Recent reviews by I Am Not Amused

So I got this for 10€ and after I finished it, I still feel like I paid too much for what this non-game had to offer. I like adventure games, but as it turned out, this is not an adventure game. In fact, it's not even a game. It's mostly a series of cut-scenes where you press a button to continue the cut-scene. And even that is optional. There doesn't seem to be any way to actually fail.

The parts of it that actually do feel like a game are ruined by the horrible controls. You are constantly going to fight the camera and struggle to walk around. Just looking behind you requires you to swipe your mouse 7-10 times over your mouse pad. Walking straight is an ordeal. Your character turns left and right on her own and the camera constantly changes angle, requiring you to fight against it even more.

It is clear that whoever made this game does not understand the most basic concepts of video games. I suspect this is what happens when people who don't play video games at all are tasked with making a video game.

The story itself is engaging for 90% of it, which is the only reason I stuck with it. Until I got to the end, that is, where I rolled my eyes so hard, they flew out of my skull. I'm now struggling to find the thumb down button because of my empty eye sockets.

Atrocious car handling, an engineer that talks to you constantly spouting out cliche platitudes and unskippable live action "ESPN TV" cutscenes that are so cringy, you'd be lucky if your eyeballs are still in your skull since the game forces you to watch them.

Total waste of time and money.

This just makes the game go from 100+ FPS to 30-40FPS on planets. This is completely unacceptable.

And it's not like there's any stunning visuals or anything that would warrant the need for a $3000 GPU to run this game at a playable framerate. It's just a completely flat planetary surface without any detail whatsoever and only a very few objects nearby. The graphics look like they should run perfectly even on a toaster. But what you get is 30-35FPS at 1080p...

The official system requirements on the store page are a complete and utter lie. I *dare* you to try and play this game on the "recommended" GPU, or even just run it for more than 10 seconds on the "minimum" spec GPU this game claims to support.

Dear Frontier Developments: Graphics cards do not grow on trees.

Absolute garbage game. All it has are pretty graphics, but the game itself is abysmally bad. And it's such a shame, as Metro Last Light was amazing.

Every single thing in this game is annoying as hell. From the autosave that happens every 30 seconds flashing in random numbers on the screen and producing stutter, to the guns being useless and jamming every 5 seconds, to running out of bullets just after 5 minutes, to the lighting being completely broken and you can't see anything even in broad daylight, to the huge mouse lag that happens after every mini-cutscene (like climbing a ladder), to the keyboard keys having almost half a second of delay, to the game requiring you to hold the E key for two seconds to activate of pick up something, and countless other aggravating things that ruin this game.

Garbage. Just plain garbage.

"Do you like cockroaches?"

-- George Stobbart, talking to a hot girl


Now that the funny part is dealt with, let's just say that the game starts out strong and very promising, but then descents into really bad writing, a really bad plot, completely wrongly delivered voice acting (face palm worthy at times,) and religious BS. It gets worse and worse the closer you get to the end. The final couple of hours are so bad, it becomes unbearable. I was just going through the notions at some point, clicking away dialog as I wasn't interested anymore at what the characters had to say, or what was happening. It's like trying to sit through a really bad movie while in reality you just want to walk out of the theater. The only thing that's keeping you there is the memory of how good it was at the beginning.

Might be worth a pick up for a couple bucks on sale, but even then, it can be a chore to play through to the end. This is one of the rare games I know of where it starts as a good game, and becomes a bad game as you play through it.

If I had to use a one-liner to describe this game: What a shame it ended up like this.

Poor start, but picks up as it goes on. And I've been playing this for 25 hours now and it's still going. Has to be one of the longest adventure games I've ever played.

Pretty good overall. My only major complaint is that it turns into a cheesy romantic comedy after a while, which is not something I'm particularly fond of, but that's subjective I guess. It definitely has a very different feel to it compared to the first game.

Overall, it's not as good as the first one, but it's very hard to top one of the best adventure games ever made anyway. Still stands well on its own.

The first game was 10/10 material. This one barely makes the cut. The first part of the game is OK, but once you get to the second part where you play the Critter, gameplay largely devolves into clicking everything in every possible permutation until something useful happens, and there's no rhyme of reason behind it.

For example, why on earth would I use a sock on a generator? To make a belt out of it! Yes of course! Wait... what?!

And then you need to use a fishing line on a baseball cap? To make a... something you then use on a penguin? Eh?

So in the end, you will need to go from location to location, pick everything up that you can, use every item in your inventory on every other item on your inventory, then use every item on your inventory on every hotspot in the current location, and that's how you progress through the game. It doesn't matter how absurd a combination seems. You need to try them all. It gets tiring and is not very fun. It's hard to believe that this is a sequel to a game where none of this was the case. It had natural puzzles that made complete sense. No idea what happened with this game.

So, yeah, it's one of those games where moon logic is through the roof. Might be worth buying for 5 bucks or so, still. But if you skip this one, you aren't missing much.

I have no idea what I just played. The game is barely 2 hours long, and it was good*, but I don't know what the hell it was. Kind of like the ending of Lost.

* Once you turn off voices in the setup tool, that is; voice acting is so bad it actually ruins the game. Run the setup tool, disable the "use voice pack if available" checkbox in the "advanced" settings, thank me later.

Best adventure game I played in years. Finished "Kathy Rain" a couple days ago which was already very good, but Technobabylon seems to be on a whole different level. This is pretty much a perfect point&click adventure. I just can't find anything wrong with it. At least nothing that actually matters, other than one nitpick: the mouse acceleration issue. But it's 100% solvable through an *.cfg file tweak.

The puzzles are just right, and everything makes sense. They're all environmental. No artificial "chess puzzles" slapped on top. It's all in-game. There's no "moon logic" anywhere to be found. The difficulty is also just right. I didn't get stuck even once, but I did have to think a bit to figure out solutions.

The plot is engaging and the story is constantly progressing. At no point did the plot lose momentum and got you in a "what the hell am I doing here" situation. You always feel like you're on a mission with a clear goal.

Graphics are very well made. Sound, music, voice acting are also very good.

Took me 14 hours to finish. I got so sucked into it, I actually played it in two sitting over a weekend! I don't tend to play a game for 7 hours at a time, but this just wouldn't let me go. It has different endings too (at least two I know of.)

Yeah, it's REALLY good. 10/10, must-buy.

Good game. Plays like a classic adventure game, looks good, sounds good. The 320x240 graphics give the game the same feel you get from classics like Full Throttle and Monkey Island. But you can already see that from the screenshots. The writing is good, voice acting is also good.

If I had to find something to complain about, it's that the puzzles are not very difficult, but that's just me. On the other hand, the puzzles are *real* adventure game puzzles. You're not presented with chess puzzles, sliding tiles mini-games, or anything like that. Puzzles are purely environmental, and solved by observing your surroundings, and/or using information you gathered so far. The only exception I found is lock picking, but it's a very easy version of the Splinter Cell lock picking mechanic, and it doesn't actually feel out of place at all. Basically, it's just there to make you feel like you're actually picking a lock rather than having the door open automatically just because you used a lock pick on it.

And I'm happy to say, there's exactly *zero* pixel hunting in this game. By pressing the space bar, you always know what's in the current location without having to scan over every pixel with your mouse. Also, when examining objects, your character doesn't have to walk up to the object first before describing it; you can just examine things from afar.

Finally, I've seem reviews describing the protagonist as "goth" or "emo", and I'm not sure where that comes from. Looks like a rock or metal biker kind of person to me. Has an electric guitar in her room too. And has a strong dislike for religion. If "militant atheist metal biker" is a synonym for "goth" or "emo" these days, I must have missed the memo.

If you like this type of game, it's highly recommended. If you're not sure whether or not you like this type of game, there's a demo (note the "Download Demo" button on the store page) and you should definitely try it.