What I said in my first look:
Coupled with the star on the
rise that is Wadjet Eye, it is not surprising this first look has such
promise.
I am here to say the final look
lived up to that promise.
Maybe the puzzles were a little
easy, maybe it isn’t long enough, perhaps the adventure gaming v the
story banged heads a bit too often. But it was a satisfying piece of
historical redemption, with a great little story going on.
Don’t let the reference to
“historical” put you off. It isn’t edutainment in the remotest sense,
nor is it a stuffy dramatization of past events. The tale is set in a
real place, against the backdrop of real events, the sights and sounds
reflect the time in question and you know how some things end (ie there
was a depression) but it added to the whole thing rather than it was the
whole thing.
In fact, the period shone
through. At times it tried a little hard, but overall it hit the mark.
Kudos to Mr Gonzalez.
As I noted in the first look,
the game is a retro kinda thing in terms of its graphics, akin to the
broader Wadjet Eye catalogue. It’s retro point and click all the way as
well, easy to get into and easy to get along with.
Allowing for the graphic style,
the game looks good and sounds good, from the jazzy notes of the score
to the voices of the main players. They (the voices) fall away a little
for the marginal ones but not such that I was overly concerned.
The game packs 15 years into its
7 or so hours of playtime, and the story telling does feel a little
disjointed as it jumps ahead in chapters. As far as that story is
concerned, you play Alfie, a top salesman in New York, who decides to
pack up and head south, for reasons you can find out for yourself, and
to perhaps take advantage of a soon to be land boom. To tell you too
much more would be to spoil things. Let’s just say it isn’t all
ticketyboo for Alfie, despite how it starts and appears.
Alfie isn’t real, but he is a
character I liked. A little set in his ways, and the game didn’t allow
you to change those ways, but perhaps that’s my Telltale bias showing
through.
He ran around a lot doing other
peoples bidding, but that was the adventure gaming discordance going on.
Quite frankly, it isn’t my favourite aspect of adventure games, and I
wouldn’t have been at all disappointed if he had told a few people to
“go jump” (if that is an Australian expression I can translate).
These aren’t the only
conundrums. There are some conversation challenges which involve
convincing people to make certain decisions, and a variant which
involves matching buyers with their perfect house. Effort has been put
into these and other aspects to add to the real estate-y feel of the
game, and by and large they do a good job.
There is an intuition system
which can guide you in how to approach your conversations, should you
need it. I didn’t really use it as I wasn’t generally in need of
guidance.
The Golden Wake wasn’t perfect,
but was a bold ambition and is clearly a labour of love, which is not a
bad thing at all. It is a worthy addition to the Wadjet pantheon.
Grade B+
I played on:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core CPU 2.2 GHz
Ram: 4.00GB DDR2 400MHz
