About eight years ago the first Blackwell game was released called The Blackwell Legacy. However a few years before that a smaller version of the game was released as freeware. It gained so much popularity that they made it into a commercial product, and an entire series. The series just ended with the fifth game and was released a week ago. Its written by Dave Gilbert who made games like The Shivah, Gemini Rue, and Primordia. However the Blackwell series is what he's most known for. If you're a fan of detective work, mysteries, and the occult this will be right up your alley.
You start the series as a confused woman called Rosangela Blackwell, or Rosa for short, dumping the ashes of her deceased aunt off of a bridge. Rosa is a socially awkward writer of sorts for a small paper. You get a job from your boss telling you to fill in for one of the reporters who can't come in. You have to investigate and get the story about the suicide of a college girl. Around this same time, you meet the family ghost, Joey Mallone who worked with your aunt before you. Together the two of you must unravel the mystery and save lost spirits wandering the world. You start off reluctant to take up the role as a spirit medium to send lost spirits to the afterlife but eventually you start to feel like this is your true calling and grow as a person. No longer are you that scared and confused person.
Like all adventure games there are puzzles. Unlike the more common ones where you have to combine items and try weird combinations of objects on doors or fountains and other weird crap, this one is all purely information puzzles. You need information on who this lost spirit is, you then need to somehow convince this lost spirit he or she is dead, and lastly you send them off to the afterlife when you're done. You can find information from anything and it will link you to the next clue and so on. For example you could find a photograph and in the photograph will be a word, or date written on it or in the background. You can then go on the browser in game and type it in to find your next clue. Which leads you to a person. You will have all your clues written down in your trusty notebook and can select clues to combine if you think there is a link. Of course the technology also changes as it changed in real life. While playing as your aunt, you don't get a computer and have to look through a phone book, and in the earlier series you had to go home to search on your computer, while in the later series you get a smart phone to get all your clues and browsing done.
In the series, you not only control Rosa but also your trusty ghost guide Joey Mallone. He cannot actually interact with people or objects but he can pass through doors, walls, objects to look at things. Sometimes you have to send him in a room to spy on the conversation of others for clues, other times you have him look inside drawers or locked houses. Other times there would be ghosts that refuses to respond to Rosa and you must send in Joey to talk to them. Rosa cannot physically touch ghosts so you may need Joey to grab a ghost to get their attention. The duo is nice. If the game just involved Rosa everyone would be bored to death. With the inclusion of Joey the game feels much more entertaining.
Even with all the good points, a good game does have its faults. The game play of the entire series is almost exactly the same. It might not be a bad thing but it almost always involve solving a mystery of a random ghost that has almost no involvement to the story at the very start as a tutorial. Then the credits roll in, then you can go around and do whatever you want. After solving a few mysteries you realize its part of a bigger conspiracy and you solve whatever problem you have and move onto the next game of the series until the finale. The thing is, the conspiracy was never solved at all. There are plot holes that were never explained as well. From what I understand Dave Gilbert didn't want the story to be about the conspiracy, he wanted it to be about the Blackwell women and Joey Mallone. Its their story, not the story of the great conspiracy. Other than that, the story is probably the best I've ever read/played in an adventure game.
If you're a fan of adventure games, you have to try this game out. Even if you aren't you should try this out. It uses a retro graphic style that some people might be turned off from but it does get better as the series progresses, slightly better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knpNvbbqCQE
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment