Game Review - Darkest Dungeon (build 14620)

Game Review: Darkest Dungeon  (build 14620)
Score: +6/FAIL
You can buy Darkest Dungeon with no-hassle setup and risk-free money-back guarantee from Good Old Games.

Even before you play the Campaign, Darkest Dungeon sets your expectations: "Darkest Dungeon is about making the most of a bad situation. Quests will fail or must be abandoned. Heroes will die. And when they die, they stay dead. Progress autosaves constantly, so actions are permanent. The game expects a lot out of you. How far will you push your adventurers? How much are you willing to risk in your quest to restore the Hamlet? What will you sacrifice to save the life of your favorite hero? Thankfully, there are always fresh souls arriving on the stage coach, seeking both adventure and fame in the shadow of the Darkest Dungeon"

The balance in Darkest Dungeon is one where you fight attrition on every front and thereby slowly make headway. This attrition is mostly manifested in the Stress system which handicaps your characters (but occasionally helps them) very quickly (as it is very easy to gain Stress) and the autosave system which means random sudden death cannot be rolled back and you are forced several steps back. Your slow progress basically translates to "grinding", in a worse way than grinding in online MMOs.
While this fits perfectly with the gothic Lovecraftian genre, there is nevertheless one fatal flaw in the game design -- Disrespect for the player's time.

Now, more than ever, there are so many great games. For any game to basically waste my time grinding over and over again, doing extremely repetitive things, is inexcusable. Cheap online MMOs get you to do that at higher levels of character development for two reasons:

• You'll otherwise run out of content and be bored, leave the game, and stop spending money
• You need to be frustrated by slow progress so you'll spend money in all sots of ways to make headway.

And once you spend money you'll be hooked because you don't want to lose your investment.
But Darkest Dungeon is not an online game. They've already got your money, so there's no reason to waste your time.

If an encounter suddenly goes bad and you lose a key character like a healer and suddenly things can collapse very quickly, forcing you to wait for a healer to randomly show up and improve them again while everyone else waits -- more time-wasting. In fact, combat is so chancy that you are actually NOT guaranteed to see both tutorial characters survive even the tutorial getting-to-the-town mission of killing a total of three bandits.
Even when combat isn't being hard, it can be tedious. See how the devs have a talent for wasting your time, and it's not even that interesting or exciting:



Suppose you actually like the bleak "Lovecraftian realism", there are clearly many gameplay mechanics that are ludicrous but designed to keep pulling you back and losing ground.
For example, if you abort a dungeon raid, there is a Stress penalty. Why? There should be stress relief, though possibly with a penalty in gold or goods representing paying the wages of the adventurers.

And because Stress accumulates so quickly and has to be dealt with, you are basically running at least two parties, alternating them between resting in town (costing you gold to stress-relief them) or being sent on an adventure that will hopefully net a profit. You may seem to get a lot of gold, but it's deceptive as your expenses will mount.

Another example: You cannot use healing skills outside of combat. Why? You can only camp a certain number of times. Why? Earlier versions apparently let you eat a lot of food outside of combat to heal, but a limit was implemented (you can only eat so much before you are full, and 3 units won't heal anything useful).

For the reasons mentioned, the basic score is FAIL.

Caveat: You may have dungeon missions that go very nicely and your team doesn't come out crippled by stress or a member short. But often this can be quite chancy, depending on the encounter you come upon. Therefore the one single thing you need to do to make this game less frustrating and at possibly decently playable is to find out where the savegames are and regularly back them up. Just doing this will at least remove some element of chance having a sudden devastating impact.

If you want a "making the most of a bad situation" game, I highly recommend you instead play Fallout Shelter. For one thing, it's FREE. You can get your masochistic fix there for free. If you do well and want to graduate to spending money to waste your time doing the same things over and over, then try Darkest Dungeon.

*

Since Darkest Dungeon is fortunately easily modded in many ways to reduce the mechanics that contribute to grind, if you are willing to do that, then it has all the trappings of a very nice game. Especially once you find that the saved games are in ...\Documents\Darkest\ so you can just backup that entire directory and can roll back your saves to help keep making incremental progress.

So, since we have these workarounds, let's look at the key positives of Darkest Dungeon -- and there really are some good ones.
+ Interesting characters and abilities
+ Simple combat but with enough strategy to make it tactical
+ Lovecraftian genre, which isn't easy to find done well
++ Atmosphere! From the narration to the music to contextually appropriate speech bubbles of the characters, the game sets up a very interesting and interactive atmosphere with the right gothic mood.
+ Graphically a nice game

We have some basic tweaks that you can apply yourself to Darkeest Dungeon:

• Darkest Dungeon prevents hitgher level characters from going back to lower level dungeons, which really just results in helping you lose characters permanently and having to start all over with new characters. This simple fix will remove this mechanic.
• Darkest Dungeon limits your ability to rest during a mission (raid) and limits how much loot you can haul back. Our article on Camping addresses both. I find it extremely silly that your healer can throw out unlimited faith healing while in combat but not outside of it; and can heal even less than in battle when camped. DUH.

Darkest Dungeon has a great framework for MODDING. Straight out of the box, it's not worth your time grinding it.

Game Review: Darkest Dungeon  (build 14620)
Score: +6/FAIL
You can buy Darkest Dungeon with no-hassle setup and risk-free money-back guarantee from Good Old Games.

Even before you play the Campaign, Darkest Dungeon sets your expectations: "Darkest Dungeon is about making the most of a bad situation. Quests will fail or must be abandoned. Heroes will die. And when they die, they stay dead. Progress autosaves constantly, so actions are permanent. The game expects a lot out of you. How far will you push your adventurers? How much are you willing to risk in your quest to restore the Hamlet? What will you sacrifice to save the life of your favorite hero? Thankfully, there are always fresh souls arriving on the stage coach, seeking both adventure and fame in the shadow of the Darkest Dungeon"

The balance in Darkest Dungeon is one where you fight attrition on every front and thereby slowly make headway. This attrition is mostly manifested in the Stress system which handicaps your characters (but occasionally helps them) very quickly (as it is very easy to gain Stress) and the autosave system which means random sudden death cannot be rolled back and you are forced several steps back. Your slow progress basically translates to "grinding", in a worse way than grinding in online MMOs.
While this fits perfectly with the gothic Lovecraftian genre, there is nevertheless one fatal flaw in the game design -- Disrespect for the player's time.

Now, more than ever, there are so many great games. For any game to basically waste my time grinding over and over again, doing extremely repetitive things, is inexcusable. Cheap online MMOs get you to do that at higher levels of character development for two reasons:

• You'll otherwise run out of content and be bored, leave the game, and stop spending money
• You need to be frustrated by slow progress so you'll spend money in all sots of ways to make headway.

And once you spend money you'll be hooked because you don't want to lose your investment.
But Darkest Dungeon is not an online game. They've already got your money, so there's no reason to waste your time.

If an encounter suddenly goes bad and you lose a key character like a healer and suddenly things can collapse very quickly, forcing you to wait for a healer to randomly show up and improve them again while everyone else waits -- more time-wasting. In fact, combat is so chancy that you are actually NOT guaranteed to see both tutorial characters survive even the tutorial getting-to-the-town mission of killing a total of three bandits.
Even when combat isn't being hard, it can be tedious. See how the devs have a talent for wasting your time, and it's not even that interesting or exciting:



Suppose you actually like the bleak "Lovecraftian realism", there are clearly many gameplay mechanics that are ludicrous but designed to keep pulling you back and losing ground.
For example, if you abort a dungeon raid, there is a Stress penalty. Why? There should be stress relief, though possibly with a penalty in gold or goods representing paying the wages of the adventurers.

And because Stress accumulates so quickly and has to be dealt with, you are basically running at least two parties, alternating them between resting in town (costing you gold to stress-relief them) or being sent on an adventure that will hopefully net a profit. You may seem to get a lot of gold, but it's deceptive as your expenses will mount.

Another example: You cannot use healing skills outside of combat. Why? You can only camp a certain number of times. Why? Earlier versions apparently let you eat a lot of food outside of combat to heal, but a limit was implemented (you can only eat so much before you are full, and 3 units won't heal anything useful).

For the reasons mentioned, the basic score is FAIL.

Caveat: You may have dungeon missions that go very nicely and your team doesn't come out crippled by stress or a member short. But often this can be quite chancy, depending on the encounter you come upon. Therefore the one single thing you need to do to make this game less frustrating and at possibly decently playable is to find out where the savegames are and regularly back them up. Just doing this will at least remove some element of chance having a sudden devastating impact.

If you want a "making the most of a bad situation" game, I highly recommend you instead play Fallout Shelter. For one thing, it's FREE. You can get your masochistic fix there for free. If you do well and want to graduate to spending money to waste your time doing the same things over and over, then try Darkest Dungeon.

*

Since Darkest Dungeon is fortunately easily modded in many ways to reduce the mechanics that contribute to grind, if you are willing to do that, then it has all the trappings of a very nice game. Especially once you find that the saved games are in ...\Documents\Darkest\ so you can just backup that entire directory and can roll back your saves to help keep making incremental progress.

So, since we have these workarounds, let's look at the key positives of Darkest Dungeon -- and there really are some good ones.
+ Interesting characters and abilities
+ Simple combat but with enough strategy to make it tactical
+ Lovecraftian genre, which isn't easy to find done well
++ Atmosphere! From the narration to the music to contextually appropriate speech bubbles of the characters, the game sets up a very interesting and interactive atmosphere with the right gothic mood.
+ Graphically a nice game

We have some basic tweaks that you can apply yourself to Darkeest Dungeon:

• Darkest Dungeon prevents hitgher level characters from going back to lower level dungeons, which really just results in helping you lose characters permanently and having to start all over with new characters. This simple fix will remove this mechanic.
• Darkest Dungeon limits your ability to rest during a mission (raid) and limits how much loot you can haul back. Our article on Camping addresses both. I find it extremely silly that your healer can throw out unlimited faith healing while in combat but not outside of it; and can heal even less than in battle when camped. DUH.

Darkest Dungeon has a great framework for MODDING. Straight out of the box, it's not worth your time grinding it.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Island Experiment has lousy math

Game Review: Island Experiment ver: Rel4.0224.1142 a00302
Score: FAIL
I actually like Island Experiment for many reasons. As a smartphone game meant to encourage you to spend money to avoid grind, it is obviously a very inconvenient game if you are hoping to make quick progress.
However, where it fails is in math versus our expectations.
Here are a couple of examples:

Farming:

• The basic farm provides 6 food for 25 coin, or 4.16 gold per food.
• A level 2 farm provides 24 food for 64 coin, or 2.67 gold per food. You get both the ability to "bank" food on your farm better, as well as a better price per unit.
• A level 3 farm provides 40 food for 130 coin.
• Huh? Now the ratio is worsened to 3.25 coin per food!
• Sure you get to bank more food on each farm, but when you harvest, it goes into your warehouse, so banking it passively also blocks you from using your farm to make food.

Water:

• Your first water source in the early game is a pond that provides 1 unit of water and 2 units of XP if you spend 3 units of food to draw that water.
• Later you are asked to build a well. The basic well provides 3 units of water if you spend 30 coins and 4 food.
• Huh? Suppose we use the level 1 farm coin-food ratio. 30 coins is 7.2 food. Plus 4 food, the cost for 3 units of water is 11.2, or 3.73 food per unit of water.
• Not only does it cost MORE food to use your well, you also lose out on the 2 XP per unit of water you get when you draw it from the pond.

Considering that they haven't really thought things out properly, I don't really have much faith in the rest of the game and don't see myself wanting to trust them to tell me a good story for my time.
Hopefully a future update will tidy things up!

Game Review: Island Experiment ver: Rel4.0224.1142 a00302
Score: FAIL
I actually like Island Experiment for many reasons. As a smartphone game meant to encourage you to spend money to avoid grind, it is obviously a very inconvenient game if you are hoping to make quick progress.
However, where it fails is in math versus our expectations.
Here are a couple of examples:

Farming:

• The basic farm provides 6 food for 25 coin, or 4.16 gold per food.
• A level 2 farm provides 24 food for 64 coin, or 2.67 gold per food. You get both the ability to "bank" food on your farm better, as well as a better price per unit.
• A level 3 farm provides 40 food for 130 coin.
• Huh? Now the ratio is worsened to 3.25 coin per food!
• Sure you get to bank more food on each farm, but when you harvest, it goes into your warehouse, so banking it passively also blocks you from using your farm to make food.

Water:

• Your first water source in the early game is a pond that provides 1 unit of water and 2 units of XP if you spend 3 units of food to draw that water.
• Later you are asked to build a well. The basic well provides 3 units of water if you spend 30 coins and 4 food.
• Huh? Suppose we use the level 1 farm coin-food ratio. 30 coins is 7.2 food. Plus 4 food, the cost for 3 units of water is 11.2, or 3.73 food per unit of water.
• Not only does it cost MORE food to use your well, you also lose out on the 2 XP per unit of water you get when you draw it from the pond.

Considering that they haven't really thought things out properly, I don't really have much faith in the rest of the game and don't see myself wanting to trust them to tell me a good story for my time.
Hopefully a future update will tidy things up!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Game Review - MARVEL Avengers Academy

Game Review: MARVEL Avengers Academy
Score: +7/-3
UPDATED SCORE: FAIL (updated: 2016-Jun-26)

I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience.
Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy shares a lot of the traits I really like.

The game basically plays like one of the Sims games: Characters have generic actions, and through a combination of "appropriate" generic actions you complete tasks that advance the story. The story happens offstage and and you get conversations that update you on what happen, and thereby advance the storylines.
You are therefore really only playing for various storylines, and getting characters to do things to accumulate resources and pass time. There's a little more to that, but this is the core of the gameplay.
There are occasional special events like the recent time-limited opportunity to recruit Blue Hulk and Red Hulk. And there are various triggered events that encourage you to spend money to recruit certain characters.

The game starts quite slowly, but once you have more characters and therefore a better ability to complete tasks, things start to get busier.
TIP: If there is a task on the mission board that takes a long time, you can click the small trashcan at the upper left to delete the task and get another one after a 20-minute refresh time.
++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry. Unless there's a special time-limited event, there's just no urgency.
+Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge. You are waiting for characters to finish tasks, though, and so it's not really conducive to a sit-down session unless you want to spend money to get Crystals to accelerate things. This is really a casual game for people who don't have a lot of concentrated time or just want to check in once in a while when they get a few spare minutes.
+Low demand on your time. There are no Daily Quests or any of that to addict you to checking in every day.
+You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. But do check in, in case there is a special event. Typically, however, you play at your own pace. 
+Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources.
+Decent graphics! A bit simple, but character animations are pretty good.
-Inane. Sometimes the stories are inane. You really have to get into the these-are-teens mindset. There's nothing serious going on here. Humour is also sort of weak. Nothing laugh-out-loud so far.
-Poor return for purchase. You can buy all sorts of buildings but the spread of characters actually using those buildings for Missions that award something is very weak. For example, I have the Maverick Dorm, but I have yet to see any mission using it.
-Decisions that seem stupid or that make no sense. Examples:

• During the Guardians of the Galaxy limited event, Gamora can train her combat skills either in the Quad or at Club A -- but why not at the Cosmic Combat Simulator they got you to build? DUH.
• There's a "Hone Deathblows" action for the "Club Life, Pt. 2" Mission -- and again, instead of the Cosmic Combat Simulator, they have Gamora doing that at the PUNCHING BAG in Avengers Dorm. DUH.

Game Review: MARVEL Avengers Academy
Score: +7/-3
UPDATED SCORE: FAIL (updated: 2016-Jun-26)

I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience.
Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy shares a lot of the traits I really like.

The game basically plays like one of the Sims games: Characters have generic actions, and through a combination of "appropriate" generic actions you complete tasks that advance the story. The story happens offstage and and you get conversations that update you on what happen, and thereby advance the storylines.
You are therefore really only playing for various storylines, and getting characters to do things to accumulate resources and pass time. There's a little more to that, but this is the core of the gameplay.
There are occasional special events like the recent time-limited opportunity to recruit Blue Hulk and Red Hulk. And there are various triggered events that encourage you to spend money to recruit certain characters.

The game starts quite slowly, but once you have more characters and therefore a better ability to complete tasks, things start to get busier.
TIP: If there is a task on the mission board that takes a long time, you can click the small trashcan at the upper left to delete the task and get another one after a 20-minute refresh time.
++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry. Unless there's a special time-limited event, there's just no urgency.
+Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge. You are waiting for characters to finish tasks, though, and so it's not really conducive to a sit-down session unless you want to spend money to get Crystals to accelerate things. This is really a casual game for people who don't have a lot of concentrated time or just want to check in once in a while when they get a few spare minutes.
+Low demand on your time. There are no Daily Quests or any of that to addict you to checking in every day.
+You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. But do check in, in case there is a special event. Typically, however, you play at your own pace. 
+Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources.
+Decent graphics! A bit simple, but character animations are pretty good.
-Inane. Sometimes the stories are inane. You really have to get into the these-are-teens mindset. There's nothing serious going on here. Humour is also sort of weak. Nothing laugh-out-loud so far.
-Poor return for purchase. You can buy all sorts of buildings but the spread of characters actually using those buildings for Missions that award something is very weak. For example, I have the Maverick Dorm, but I have yet to see any mission using it.
-Decisions that seem stupid or that make no sense. Examples:

• During the Guardians of the Galaxy limited event, Gamora can train her combat skills either in the Quad or at Club A -- but why not at the Cosmic Combat Simulator they got you to build? DUH.
• There's a "Hone Deathblows" action for the "Club Life, Pt. 2" Mission -- and again, instead of the Cosmic Combat Simulator, they have Gamora doing that at the PUNCHING BAG in Avengers Dorm. DUH.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Game Review - Mage and Minions v1.1.29

Game Review: Mage and Minions v1.1.29 
Score: +13/-2
I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience.
Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy is another great casual game.

There are two types of characters you can play. The titular Mage, and a melee Warrior. For more of a challenge, play the Warrior.
++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry, even in the middle of combat. You don't even have to turn off your phone because if you get killed, you can at no penalty or resource cost resurrect nearby. There's just no urgency.
+Convenient interface. Tap to move instead of clumsily using a finger "mouse pad". Automatic targeting on new nearby enemies once you have selected a target and it is dead.
+Really cool use of drawing symbols to activate skills.
+Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge.
+Low demand on your time. If you don't play for a day, there are only two things you might possibly miss out on: Daily check-in prize (which takes so little time to do anyway) and one daily quest for each character of level 5+. The daily quest is just to kill X number of a type of things, which you can typically do during regular gameplay. And even if you fail to do it, you are only missing out on 20 Gems (which you typically buy with money), so it's not a big deal.
++Convenient daily quests. The Daily Quests are shared by all characters once you start the quest, so if you only have time to play one character today, start all quests for all characters and use your gameplay with the one character to complete them all. Then go back to each character and turn in the reward. If you start one but can't finish it before server reset, you can still finish it, AND pick up the Daily Quest for the new day.
+You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. In many other games, you have to wait for "energy" to recharge and there is a limit to how much you accumulate. If you don't play regularly you will "waste" it. Here, there's none of that so you don't have to feel like you're missing out on anything.
++Playable offline. Some things still need a connection, such as checking the progress of your skill upgrades, but otherwise the game is completely playable offline whereas most other good games need you to be connected.
+Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources.
+Skill Synergy. There are lots of skills and it can take a lot of time to upgrade a skill. But none of it is ever wasted because every level you accumulate goes toward a counter that gives you a stat bonus. Therefore no skill upgrade is ever entirely obsolete.
-Scaling. Low-level maps eventually scale up in enemy level, so you can't really grind for loot or do quick casual runs to clear Daily Quests. I feel the scaling goes up way too aggressively.
-Inferior graphics. Compared to many games out there now, graphics are inferior with a and "blocky" look because of not enough polygons. But overall not too bad because of the small screens you are seeing it on.

TIP: Start multiple characters, but focus only on one. That way you can collect Daily Quests from the other characters and farm Gems once a day from each. The startup cost to do it increases drastically though: 100 Gems to have a third character and 500 for a fourth means you won't break even for 5 and 25 days respectively.

TIP: Use your Gem-farming characters to re-play the easy levels while they are completing Daily Quests. You can play a map up to five times for a total of 10 Gems after all five runs.

Game Review: Mage and Minions v1.1.29 
Score: +13/-2
I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience.
Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy is another great casual game.

There are two types of characters you can play. The titular Mage, and a melee Warrior. For more of a challenge, play the Warrior.
++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry, even in the middle of combat. You don't even have to turn off your phone because if you get killed, you can at no penalty or resource cost resurrect nearby. There's just no urgency.
+Convenient interface. Tap to move instead of clumsily using a finger "mouse pad". Automatic targeting on new nearby enemies once you have selected a target and it is dead.
+Really cool use of drawing symbols to activate skills.
+Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge.
+Low demand on your time. If you don't play for a day, there are only two things you might possibly miss out on: Daily check-in prize (which takes so little time to do anyway) and one daily quest for each character of level 5+. The daily quest is just to kill X number of a type of things, which you can typically do during regular gameplay. And even if you fail to do it, you are only missing out on 20 Gems (which you typically buy with money), so it's not a big deal.
++Convenient daily quests. The Daily Quests are shared by all characters once you start the quest, so if you only have time to play one character today, start all quests for all characters and use your gameplay with the one character to complete them all. Then go back to each character and turn in the reward. If you start one but can't finish it before server reset, you can still finish it, AND pick up the Daily Quest for the new day.
+You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. In many other games, you have to wait for "energy" to recharge and there is a limit to how much you accumulate. If you don't play regularly you will "waste" it. Here, there's none of that so you don't have to feel like you're missing out on anything.
++Playable offline. Some things still need a connection, such as checking the progress of your skill upgrades, but otherwise the game is completely playable offline whereas most other good games need you to be connected.
+Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources.
+Skill Synergy. There are lots of skills and it can take a lot of time to upgrade a skill. But none of it is ever wasted because every level you accumulate goes toward a counter that gives you a stat bonus. Therefore no skill upgrade is ever entirely obsolete.
-Scaling. Low-level maps eventually scale up in enemy level, so you can't really grind for loot or do quick casual runs to clear Daily Quests. I feel the scaling goes up way too aggressively.
-Inferior graphics. Compared to many games out there now, graphics are inferior with a and "blocky" look because of not enough polygons. But overall not too bad because of the small screens you are seeing it on.

TIP: Start multiple characters, but focus only on one. That way you can collect Daily Quests from the other characters and farm Gems once a day from each. The startup cost to do it increases drastically though: 100 Gems to have a third character and 500 for a fourth means you won't break even for 5 and 25 days respectively.

TIP: Use your Gem-farming characters to re-play the easy levels while they are completing Daily Quests. You can play a map up to five times for a total of 10 Gems after all five runs.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Game Review - Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Divinity II

Game Review: Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Divinity II
Score: +7/-3

The Divinity anthology is a fairly old game now, but it actually has surprising play value despite its drawbacks. For sheer gameplay experience, it more than rivals more recent games like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -- and you will actually see elements of these games in Divinity, only done better. Which is not to say there's outright plagiarism, but just proof the old writers' adage, "all writing is re-writing" -- good ideas and story structures just tend to resurface again and again.
-- Mechanics suck. Strangely, it won't matter too much because you are basically playing for story and gameplay experience. What it does is favour certain character builds and makes playing other character types possibly too hard or annoying to play. If you then increase the difficulty beyond the recommended "Normal", then some builds become impossible.
- No full respec. You can re-do skills, but not stats without third-party software. You can end up with a build that won't be able to finish the game. And each game is so long that it can basically be a huge waste of time to restart.
+ A lot of content. There are a ton of sidequests to do, as well as a wide variety. If you boil down the tasks, they will probably distill into kill-this-for-me or "Fedex" fetch-this-for-me quests. But the dressing around each quest really gives it life.
+ Alternate outcomes. Especially in Divinity II, many sidequests have alternate resolutions. Ultimately it won't affect the main quest so much, but not many games offer this because it is a lot of scripting to handle.
+ Big environments to explore. Not as big as Morrowind or Oblivion, but you also don't have endless tracts of nothing. Each area has something so you don't have to run far to encounter something interesting.
+ Sense of humour.
-0 Samey environments. For older games, this is to be expected, so in consideration that these Divinity games are in fact older, there is no real penalty. But if you insist on top-class graphics and a ton of graphic resources, you won't find it here. That said, Divinity II does have decent artwork and models.
+ Continuity - If you played the previous games, you will see stories and cameos from previous games in subsequent ones, adding to the richness of experience and giving you a reward for having experienced the previous stories. Not as complexly done with the same range of significant alternate outcome as the Mass Effect Trilogy, but nevertheless a nice touch.
++ Fast paced and flowing combat with convenient targeting. One of the best interfaces for real-time combat, especially in Divinity II. Makes it slightly easy with auto-targeting, but it also means your manual dexterity as a *player* does not get in the way of playing the game since it doesn't affect the *character* you control. Comes with combat pause so that you can react more or less as quickly as the computer-controlled enemy. Something that the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games have only feebly resolved.

With respect to Oblivion and Skyrim, if you play Divinity II you will see similarities to both games, just in a more exciting way. Both Divinity II and Oblivion take you to alternate hellish worlds. Skyrim lets you be a dragon descent and ride dragons; Divinity II actually lets you BE A DRAGON.
As an older game, it holds up remarkably well compared with many newer games that are often more style than substance.

We highly recommend buying the older Divinity games on GOG (Good Old Games) because of the more immediate support through GOG:

• Divine Divinity
• Beyond Divinity
• Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga

Game Review: Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Divinity II
Score: +7/-3

The Divinity anthology is a fairly old game now, but it actually has surprising play value despite its drawbacks. For sheer gameplay experience, it more than rivals more recent games like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -- and you will actually see elements of these games in Divinity, only done better. Which is not to say there's outright plagiarism, but just proof the old writers' adage, "all writing is re-writing" -- good ideas and story structures just tend to resurface again and again.
-- Mechanics suck. Strangely, it won't matter too much because you are basically playing for story and gameplay experience. What it does is favour certain character builds and makes playing other character types possibly too hard or annoying to play. If you then increase the difficulty beyond the recommended "Normal", then some builds become impossible.
- No full respec. You can re-do skills, but not stats without third-party software. You can end up with a build that won't be able to finish the game. And each game is so long that it can basically be a huge waste of time to restart.
+ A lot of content. There are a ton of sidequests to do, as well as a wide variety. If you boil down the tasks, they will probably distill into kill-this-for-me or "Fedex" fetch-this-for-me quests. But the dressing around each quest really gives it life.
+ Alternate outcomes. Especially in Divinity II, many sidequests have alternate resolutions. Ultimately it won't affect the main quest so much, but not many games offer this because it is a lot of scripting to handle.
+ Big environments to explore. Not as big as Morrowind or Oblivion, but you also don't have endless tracts of nothing. Each area has something so you don't have to run far to encounter something interesting.
+ Sense of humour.
-0 Samey environments. For older games, this is to be expected, so in consideration that these Divinity games are in fact older, there is no real penalty. But if you insist on top-class graphics and a ton of graphic resources, you won't find it here. That said, Divinity II does have decent artwork and models.
+ Continuity - If you played the previous games, you will see stories and cameos from previous games in subsequent ones, adding to the richness of experience and giving you a reward for having experienced the previous stories. Not as complexly done with the same range of significant alternate outcome as the Mass Effect Trilogy, but nevertheless a nice touch.
++ Fast paced and flowing combat with convenient targeting. One of the best interfaces for real-time combat, especially in Divinity II. Makes it slightly easy with auto-targeting, but it also means your manual dexterity as a *player* does not get in the way of playing the game since it doesn't affect the *character* you control. Comes with combat pause so that you can react more or less as quickly as the computer-controlled enemy. Something that the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games have only feebly resolved.

With respect to Oblivion and Skyrim, if you play Divinity II you will see similarities to both games, just in a more exciting way. Both Divinity II and Oblivion take you to alternate hellish worlds. Skyrim lets you be a dragon descent and ride dragons; Divinity II actually lets you BE A DRAGON.
As an older game, it holds up remarkably well compared with many newer games that are often more style than substance.

We highly recommend buying the older Divinity games on GOG (Good Old Games) because of the more immediate support through GOG:

• Divine Divinity
• Beyond Divinity
• Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga

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Game Review - Metro 2033 Redux and Metro Last Light Redux

Game Review - Metro 2033 (Redux) and Metro Last Light (Redux)
Score: +5/-11
Summary: Tightly scripted linear first person shooter. Story line not very good.

++- Graphics are very good except for somewhat plastic-looking stock characters. However, they are overall intensive on the computer for not a lot of gain: For example, there are a lot of miscellaneous static debris that still adds up to processing needs. (On a computer with the same specs, Metro Last Light Redux is even worse, and suffers from objects "blinking in", presumably as objects and textures are loaded too late.)
+ For a character who doesn't talk at all, the story is quite clever to make his choices believable. All "talking" is done through journal entries to give you insight into what the protagonist is thinking.
+-- Some very smoothly integrated cutscenes, but with little warning when control of your character is lost or regained. Because of the already minimal UI, you don't always know how much you can control your character (Can you shoot? Move? Look around?). In some cases, you have to act during what appears to be merely a cutscene but is actually an interactive scene. Problem is, you don't know without trial and error, or looking up a walkthrough.
- Some area transitions (going through doors) are 1-way without any warning or reason to be. Some areas look like you should be able to jump or get to, but are blocked, reducing overall intuitiveness.
- People that walk through you -- a frequent occurrence in settlements. Enemies that can move through terrain barriers like barrels and fences (fortunately not often).
- Several suicidal combat scenarios made survivable only because your companion(s) cannot be killed. This diminishes immersion and sense of player achievement.
- Poor story pacing. For a tightly linear story, too much time is spent on filler combat levels. The result is that it is easy to lose sight of your mission as well as any sense of urgency. The short side-trips amount to just a bit of extra exploration, and except for a couple of events, rarely give any real return on time investment. Further, the default difficulty where resources are scarcer dissuades this sort of exploration, which defeats the purpose of presenting them at all.
+ Creepy ghost scenes that are very nicely done. Worth playing through just for these if you like suspense-horror without gore or actual violence.
-- Really lousy endings for Metro 2033. Unsatisfying endings for Last Light. For example, the two Metro 2033 endings are:

• The canonical ending (the one used by the sequel, Metro Last Light) is implausible as the enemy already knew he was on the way to blow them up and there was more than enough time to either stop him or do some sort of evacuation into the Metro, which can apparently survive nuclear attack, especially when radiation and pollution are not dangers to them.
• The alternate "good" ending is also implausible as it does not address the ongoing threat to the character's home and makes for an implausible choice. Also, the enemy's claim to want peace is also implausible considering their ongoing hostile actions.

-0 The sequel, Metro Last Light (Redux) also loses points for having only limited reference to what you did in Metro 2033. For example, they use as the canonical ending is the default or "bad" one where you blow up the Dark Ones. Since this could be attributed to lacking or being unwilling to commit the time and resources to present alternate references and storyline, I point it out but do not count a full negative point.
- Too-tight scripting. Some scripted scenes completely take over your character regardless of your personal ability to control the character, but in Metro Last Light, this feels more severe. For example, in one hostage scene, you can:

• Take off your gas mask as the enemy demands.
• Shoot the enemy in the eye with a sniping rifle (or whatever gun you have).
• Move closer to the enemy.

But ALL of these choices have basically the same result, except that if you take off your mask, for unclear reasons once the enemy is gone you do not bother to put it back on and start choking and suffocating. In the other two choices, your gas mask breaks, but throughout the entire game, the consequence of a broken mask was never as severe as the cutscene suggests.

Finally, even if you shoot the enemy in the face / eye / whatever, they survive and flee unscathed.

Whichever choice you take, the consequence is so implausible that the game loses credibility.
Also tiresome is constantly being surprised when opening doors.
- The heavy-handed scripting also leads to some very bad scenes where you have to figure out what the developers want you to do. This was worse in Last Light as various enemies that are invincible due to the necessary continued presence in plot points -- except you don't know when they are protected and in the meantime you might burn through all your ammo. For example, to defeat the tank boss, you have to shoot, in sequence, the rod connecting the wheels, then the wheels, then the turret -- but why can't you just shoot the turret to begin with? How is shooting the wheels a necessary prerequisite for taking out the turret?

Game Review - Metro 2033 (Redux) and Metro Last Light (Redux)
Score: +5/-11
Summary: Tightly scripted linear first person shooter. Story line not very good.

++- Graphics are very good except for somewhat plastic-looking stock characters. However, they are overall intensive on the computer for not a lot of gain: For example, there are a lot of miscellaneous static debris that still adds up to processing needs. (On a computer with the same specs, Metro Last Light Redux is even worse, and suffers from objects "blinking in", presumably as objects and textures are loaded too late.)
+ For a character who doesn't talk at all, the story is quite clever to make his choices believable. All "talking" is done through journal entries to give you insight into what the protagonist is thinking.
+-- Some very smoothly integrated cutscenes, but with little warning when control of your character is lost or regained. Because of the already minimal UI, you don't always know how much you can control your character (Can you shoot? Move? Look around?). In some cases, you have to act during what appears to be merely a cutscene but is actually an interactive scene. Problem is, you don't know without trial and error, or looking up a walkthrough.
- Some area transitions (going through doors) are 1-way without any warning or reason to be. Some areas look like you should be able to jump or get to, but are blocked, reducing overall intuitiveness.
- People that walk through you -- a frequent occurrence in settlements. Enemies that can move through terrain barriers like barrels and fences (fortunately not often).
- Several suicidal combat scenarios made survivable only because your companion(s) cannot be killed. This diminishes immersion and sense of player achievement.
- Poor story pacing. For a tightly linear story, too much time is spent on filler combat levels. The result is that it is easy to lose sight of your mission as well as any sense of urgency. The short side-trips amount to just a bit of extra exploration, and except for a couple of events, rarely give any real return on time investment. Further, the default difficulty where resources are scarcer dissuades this sort of exploration, which defeats the purpose of presenting them at all.
+ Creepy ghost scenes that are very nicely done. Worth playing through just for these if you like suspense-horror without gore or actual violence.
-- Really lousy endings for Metro 2033. Unsatisfying endings for Last Light. For example, the two Metro 2033 endings are:

• The canonical ending (the one used by the sequel, Metro Last Light) is implausible as the enemy already knew he was on the way to blow them up and there was more than enough time to either stop him or do some sort of evacuation into the Metro, which can apparently survive nuclear attack, especially when radiation and pollution are not dangers to them.
• The alternate "good" ending is also implausible as it does not address the ongoing threat to the character's home and makes for an implausible choice. Also, the enemy's claim to want peace is also implausible considering their ongoing hostile actions.

-0 The sequel, Metro Last Light (Redux) also loses points for having only limited reference to what you did in Metro 2033. For example, they use as the canonical ending is the default or "bad" one where you blow up the Dark Ones. Since this could be attributed to lacking or being unwilling to commit the time and resources to present alternate references and storyline, I point it out but do not count a full negative point.
- Too-tight scripting. Some scripted scenes completely take over your character regardless of your personal ability to control the character, but in Metro Last Light, this feels more severe. For example, in one hostage scene, you can:

• Take off your gas mask as the enemy demands.
• Shoot the enemy in the eye with a sniping rifle (or whatever gun you have).
• Move closer to the enemy.

But ALL of these choices have basically the same result, except that if you take off your mask, for unclear reasons once the enemy is gone you do not bother to put it back on and start choking and suffocating. In the other two choices, your gas mask breaks, but throughout the entire game, the consequence of a broken mask was never as severe as the cutscene suggests.

Finally, even if you shoot the enemy in the face / eye / whatever, they survive and flee unscathed.

Whichever choice you take, the consequence is so implausible that the game loses credibility.
Also tiresome is constantly being surprised when opening doors.
- The heavy-handed scripting also leads to some very bad scenes where you have to figure out what the developers want you to do. This was worse in Last Light as various enemies that are invincible due to the necessary continued presence in plot points -- except you don't know when they are protected and in the meantime you might burn through all your ammo. For example, to defeat the tank boss, you have to shoot, in sequence, the rod connecting the wheels, then the wheels, then the turret -- but why can't you just shoot the turret to begin with? How is shooting the wheels a necessary prerequisite for taking out the turret?

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Game Review - Ancient Space

Game Review: Ancient Space
Score: +6/-7

Summary: Ancient Space is a bit short at just 15 missions and boring skirmishes. The story is not bad, with interesting plot twists that are not afraid to kill off main characters. The has a lot of the more advanced/clever RTS features, and the design has a lot of potential for future development in an "Ancient Space II" sequel. If you like Company of Heroes or Star Wars: Empire at War, you'll like Ancient Space.
Gameplay is basically crafted scenarios and there is modest carry-over from one Mission to the next in upgrade components, officers, and the number of uses of officer powers per Mission. Although some have criticized this, I think this is a conservative choice to try to get a handle on Mission difficulty and gameplay experience. The first Battle for Middle Earth had the problem where you carried over all your experienced units and ended up with a powerful force at the start of every Mission and mowed everything down without losing whole squads, even at highest difficulty. Not surprisingly they dropped this in the sequel. Too much carry-over adds up and can wreck scenario creation. Or they could anticipate it but end up ruining the game for players who want to play faster rather than painstakingly collect every advantage for the future.
Despite the drawbacks, I did really enjoy the game, which had both exciting and relaxing moments. For optimal gameplay experience I recommend playing on the lowest difficulty (Explorer Scientist) but use no Officer powers.

+ Broad selection of units as well as mobile unit production give you different ways to approach the Missions. Not all of them are optimal but at least you have the choice, and the choices are supported by the upgrades you can choose for your flagship. Upgrades to the non-flagship units could be made to have more of an effect, however. As it is, they really don't matter.

++ Allowing you to steal enemy units makes for even broader tactical choices and overall interestingness. Often people like to try playing the enemy and this is a nice way to do it instead of making a completely new faction. A lot of untapped potential here.

+- Generally a good range of play in each mission, ranging from rush to combat to "hidden object game" (looking for the anomalies to scan for "Discoveries") to just building and structuring your fleet before moving on. But some missions are too hard if you don't take the time to clear the map or use an exploit/oversight -- and this is on the lowest difficulty. The very first mission can be near-impossible on highest difficulty whereas later missions, with more time and flexibility, are not impossible. Nevertheless players will have already been turned off trying it.
+- Nice ship models, but often they fire when not in proper alignment, which is odd. If the guns were on a turret that might make sense but often this is not the case.

- 3-D fleet movement is generally planar but hard to properly estimate without a lot of camera panning. The option to select your position on the Z (up/down) axis is extremely clumsy. I would have preferred to instead see a game-pausing toggle of a 3-D grid of points to select a position for your ships. Zooming could increase the density of these points.
- Officer powers are interesting but often make no sense. For example, the crewman "Two" is an expert hand-to-hand combatant apparently but you can invoke her to damage all enemy ships in the area? Why? Something more sensible might be to link her selection or in-game acquisition as a crew member to an enhancement of all ship-capturing Boarding actions.
-- Units often end up clumped together in a spaghetti or just fly so closely that trying to click on the right one is hard. And when you have 5 of the same type, clicking one at a time to find the one you are looking at / wanting to target is annoying; you don't even get this option when it's the enemy units that are clumped together. This has several drawbacks, including trying to select the proper unit, units struggling to path-find their way, units getting stuck, and units not knowing their line of fire is blocked and they keep firing anyway without changing position to get a proper firing angle. I don't see the point of a no-pause Hardcore Mode when selecting a ship from this morass can take a half minute.

+ The highlighted icon for each unit is not just necessary since the units tend to blend into the environment based on their not-very-vibrant colouring, but a nice way to quickly locate and select your unit. It is also a great way to allow units to be more to scale, such as fighter squadrons being tiny but selectable based on their icon. This was something that Star Wars: Empire at War didn't do and they compromised with ridiculous ship scaling.
- Horrible anti-climactic ending cutscene obviously setting up a sequel. The final mission is not bad, however.

Game Review: Ancient Space
Score: +6/-7

Summary: Ancient Space is a bit short at just 15 missions and boring skirmishes. The story is not bad, with interesting plot twists that are not afraid to kill off main characters. The has a lot of the more advanced/clever RTS features, and the design has a lot of potential for future development in an "Ancient Space II" sequel. If you like Company of Heroes or Star Wars: Empire at War, you'll like Ancient Space.
Gameplay is basically crafted scenarios and there is modest carry-over from one Mission to the next in upgrade components, officers, and the number of uses of officer powers per Mission. Although some have criticized this, I think this is a conservative choice to try to get a handle on Mission difficulty and gameplay experience. The first Battle for Middle Earth had the problem where you carried over all your experienced units and ended up with a powerful force at the start of every Mission and mowed everything down without losing whole squads, even at highest difficulty. Not surprisingly they dropped this in the sequel. Too much carry-over adds up and can wreck scenario creation. Or they could anticipate it but end up ruining the game for players who want to play faster rather than painstakingly collect every advantage for the future.
Despite the drawbacks, I did really enjoy the game, which had both exciting and relaxing moments. For optimal gameplay experience I recommend playing on the lowest difficulty (Explorer Scientist) but use no Officer powers.

+ Broad selection of units as well as mobile unit production give you different ways to approach the Missions. Not all of them are optimal but at least you have the choice, and the choices are supported by the upgrades you can choose for your flagship. Upgrades to the non-flagship units could be made to have more of an effect, however. As it is, they really don't matter.

++ Allowing you to steal enemy units makes for even broader tactical choices and overall interestingness. Often people like to try playing the enemy and this is a nice way to do it instead of making a completely new faction. A lot of untapped potential here.

+- Generally a good range of play in each mission, ranging from rush to combat to "hidden object game" (looking for the anomalies to scan for "Discoveries") to just building and structuring your fleet before moving on. But some missions are too hard if you don't take the time to clear the map or use an exploit/oversight -- and this is on the lowest difficulty. The very first mission can be near-impossible on highest difficulty whereas later missions, with more time and flexibility, are not impossible. Nevertheless players will have already been turned off trying it.
+- Nice ship models, but often they fire when not in proper alignment, which is odd. If the guns were on a turret that might make sense but often this is not the case.

- 3-D fleet movement is generally planar but hard to properly estimate without a lot of camera panning. The option to select your position on the Z (up/down) axis is extremely clumsy. I would have preferred to instead see a game-pausing toggle of a 3-D grid of points to select a position for your ships. Zooming could increase the density of these points.
- Officer powers are interesting but often make no sense. For example, the crewman "Two" is an expert hand-to-hand combatant apparently but you can invoke her to damage all enemy ships in the area? Why? Something more sensible might be to link her selection or in-game acquisition as a crew member to an enhancement of all ship-capturing Boarding actions.
-- Units often end up clumped together in a spaghetti or just fly so closely that trying to click on the right one is hard. And when you have 5 of the same type, clicking one at a time to find the one you are looking at / wanting to target is annoying; you don't even get this option when it's the enemy units that are clumped together. This has several drawbacks, including trying to select the proper unit, units struggling to path-find their way, units getting stuck, and units not knowing their line of fire is blocked and they keep firing anyway without changing position to get a proper firing angle. I don't see the point of a no-pause Hardcore Mode when selecting a ship from this morass can take a half minute.

+ The highlighted icon for each unit is not just necessary since the units tend to blend into the environment based on their not-very-vibrant colouring, but a nice way to quickly locate and select your unit. It is also a great way to allow units to be more to scale, such as fighter squadrons being tiny but selectable based on their icon. This was something that Star Wars: Empire at War didn't do and they compromised with ridiculous ship scaling.
- Horrible anti-climactic ending cutscene obviously setting up a sequel. The final mission is not bad, however.

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Game Review - Rite of Passage: Hide and Seek

Game Review - Rite of Passage: Hide and Seek
Score: +8/-2
Summary: Interesting and fantastical story. Pacing and variety is very good. Believable action by the protagonist helps to maintain immersion. One of the better Hidden Object Games available and highly recommended.

In many ways, criticisms in review will apply to many contemporary hidden object games, and are not to be taken as faults unique to this game.
+- Character animations choppy but artwork overall very good. Also, not everyone is Kim Kardashian or Brad Pitt.
- Fuzzy cutscenes, especially if you play on higher resolutions.
+ Convenient replays of hidden object games for achievements involving spotting "morphing items". Because this unlocks achievements and further features, it really helps to have the replay available without having to replay the entire game. Also, if you are only missing a morphing object in a hidden object game, you can just locate that object in the replay instead of completely replaying the hidden object game scene.
+ Achievements for replay value: You can replay the game or parts of the game, such as replaying hidden object game scenes to score achievements with better time and accuracy -- unlike other games, where you typically can't rollback to redo anything unless you located and backed up your savegame first. And achievements give you an actual reason to do it again and better.
+ Post-game mini-games.
++ Interesting story with a variety of environments and locations. Unexpected and dramatic scenes keep the game lively. It is often easy to just get bored looking for hidden objects and flip from one screen to the next. Good use of event-driven scenes and plot advancement.
+ Believable action by the character. You are an "average person" who isn't suddenly a powerful fighter or wizard. End game "boss fight" does not involve actual "combat", but competition. This is much more believable than in many hidden object games that simply thrust the protagonist into heroics from zero to hero. Careful crafting of the story and backstory makes this possible.
+1-0 Tries to get you to invest more in the character/action through dialogue choices, but other than a few immediate changes in dialogue, there is ultimately no branching story arc: Characters still you encounter still do the same thing and the story progresses in the same way -- even if it is implausible. For example, in Hope's Edge you meet someone who offers you a device at the end of your first conversation, whether you were nice or a jerk in your dialogue. Why would they offer to help you at all, with the sole reason being that you might be interested in their invention? At the very end of the game, your "morality" locks out a possible ending, but because you are already at the end of the game, you just get a slightly different cutscene. Points for trying, but ultimately a disappointing false sense of choice and an empty threat of consequence.
+0-0 Tries to expand the action through the use of "pets" and skills, but the usage is too predictable (often they outright tell you to use the skill) to be worth forcing the player to click an extra button.

Game Review - Rite of Passage: Hide and Seek
Score: +8/-2
Summary: Interesting and fantastical story. Pacing and variety is very good. Believable action by the protagonist helps to maintain immersion. One of the better Hidden Object Games available and highly recommended.

In many ways, criticisms in review will apply to many contemporary hidden object games, and are not to be taken as faults unique to this game.
+- Character animations choppy but artwork overall very good. Also, not everyone is Kim Kardashian or Brad Pitt.
- Fuzzy cutscenes, especially if you play on higher resolutions.
+ Convenient replays of hidden object games for achievements involving spotting "morphing items". Because this unlocks achievements and further features, it really helps to have the replay available without having to replay the entire game. Also, if you are only missing a morphing object in a hidden object game, you can just locate that object in the replay instead of completely replaying the hidden object game scene.
+ Achievements for replay value: You can replay the game or parts of the game, such as replaying hidden object game scenes to score achievements with better time and accuracy -- unlike other games, where you typically can't rollback to redo anything unless you located and backed up your savegame first. And achievements give you an actual reason to do it again and better.
+ Post-game mini-games.
++ Interesting story with a variety of environments and locations. Unexpected and dramatic scenes keep the game lively. It is often easy to just get bored looking for hidden objects and flip from one screen to the next. Good use of event-driven scenes and plot advancement.
+ Believable action by the character. You are an "average person" who isn't suddenly a powerful fighter or wizard. End game "boss fight" does not involve actual "combat", but competition. This is much more believable than in many hidden object games that simply thrust the protagonist into heroics from zero to hero. Careful crafting of the story and backstory makes this possible.
+1-0 Tries to get you to invest more in the character/action through dialogue choices, but other than a few immediate changes in dialogue, there is ultimately no branching story arc: Characters still you encounter still do the same thing and the story progresses in the same way -- even if it is implausible. For example, in Hope's Edge you meet someone who offers you a device at the end of your first conversation, whether you were nice or a jerk in your dialogue. Why would they offer to help you at all, with the sole reason being that you might be interested in their invention? At the very end of the game, your "morality" locks out a possible ending, but because you are already at the end of the game, you just get a slightly different cutscene. Points for trying, but ultimately a disappointing false sense of choice and an empty threat of consequence.
+0-0 Tries to expand the action through the use of "pets" and skills, but the usage is too predictable (often they outright tell you to use the skill) to be worth forcing the player to click an extra button.

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