Your intrepid heroes watch a bad intro, lose their gerbils, and enjoy the illusion of choice. Silence faces the CHAIRQUISITION!
Game: Silence: The Whispered World 2
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/314790/
Devel: Daedalic Entertainment
Engine: Unity
Price: 29.99 / CDN 39.99
Wazzat: Can you save Silence, the grim, but also serene world between life and death? Can you help Noah find his little sister Renie in this suffering world? Can you bring her home? Explore Silence and join the siblings on their adventurous journey.
CHAIRQUISITION:
Makes with the working
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- http://www.daedalic.de/en/ homepage is 19MB.
- I can’t ding you a Chair for that but goddamn.
J-
- Performs very well in game as well. 60FPS@UHD on Fantastic
- All the videos are 720P/30 though so they look ugly as shit in comparison
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Shiny / Sounds
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- Whoever encoded that intro video should be shot, ney, stabbed in their reproductive organ.
- This thing is directed like a mofo.
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- It looks and sounds very good, but there are a few niggling issues, like the fact that there isn’t any lipsync. Which in a dialogue heavy game is super distracting
- The matte paintings are really well done, however after spending copious amounts of time staring at the 3d models on the 2D background, you do start to notice things
- The voice acting is really good. Even the child they got for the little girl isn’t terrible
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- Framerate is usually something we’ll rag on during the Makes with the Working but in this case, it also very much plays into the aesthetics.
- It’s jarring to see the game go from 30 FPS to 60FPS and then back the moment a cutscene starts.
- Both the cutscenes and the world are beautifully designed and are about on par with one another, why would you do something like this?
- The voice acting is also great, as is the script behind it, but like Jordan mentioned the lack of lipsync doesn’t really fit.
- It’s not every game which manages goosebumps out of me during the intro cutscene; based solely on hand-drawn visuals and an awesome soundtrack, no less.
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Control
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- It can be real finicky about selecting targets.
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- They have the mouse movement minigames, but they don’t capture your cursor to the screen. That’s a wee annoying
- The UI has a few minor issues
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- There’s a whole of two buttons for this game, the action/move button and the “Hints” button.
- And since point&clickers are often very limited when it comes to mechanics and the controls driving said mechanics, it’s pretty hard to cock it up.
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FUN?
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- I’ve named the little girl “Food”
- You GOT to let people skip the intro scenes.
- Seriously, I just said “I got to sit through this bullsh*t again”
- If not you at least need to nope the autosave mechanic.
- Illusion of choice much?
- I just chose the exact opposite for all the questions in the reunion scene (that you made me sit through twice) and it led to the same outcome.
- The cute lovable sidekick is a bit over the top.
J-
- This is one of those games where you’re sitting there, listening to some dialogue and then there is a pause
- The pause goes on for a strangely long amount of time. Then you realize that the game is expecting you to do something
- And that statement encapsulates the problem with this game. I would totally watch a feature length movie or miniseries about this game. The gameplay elements themselves become a tedious distraction
- And the waiting for your character to do something while the overly long animation repeats for the nth time is also not that fun
- The story is well written, albeit a bit heavy on the tropes that it’s supposedly trying to parody/pay homage to
- I was surprised how sharp the dialogue was for a kids game. Somewhat reminiscent of over the garden wall
- In fact, I’m pretty sure that was a pretty big source of inspiration for this game
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- I’m not the target audience here.
- In fact, from what I’ve played of the game so far, this is geared more towards parents of children 8-12.
- It tackles some more grown-up material but with a charm and light enough mood, which could serve as an awesome aid for you as a parent to talk to your offspring about those very same subjects.
- The limited control scheme and simple point and click mechanics are perfect for an introductory video game, should said offspring be on track to getting into the world of video games.
- And even though I’m aware I’m not the target audience, for the first hour or so I was hooked.
- Silence manages to be kid friendly but not condescendingly so, which is actually what happens with many children orientated games/media. And that means even a completely fucking jaded 30-year old asshole on the internet can find some enjoyment in it.
- It wasn’t until I hit some slightly convoluted puzzles, one of which is the one I’m stuck on in the footage you’re watching, that I actually stopped and took stock what was happening.
- For all my shpiels of mechanics being the driving force behind a videogame, I too can recognize that you can in fact have very good game while focusing solely on the aesthetics and narrative.
- And this game does those latter two very, very well. Even if there are some nits to be picked at.
- This will also be a great teaching aid, if you’d like to give your kids a crash course in patience.
- Goddamn those loading screens take for fucking ever.
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Final –
