This week your intrepid heroes point and click, woo the ladies, and ask for our time back. Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler faces the CHAIRQUISITION!
Game: Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/472420
Devel: Venture Moon Industries
Engine: Unity
Price: 6.99 / CDN 7.79
Wazzat: Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler is a classic point-and-click adventure, created with love by an indie team that includes LucasArts alumni, Bill Tiller (The Curse of Monkey Island, Steven Spielberg’s The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine).
Disclosure: We were sent keys.
CHAIRQUISITION:
Makes with the working
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- During the intro cutscene, the subtitles only “started” about halfway through and then froze again after 2 lines.
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Shiny / Sounds
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- 3D models on 2D background…
- The characters don’t so much as move vs glidewalking.
- Everyone’s jaw-organ is on a static hinge.
- Could explain the horrid sync.
- I couldn’t deal with the voicework so Slayer it was.
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- You can really tell who recorded this at their desks with their webcams and who had a whisper room
- TIL John St John voices the zombies
- Visually, not too impressive. 2003 Quality graphics
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- It really does look jarring when Duke attempts to move “deeper” into any of the sceneries, and it doesn’t help that he already looked far too big and disproportionate when compared to everyone around him.
- Once could make the argument he is made to look like the gorilla, but the gorilla is even bigger than he is.
- I’m guessing the two most egregious examples of bad quality audio were kickstarter backers who paid enough to be in the game.
- Which I can only reinforce how big a misapplication of judgement it was by what’s coming up in the Fun segment.
- Where’s the AA? Oh, that’s right! This is a Unity game, the default AA from the presets don’t work on Linux.
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Control
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- Point and click so nothing to report.
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- Dinged a chair because the combining/crafting UI makes no sense sometimes
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- For the most part everything works as you expect, until you want to drag something out of your inventory and onto the scenery that it just fails to register sometimes.
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FUN
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- Your primary mission is to run about and woo the ladies.
- Protip: If you are pushing 2.2 meters and build like a brick house that’s not going to be difficult.
- I’m not saying looks alone will woo the best and the brightest but it goes a long way I may or may not be speaking from personal experience.
- Also, it’s sexist?
- Anywho, this game bored the piss out of me from the start.
- Attempted humour falls flat.
- It looks like a student project.
- It’s hella short.
- And there is nothing, NOTHING to make you give a singular FK about the story.
- The industry quit making these games for a reason.
- Yeah, double Fine can remaster their classics but their latest IP Broken Age was met with a resounding meh.
- And this lads, is no Broken Age.
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- “A wretched hive of SCUMM™ and villainy” – got a laugh out of me. AND ONLY ME
- For a monkey island inspired adventure game, this is pretty tame
- You have everything you need to solve any puzzle on the same three screens
- There aren’t any lethal traps or items you need to get early on to progress in the game, as far as I can tell.
- CAN I GET A SPEED UP BUTTON PLEASE!
- I beat it in about 2 hours, but that’s with going around clicking everything. If you knew what you’re doing, it could be done in an hour and change.
- I can’t give it one chair. Maybe a story about a big dumb guy who isn’t great with women hits a little close to home. It gets the sympathy chair
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- This game is boring.
- When it comes to the whole Mechanics vs Narrative and Aesthetics, Point and Click adventure games come out of the gate with a very serious handicap.
- The Mechanics of Point&Click games have been stripped bare, boiled down and fine picked to the bone over the past 20 something years.
- So, if you’re going to put yet another adventure game out there you better have something really special to bring to the table.
- I guess working in working in some very successful LucasArts games does count towards that specialness, unfortunately when your background is design, writing, and illustration, that doesn’t really mean much to a videogame.
- I’ve said it time and time again, videogames live or die on their mechanics.
- And Duke Grabowski does absolutely nothing to differentiate itself from the hundreds of Point&Clicks which Nostalgia-fueled dimwits keep throwing money at on Kickstarter.
- Playing past the 20 minute mark was painful.
- Not because of something the game did, no. It’s precisely because it did NOTHING of interest.
- I think this would’ve been a fun story if it was a short movie. Like your Big Buck Bunnies and those tiny short Pixar releases every now and again.
- Work on the dialogue a little bit and you got yourself an awesome 30 minute to 1 hour short, which people can enjoy.
- As a game, though, it falls, feels and is short.
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Final –
