Recent reviews by Gelf

Absolutely fantastic game. Magicka meets Starship Troopers. Easy to drop in and out when I have time, and I even got a chance to take part in a real-life Major Order!

12/10

This game was impossibly good, and I am surprised at how I'm looking forward to more. I have a deep appreciation for this game and all its aspects. Wholly worth the wait and the $20 (cost at time of posting). First playthrough netted about 15+ hours of gameplay between actual in-game content and cipher solving both on live-stream and off.

Get Jenny LeClue if you like: Nancy Drew, Oxenfree, the Blackwell series, story-driven adventure games, investigation adventure games, mysteries, stylized graphics.

PROS:
No mouse needed, can be played on a laptop. Multiple layers of experience, both obvious and hidden. Fully encapsulated narrative with enough unanswered questions to make you desire more. Excellent art. Beautiful music. Packed with genuine moments and "Whoa, I'm smart!" puzzles. Tips between classic Nancy Drew-esque investigation and games like Oxenfree.

CONS:
Lack of direct address commas. I had to put something here...

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate TBC (to be continued) endings with a fiery passion, because most games use it as an excuse to avoid a mess of an ending. Jenny LeClue has a fully realized and wholly encapsulated narrative that satisfied my need for answers, solving the mystery while simultaneously building a very strong case for a second game. I had a knee-jerk reaction to the ending initially, but the more I thought about it, the more I found that this game delivers on all fronts.

Supremely unsettling and nostalgic, this is storytelling as an art form.

I played this game from beginning to end (completed it) live for people on my stream and I've never felt so frustrated or embarassed on behalf of my viewers. Please understand that this review includes specific examples of events in-game that could be considered spoilers.

Lovely hand-drawn art style. Competent voice acting. Highly detailed environments. Revisted old locations and characters in a fresh, new way.

Daedalic offers us unimaginative mini-games (click on the psychadelic red mushroom to make your Mario-Kart, er, go-kart, go faster), QTE events, shoehorned pop culture references (see the aforementioned Mario Kart), and "read my mind" item associations that become harder and harder to parse out the more frustrated the player gets.

Also on the plate: shockingly off-the-cuff racism (Rufus comments "There goes the neighborhood" upon viewing a mixed race couple moving into an apartment), transphobia (telling a trans woman her bust is too small, her legs are too hairy, and her voice is too manly, immediately after said woman was assaulted, e.g., his beard ripped off and his genitalia presumably as well, by Rufus' on-again/off-again girlfriend Toni), and completely unintelligable logic (too many examples to even consider narrowing it down) makes DEPONIA DOOMSDAY an unimaginably low-brow, immature venture. As if giving their playerbase two giant middle fingers,

The logic is, well, Deponian. As with the earlier installments, there are some leaps of logic you just have to feel froggy enough to get (bra underwire plus halved potatoes equals ear protectors? Okiedokie.). Most chapters will end up being a daisy chain of "do this, then this, then this, then that, and now this" consisting of ~20 steps, a gameplay style that has never been very rewarding. "You want over twenty hours of gameplay out of a point-and-click adventure, dammit, you're going to get it!" Having multiple action chains going at once would allow a player to switch it up if they get stuck, but DOOMSDAY offers one row to hoe, and God be with you if you get confused or lost, which may happen often. The logic shifts and changes, and players are expected to fumble around until they act against the pre-determined rules as well (even though there's no Interact icon, left-click anyway until something happens).

Art assets are clearly reused from earlier games, and no more obvious than right at the beginning. Animations of new assets are smoother, while old assets are janky and stuttery. Entire scenes feel like they're missing, and the cinematics will simply jump ahead to avoid them, giving some transitions a terrible whiplash. Only once do we get the guitar player strumming us into a new chapter (even then, it's a disappointing, in-your-face "shame on you for not liking the ending" finger-wagging) and no tongue-in-cheek tutorial that we've come to know and love from the earlier installments.

The ending is frustratingly convoluted, with the exposition dump insisting that the solution was there the whole time and this loop was really connected to this loop and we didn't realize that there were two major loops with smaller loops inside the loops and, and, and...okay, Rufus. As Goal and the guitar-player insist, we shouldn't "taunt endings." I've learned my lesson.

It was a mediocre slog through a frustrating swamp of barbed wire. DEPONIA DOOMSDAY felt less like a new chapter in an oddball, quirky series and more like two big middle fingers for people who dared be unhappy or unfufilled with the ending to the Trilogy.

This has been my favorite game for a very, very long time and I would recommend anyone with a taste for unique storytelling to give it a try.

This game is the number one exemplar for this generation's open-world gaming. High quality graphics and texures, versatile gameplay, and a large community of modders as well as the continuing development of official content places Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at the top of the Fantasy Must Play List.

EDIT: I tried to keep up with my husband's hours played, but I gave up when I hit 150 and he hit 900. Because of a recurring glitch, he still hasn't done the Battle of Whiterun.

Powerful storytelling and a haunting atmosphere come together in a game that is an enigma built on a pretty solid engine and graphics, with spectacular music and worthwhile DLC content.

If you're a fan of survival horror like Silent Hill but would rather have a more 'Twin Peaks' feel than 'Exorcist,' Alan Wake and Alan Wake: American Nightmare should be on your games list.

Not worth the full $30 Retail Price, but definately worth picking up during a sale, AP is an interesting, fun twist with an environment that breeds obsession over perfection. So if you can, get it for cheap.

This game is fantastic, the style of play, the worlds, the humour is wonderful. This is one game where co-op isn't really co-op (especially if you have bad aim!). I play when I need to relax, I play when I want to explore, I play when I want to just hack and slash (or zap and shoot).