Goodbye
Deponia
Daedelic
After the chaos comes the
goodbye, a routine sequence which is anything but.
Much is the same – Rufus (all
three of him), the try too hard humour (questionable and crass at
times), the interface and the mini-games. Little is different, which
reflects what is really a tale in three parts as opposed to a bunch of
different games.
Hermes is new, in more ways than
one. He knows stuff too, but telling would be telling. I had a lot of
time for Hermes, more in fact than I had for Rufus.
Which is a little unfair. He
remains unwarmed to, but I have a better appreciation now of why he is
like he is. When all three Rufuses are present, the gameplay takes an
interesting turn. And I couldn’t help but admire the end, all the more
so because it was unlikely.
The writing hits its straps, and
does an admirable job of pulling together the bits and pieces from
across the three episodes and resolving most things satisfactorily. It
would have been easy to simply let some threads lie, forgotten with the
passage of the parts, but on the whole that didn’t happen. Which does
mean it will be all the better played as one single game.
Not everything is neatly
resolved though, which I didn’t mind at all. I have always liked an
element of “what now” in my conclusions, and don’t need everything to be
neatly wrapped up. If done right, it still seems like an end, but leaves
room for speculation.
The writing is also responsible
for my (grudging) new-found respect for Rufus, so well done indeed.
Puzzling is at times exactly
that, which, as I have said before, is part and parcel of these types of
games. A walkthrough was my occasional friend, helping to overcome what
would otherwise perhaps have been obtuse. The game mechanics help,
hotspots being highlightable and mini games being skippable, but they
also hinder, like when a new dialogue response becomes available where
it once wasn’t, and the cursor decides to do something similar. Like
Anne Elks theory of the brontosaurus however, the pacing of the puzzling
allows a settling in and then a steady flow to the end, with the hair
pulling and teeth gnashing sandwiched in between.
An early dialogue will review
what went before but as already mentioned, the experience will benefit
from knowing what went before. A tutorial will explain the interface,
although little explanation is required. Save at will, but not in
cutscenes or the mini games.
It remains quirky till the end,
which was further away than in the other episodes, and the music,
although a little repetitious at times, helps bring the required mood to
the various 2D animated scenes. Background animations further bring it
to lift,
I mentioned the humour and I
have to mention it again. Some things just aren’t funny, and aren’t
meant to be, no matter how much they might be saying more about the
character than the audience. There isn’t a lot of that here, and my
funny bone definitely got a tickle or three, but I do think the game is
done a disservice by one or two overly questionable bits.
But hey, that might just be me.
By contrast, I haven’t mentioned
the platypi, so I will mention them now. We have platypus once again, as
we should. There is nothing not improved by a platypus.
All up, this was a satisfying
trilogy of this type of game. It looked good, and underneath its
colourful exterior was a streak of darkness that just kept it a little
off kilter. There were twists and turns, and things I didn’t see coming,
and the walkthrough just over there kept the random guessing from
bogging things down. Some judicious and sparing pruning would make it
just that little bit better, but it is a solid addition to the Daedelic
development catalogue.
B+
I played on:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i7-3820 4GHz
RAM: 12GB Ripjaw DDR3 2133 Mhz
