Her goal in the second act is simply to learn a little more about the monster’s provenance and continue her quest to stop it – and others like it – from terrorizing her world. Vella’s puzzles aren’t any less frustrating, but at least the ship she finds herself on is a little bit different than we remembered it through Shay, abused as it was by the crash landing. Double Fine Productionsĭuring the most frustrating moments of Shay’s quest I simply quit his story and jumped over to Vella – a nice trick happily carried forward from the first act. I literally spent hours just going from one character to the next and dragging and dropping items in my inventory on them until something happened.Īnd when something did happen, I often found myself thinking – angrily – that there was no logical reason why I should have known that it would. The connections between the items you collect and how and where you’re intended to use them are frequently unknowable. Exploration is simply non-existant.Ĭompounding matters, the puzzles – once just minor distractions – have transformed into exasperating exercises in trial and error. This dogged retreading sucks almost all of the originality and creativity out of the experience. ![]() And the writing – particularly a couple bits that involve telling jokes to an easily offended tree and trying to properly describe the shape of a knot – is as charming and knowing as ever.īut – and I can’t emphasize this strongly enough – we’ve seen all of these places and people before. Voiced by the likes of Will Wheaton and Jack Black, they’re bursting with personality. On the one hand, these are some great characters. After a funny little introduction he gives Shay a list of stuff he needs to get his ship working again, and Shay spends pretty much the rest of his time in the game collecting these items by going back to places Vella had already explored and talking to characters Vella had already met. ![]() Shay walks up the beach and into a town, then climbs a hill where he meets Alex, the guy who helped Vella shoot down the monster in the first act. The rush of excitement re-experiencing this terrific twist came rushing back. The stylized, hand-crafted world was just as inviting as I’d remembered, and our two protagonists seemed ripe to continue their fantastical adventure. I was ready to dive in. The two heroes switch places, setting up some interesting possibilities. The brave young Vella falls into to the monster-cum-ship she just destroyed as a confused Shay stumbles out onto the beach upon which it crashed. (SPOILER ALERT – if you haven’t played the first act and plan to, stop reading now.) When you boot Broken Age up and press continue you’ll see the last few moments of the first act play out again. In case it needs saying, I didn’t much enjoy it. The second half of the game shamelessly regurgitates locations and characters, lacks much of the smart subtext and meaning we were able to draw from the first game, and cranks up puzzle difficulty to unfair and un-fun extremes. ![]() Players ended up waiting a surprising long 15 months to get the second half of the tale, but, like many, I assumed that time was being put to good use. It was a pleasure to play, even if its puzzles weren’t all that interesting. Beautiful, funny, and wonderfully clever, Broken Age began as the story of an independent young woman taking a stand and a mollycoddled boy trying to mature into a man. After raking in nearly $4 million in crowd funding, the acclaimed American indie game maker delivered a wonderful first half in its fanciful home-grown point-and-click adventure.
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