Episode 1s can be a
tricky lot. You are working with characters nobody knows, you have to
make an impression for people to come back, you only have part of a
story to tell but it can’t just “stop” at some arbitrary point. What
will come is riding on what is here. Stuff it up and Episode 2 will
suffer before anyone has even seen it.
It’s fair to say Cognition
makes a rather good fist of things. Its opening and closing are strong,
the middle bits a little more mundane, and the whole (while not perfect)
is a solid start.
It looks a treat, especially the
comic book style cutscenes. Awash with colour and vibrancy, using light
and shade to great effect, it’s a very “arty” production. Except for the
female hair.
It also sounds good – from the
musical score, through the ambient sound and effects, to the character
voices. The last of these drop away a bit with some of the lesser (and
even not so lesser) characters, but Erica is everything a lead should
be.
In fact she’s more. She provides
the lead vocals for the theme song “The Taking”, and manages to squeeze
a plug for her real life band into the game via a ringtone and a related
note. Raleigh Holmes is her name, daughter of composer Robert Holmes,
who worked on the Gabriel Knight games, penned “The Taking”, and
who joins her in the folk band The Scarlet Furies. Robert is also
married to Jane Jensen, a fair dinkum adventure game luminary, and story
consultant on Cognition.
Cognition
Getting back to the game itself,
Erica is an agent with the Boston office of the FBI. Introduced to us
through a grim family tragedy, we leap forward three years to a macabre
and bloody hanging. It’s here we conduct our first “cognitive”
investigation.
It’s also here that we first get
a sense of what Erica’s visions are doing to her. As the game
progresses, these visions, or more precisely the abilities that enable
them, expand and become more controllable, leading to some nifty problem
solving and probably the game’s best puzzle.
By the end, Erica will have
three abilities she can control, enabling her to do things like see what
has previously occurred with respect to an object or place, or group
related items to see what it is that links them together. There is
nothing complicated about using these abilities, and they are all
accessed through the cognition sphere which sits bottom left.
Cognition
very much hangs off Erica, and she carries the load
admirably. Hopefully as the series progresses some of the support cast
will make a heftier contribution, but if Erica is going to be the anchor
for the series, then it’s understandable that Phoenix made her so
prominent here. Quite frankly, a strong and feisty heroine with a
vulnerable flaw or two will go a long way to getting me to come back.
Projection
The game will suit adventure
players of all experiences and will likely tick a few boxes for the most
grizzled point and click veterans. The interface is simple and familiar,
and unobtrusive tutorials will assist with gameplay mechanics,
especially as you acquire your cognitive powers. Played in the third
person, generous hotspots give access to three possible actions, one of
which is to use the selected inventory item, which remains permanently
available at the top right of the screen until you choose to select
another one.
Click the inventory item itself
and the inventory slides into view. Within the inventory you can examine
and combine items, aided by a number of helpful icons. You can also
access your phone, a useful tool that functions as a hint provider in
the form of text messages from your father.
Along with the ability to
highlight all hotspots, the hints should ensure things don’t get bogged
down. Phoenix clearly belong to the school of the story is the thing,
and the need to keep it moving along. And so it should – it’s dark and
sad and I found it rather compelling. Not even the mild actiony bit
should slow any adventurer down.
Regression
Cognition
does an excellent job of creating mood, and here it’s the sum of the
parts. The graphics, the acting, the music all come together to produce
at times some quite powerful moments. Not Walking Dead
gobsmacking, but within the context and the confines of a more realistic
plot, they are well constructed and delivered. Production polish is not
something Phoenix lacks.
You can tweak a number of
settings and save at will. I got no glitches or dead ends, and there
were enough “doh” moments to make it something I played as opposed to
just clicked through.
The puzzles can at times be
contrived, bloated or a little bit silly (lock picking the boss’s office
in full view of everyone else for example), but only once did I find
them annoying (fetching food during the interrogation). So too the
dialogue can be a bit corny, especially when delivered by one of the
lesser (and even clichéd) characters. It did meander a bit in the
middle, with lots of back and forth and everyday chitchat, and I never
got used to the spinning blue wheel which appeared every time the game
was doing something no longer in my control.
Having said that, Cognition
kept me engaged, and I thoroughly enjoyed the eight or so hours it took
me. Its strengths more than compensate for the lows, and low is a
relative concept. There is much to like in Cognition, not least
of all the end. It left me wanting to come back, which is pretty much
what every Episode 1 is looking for. If it polishes the rough edges as
we move on, it could eventually be rather exceptional.
B+
I played on:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i7-3820 4GHz
RAM: 12GB Ripjaw DDR3 2133 Mhz
Video card: AMD Radeon HD 7800 2048MB
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller
can be purchased via download from
Gamers Gate or
Gamestop.
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
November 2012
design copyright©
2012
GameBoomers
Group
