Recent reviews by Tea

Got it for one penny back when Green Man Gaming launched and I want that penny back.

It's fine? I think? The original game is famously unfinished, releasing with only a fraction of its ideas intact. It's quite clear that Cecil and Gibbons had wider designs for - probably - a grimy comic book. The narrative in the manual speaks to so much. But it's also understandable. Revolution has always been an ambitious studio, dreaming up games that really should take an army of developers to make, and yet pulling it off with less than 5. And thinking of the timeframe - they didn't have the infinite resources of Skywalker Ranch or a myriad of Sierra dollars.

But Beyond has been "in the works" since as early as 2009. If it had an announcement and a trailer it'd be the Duke Nukem Forever of adventure games, but Revolution always maintained non-committal commitment to it. The 11 years in the oven don't show at all. In fact, it might be a little crispier on the edges when the recipe really called for golden-brown.

So - what's good?

Stylistically, the game is distinct and yet eerily familiar when compared to the original. It's astonishing how the art direction appropriately matches the original. From rusty walkways in the top level to mid level glistening walkways, the game matches the original in virtually every way, and that is some masterful continuity.

The characters are generally well developed and interesting, with the exception really of Robert himself who is just some guy. One of the top Steam reviews notes that Joey isn't acerbic enough - I'd suggest the writer of that review didn't get very far in the game. The humour is clearly "tidied up" a little bit to focus a little bit less on the puerile aspects that Beneath did, but Joey's attitude is attuned perfectly to how we know him.

The puzzles are well designed, such that I didn't use the hint system or lookup any guides. This isn't to say that they are easy, but rather that they do a good job of helping you identify what it is you need to progress. The hacking mechanic has you "juggling" components around, and observing the environment and characters which makes the puzzles very satisfying to solve. Once they click, they click. This is an adventure game that makes you work, but gives you everything you need to succeed. Absolute top tier adventure game puzzle design. A fun side effect of this is being able to make appliances, robots, and screens do amusing things - like making a barker d-RYD aggressively or excitedly welcome visitors. You can "die" just like in Beneath, but doing so just sends you back to the mere moments beforehand, so it's without consequence.

So it's a well-rounded adventure game all in all, and in terms of base formula, an absolute prime example of the genre.

What's not great? Well. It's a Revolution game. So the plot isn't slow-burning, rather it is...slow to ignite. Revolution have a habit of creating a compelling setting and waiting until the final act to fully introduce you to your motive and even antagonist. Up until those moments you're just sort of exploring. The first Broken Sword did a better job at this, but you still don't even have a clear "enemy" until, really, the final cutscene. So is the case here. You explore Union City and get a general feeling that it's an image, likes, and retweets obsessed culture. Social media and social credit are intertwined and liking the wrong post sends you back up to the factory level. Also people have robot slaves. Okay, cool. What's the...problem? I don't think everyone would really be in total agreement that this society is bad thing.

So other than the hook of knowing some kid from your village has been taken, you don't REALLY have a huge amount of motivation. Revolution have kind of assumed that you hate the idea of a Black Mirror social media dystopia and hoped it would be enough to keep you going.

Equally there's not much clear motivation going for the first "villain" character you meet, except his sinister moustache and job description. WHY does he hate your guts? What's in it for him? Even at his moustache twirling climax he failed to convey exactly what his passion is, except "I love this city". Sorry, that's not enough. Pure blind patriotism is expressed in so many different ways - Texans and Albertans drive oversized trucks with breedable hips because oil and gas is king, the English get blind drunk and misappropriate St George's Cross while kicking a ball around because something is king, I guess. Or they join the armed forces and serve with pride or something. Even the most jingoistic is still driven by *something*. Except this guy.

And then when a bit part character from Beneath suddenly turns up with a secondary antagonist to help you out, nothing ever explains why or how they came to turn against their city that apparently everyone just loves unquestioningly.

And then the finale is literally a rubiks cube. That's enough said there. Or it would be if the "logic problems" you present to the AI were actually...logical. Computers cannot be argued with, they understand binary only - quite literally, but there's "this statement is false" and then there's "yes but what you think is right is actually wrong". Even ChatGPT has better safeguards against the latter.

All of this is presented and conveyed through odd plasticey animations with a very odd understanding of eye contact. I'm autistic and generally have a hard time with eye contact, but good lord even I don't look at the floor when I'm threatening someone with a gun.

SO is it good? It's not terrible. It's a Revolution game - fantastic concept, passable presentation, likeable and diverse characters. But... in typical Revolution fashion, you just don't know what's going on until the end, and the end is wacky and a bit out there, and while trying to deliver a philosophical parable, falls flat because even after nigh on 20 years in the oven, Revolution weren't quite able to come with an intelligent argument against the social media dystopia other than "actually it's bad". Adventure games do a better job of parables when they have you doing the thinking (a la Blackwell).

Better than I expected it to be - granted I had quite low expectations, especially given the middling release-day press reviews. The marketing leaned a little *too* heavily on the "IT'S A RETRO FPS THAT WILL MAKE ALL OF YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE" side of things, but I can forgive that.

This is definitely more CULTIC than DOOM. I am not very good at Cultic, and so this game serves as almost like a "baby mode" Cultic. The mechanics are slimmed down and the levels are shorter than Cultic, and that's okay.

The absurdity of the Space Marine is on full display, with the stomping footsteps and ridiculous - almost moonwalk style - jumps. A 40k purist out there is probably going to make some noise about those jumps aren't possible without a jump pack, but it's also impossible for a dude to kick with both legs whilst running and shooting a gun all at the same time, so y'know, FPSs aren't really known for their realism. Even when the 'realism' is the made up frameworks of 40k. Besides, the ridiculous height of the jump is made up for by the poor in-air maneuverability the player seems to have. This is a fine balancing choice, but given some of the other balancing aspects (touched upon later) there's some work that needs to be done.

The game needs some refinements though - if we're gonna keep comparing it to Doom, let's compare the HUD with Doom Eternal's. Getting immediate feedback on grenade type and availability requires me (and I DID just lose my glasses so cut me some slack here) to stop and squint. In Doom Eternal I don't have to think about that. There is a subtle shimmer in the bottom of the screen and a distinctive sound telling me I have grenades available.

Balance also seems to need some work. The basic health pips only healing 2hp is not enough for a very hectic arena fight. The pips need to heal 10 and/or there needs to be more availability of bigger health packs around. As it is, the rules aren't super fair right now. Enemies do seem to drop health and armour pips *sometimes* but it's not obvious when. Given how much movement is involved, having a small radius of magnet grab for the pips as well would be a nice addition.

Balance in this game is just overwhelmingly stacked against the player in ways that don't seem totally fair.

With some adjustments here and there, this is going to be a very VERY good addition to the genre and Emperor be praised it is about friggin time that the Machine Spirit blessed us with a good 40k FPS. What on earth was Fire Warrior?!

Play it, enjoy it. But be prepared for some post-death "WHAT THE HECK HIT ME" moments. Maybe take out insurance on your expensive mechanical keyboard if you have issues containing your rage.

No one needs to be told that The Secret of Monkey Island is a vastly important game in adventure gaming canon, and 30 years after its release it still has an obvious influence on many aspects of the gaming space.

This Special Edition, though, does not appropriately honour the game's legacy. Let's get one thing out of the way: The voice acting is a welcome addition. The voices picked for the various characters are appropriate and while some lines are delivered in ways I wouldn't have read myself, they work. That and the fact that the key characters are voiced by their Curse (and beyond) counterparts is very welcome.

An additional positive is the underlying technology. The special edition makes use of a specially made SCUMM interpreter written by Aric Wilmunder (responsible for creating the original Windows SCUMM interpreter) that "overlays" the new graphics and UI on top of the original game; it is the very same, decades old code running "underneath" the new coat of paint. This means that the accuracy of gameplay is 1:1 but it also means that the hallmark feature of being able to swap seamlessly between the two versions is possible. This technology is later leveraged for the remasters of Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle - great stuff.

But the artwork. This will always be a divisive rendition of Monkey Island. The credits reveal the art to be entirely outsourced and this is a stark contrast to the original in-house production which comprised of digitised, hand-drawn art by Steve Purcell among others. While I don't think anyone can say that Secret was the most visually appealing game of all time, the charm in the art is the soul conveyed by the artists.

That soul is lost here. Outsourcing means making something quickly that works; I truly believe the released version of this game is the minimum viable product. The license taken in some areas warps our perceptions of the characters and locations in ways that just aren't necessary. Vector tracing of the kind later used in DOTT and Full Throttle probably wouldn't have worked, given the lack of fidelity here, but it would have been nice to bring in the artists for at least a level of consultation.

With that said, the Special Edition taught us some valuable lessons, and modern day remasters are using what was learned here. The Double Fine remasters were put together with insight from the original team - artists, writers, composers - and even more recently, the Sam & Max remasters have the artists drawing a happy middle ground between the original concept art and recent revisions by Steve Purcell.

This isn't a faithful recreation. At worst, it's offensive. But now, a decade on, it's an important milestone in the genre and a source of vital lessons. This is not a good re-release, but it is an important one, and without it we wouldn't learned what we do now about how to create a good, faithful LucasArts remaster.

With that said - it is the only commercial source for Monkey Island now, and if you just need a copy of the game then go for it. There's also a great tool available that will extract the original game data files and combine them with the voice and music from the remaster so that it can be playable in ScummVM - http://gratissaugen.de/ultimatetalkies/

Get this. But not because it's a good re-release.