![]() ![]() The first part of Broken Age was in every way a comfortable rather than revolutionary experience, but an interesting one that offered two intriguing, isolated character stories-Vella, a young woman who decides she’d rather not be fed to local Cthuloid horror Mog Chothra, and Shay, a young man on a nurserypunk spaceship looking for a real adventure. In another world, I might be whining “Wait, this is it?” after zipping through. That may or may not be true, and if it is, I do understand. In practice, being split into episodes hasn’t been to its favour, both in terms of how over-familiar its world feels despite our limited exposure to it, and how bloated this new instalment feels-like a third of the game has been forcibly over-inflated to be a full half to justify the time taken, rather than simply presented as originally intended. Broken Age wants to be one adventure game, simply rolling along from start to finish as if the last year never happened. In the end this may not be a terrible thing but I would like to see a tad more complication thrown into the mix for Act 2.I say ‘Part 1’ and ‘Part 2’, but it’s not quite that simple. The puzzles eventually make sense in time and are fairly thoughtful, although some of them could have stood to be a bit harder - because for the most part, they didn’t require a lot of brainpower. During one puzzle in particular, I had tried to combine and use every item possible to get past what I thought was the obstacle, but really all I had to do was move around it. However, as the game progressed I wasn’t entirely clear on what actions I could take. ![]() My solution to this was to whip my mouse around the screen just in case the action circle appeared in future cinematics.īroken Age manages to keep the hand-holding clues to a minimum without completely withholding answers from the player. Although I appreciate that the game never took me out of the moment mentally, it did become frustrating after a while. ![]() For instance, it took me a while to solve one of the first puzzles in the game because the action I needed to take was during what I thought was a cinematic sequence. I found that the gameplay is so seamlessly integrated with the art that it’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re supposed to be viewing a scene and when you need to take action. One of my favorites is a needy spoon who regularly vies for the attention of Shay by shouting things like “It is my honor to be your training spoon today sir, I can’t wait to start MISSION NUTRITION!” Puzzles are integrated well into the character’s personalities – I found it amusing to discover what dialogue or actions would make characters give up an item or a piece of information. Above all, the art is captivating so much so that at certain points in the game I found myself staring at scenes just to take it in.Īlmost everything comes to life in Broken Age – characters range from charming to downright ingenious, all with spot-on humor and fantastic voice acting. Broken Age captures a style that is imaginative and expressive while still maintaining an environment that’s easy to interact with. I adored every second wandering through these worlds – the dialogue on all fronts is hilarious and crafty, the story elements thoughtful. Both stories are engrossing and highlight a certain childish curiosity that I haven’t felt in a long time. ![]()
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