefreely launching badly designed craft and - sometimes - failing hilariously, or making Excel sheets for TWR and Delta-V calculations, and painstakingly plotting your launch and transfer windows, and exploring the solar system, if you think space is cool, you'll definitely have fun.

(I do wish the 1.1 release will fix the terrible instability on OS X though...)

It's a game about New York City!
It's a game about Jews!
It's a game about New York City Jews!

:D How could this go wrong? Well, it doesn't. It's a great game. Get it.

A nice little game. I really, really enjoyed it, and now that Chapter 2 is finally out, I think it deserves even more attention. :)

At times it feels somewhat stumbling in execution and puzzle design, but overall, it never ceases to be entertaining.

Yess... This game is just plain beautiful. It's the tiki bar of adventure games.

It manages to be nostalgic without blatant references, to be zany without being stupid or infuriating, and generally manages to avoid most of the pitfalls of its genre. Most of the time the puzzles flow effortlessly, and you only rarely experience the sort of dissonance between story and puzzles that came to be the killing flaw of the adventure genre.

Overall, this is one of the big new titles, right up next to neo-classics like Wadjet Eye's Resonance, Primordia and Blackwell, or the Telltales Monkey Island revival series. I'm not mentioning Daedalic, because Daedalic should pay these guys to give them lessons in game design and story writing.

Big, big A+. I'm sure it's possible to do better than this, but these days nobody has actually done better. Love it.

It is a wonderful game, a great shame that it wasn't a success when it was new. I absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys classic adventure and mystery games, especially the fans of historical settings. And I have to say, re-released on the centennary of World War I, this game is current as ever.

There are a few minor caveats though, that I need to mention...

First, the control scheme is extremely unusual, and not very intuitive, especially if you are used to point-and-click games. It definitely takes getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, you won't even notice this.

Second, the Windows version at least seems to be somewhat buggy - I have ran into a few crashes, peculiar slowdowns and speedups, and action icons getting mixed up randomly (like "turn around" being shown instead of "go forward", or having an item icon stuck as your "interact" icon, even after you've disposed of the item...)

Third, there are a few genuine design glitches, especially surrounding the artifact missing from Tyler Whitney's compartment. It is nothing major, but it's definitely something that the creators, or the remastering team could really have tackled better.

This game is a beautifully executed insult to all humanity.

In this last installment, the protagonist Rufus reaches levels of anti-heroism that are no longer funny-awkward, but plain "dafuq I'm gonna stop playing right now" despicable. The game had a pretty interesting plot point in the middle, which could have been a turning point in character development, but they blew it for laughs. And those aren't really laughs either, just "oh noes" moments.

(For example... Rufus finds some orphans, whom, in order to advance the game, you first have to send into the van of a paedophile, and then feed to a monster... I have no idea if there was a time and location where that counted as "funny", but it sure isn't now.)

Really. The writing is a serious mess. The jokes are unfunny and sometimes downright insulting. And if you think "well Deponia is supposed to be like that", this game is totally nothing like the earlier ones. Really. Those were funny, most of the time. This is just, well, cringy. And the finale is completely off the bat, and does nothing to redeem Rufus, OR the writer.

The Blackwell series has finally had its Mass Effect 3 moment. Or I could also evoke Goodbye Deponia.

The conclusion of Blackwell Epiphany is anticlimatic, lacks catharsis, and is somewhat depressing and discouraging. I'm not petitioning for a happier ending, but even for a deliberate "bad end", it's badly executed, and falls short of whatever you might be expecting or hoping after Blackwell Deception.

Blackwell Deception spoilers ahead, and some hints at the ending of Epiphany...
As you remember from Deception, Gavin was totally freaked out when we took him to the spirit world, saying that he's not supposed to be there, hinting at some kind of contract that forbids this... And true enough, he was torn apart there and then.
Now, given the slight hints at things going on behind the scenes, I was expecting a spiritual conspiracy drama, some kind of detective mystery, with superhuman, and potentially divine powers moving the pieces from behind the scenes. I mean come on, if you like conspiracy stories, what better than a conspiracy God himself may be in on. I was really curious about the "They" mentioned by both Gavin, and the first victim we meet in Epiphany...
Well, drop any expectation, because they are going to be betrayed. There IS no "they". The solution of the mystery is so incredibly inane and bad, that I could only liken it to a "the butler did it" moment. And in this mystery, it is not through investigation and clever handling of clues that the butler is uncovered by Sherlock Holmes or Poirot. Naaah. The butler just confesses without warning.
And yeah, the conclusion that follows is pretty cliched and not thought through AT ALL. Not to mention being quite similar to bloody Mass Effect 3. Aaargh.

The execution is awesome though. It's a huge shame. It could have been so cool