Back to games, for the first time in a month or so. I've been neck deep in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, which is rather brilliant, and so I've only just got back to exploring different things.
The different thing this week is Unforeseen Incidents, a point and click adventure in the traditional style, with collecting of items, solving of puzzles and heavy emphasis on the plot.
The plot is rather more grim than the usual fare for these sorts of games, with an Ebola inspired disease spreading rapidly through Yelltown, afflicting and killing several people. It's not scared to run deep into the horror of that, with a few rather gruesome moments, though these are a little more sparse than I would like.
The animation is a bit variable, with dialogue being said through simple mouth movements without changes in the wider face, and the walking down stairs definitely looks a little odd. Other parts are much more clean however, with very smooth gestures and an impressive amount of variation in the character design. The voice acting is a definite high point, with a nice range of accents and a really convincing delivery.
The puzzles are as you would expect. There's a need to acquire different items, put them together in reasonably sensible ways and then apply them to existing parts of the scenery in order to solve different problems. They are a bit more logical than the average, with no required leaps of logic or solutions that can only be achieved with multiple try-fail cycles.
It also features a few more involved bits and pieces, such as the old "what phone number should I be ringing" trick, and a couple of logic puzzles, where you need to eliminate incorrect choices by acquiring bits of knowledge from different places. Have a notebook handy. And it also has a few interesting time and motion puzzles that shake up the rhythm a little, as well as an unexpected hacking puzzle between chapters.
It does unfortunately feature that irritating problem common to all of these, the painful walking back and forth to find different components or equipment to solve different puzzles, but it does have the handy double click to jump to a different location.
It's a nice updating of the form, with a deep plot, but sticking enough to traditional values to appeal to old adventure fans. Probably one of the better point and clicks I've played in a while.
Tagged: Game Point and click 2D Easy difficulty PC