Summary
Original and interesting - but major problems prevent it to be more than that.
The Good
This is the less popular game of Simon Woodruff, the creator of "Simon The Sorcerer" games . I enjoyed very much playing the two released "Simons" and am currently waiting impatiently for the third. Meanwhile, I discovered that there was another game created by Woodruff, and immediately bought it.
This game features one of the most remarkable heroes ever to participate in an adventure: the green, big-eyed alien Feeble, who gets involved in a complicated story of dictatorship and rebellion. The story is more powerful than that of "Simon The Sorcerer", it can be even called epic: the game embraces four CDs, and they aren't only filled with videos.
One can see lots of efforts were put into this game. The dialogues are one of the parts of the game I enjoyed the most: cleverly, vividly written, they are neither too short, not too long and entertain the player with vast choices of responses and reactions: you are not likely to repeat yourself even if you attempt to speak five times to the same person.
I appreciate the effort the creators of this game put into the story: this is, indeed, one of the strongest stories ever written for a game, and could be compared to "Zork: Grand Inquisitor". A society ruled by a dictator who demands of his citizens always to be happy and to praise him and his regime, and who mercilessly slaughters the ones who disapprove one of his rules, or even allowed themselves the slightest doubt - reminds me of the Soviet Union: "The winter is over, the summer came to us. Thank you for that, dear communist party!" ... There was an ironic song that went like this.
This brings me to the "bad" section.
The Bad
First the less important things, that bothered me, however: the rather ordinary graphics and the almost complete lack of music. Another very annoying thing was the outrageously illogical puzzles. Strange is one thing, but to look for a solution in a walkthrough and just to shrug the shoulders after completing a puzzle is another. Nothing like that was seen in "Simon The Sorcerer": of course, those games were full of diabolically tough puzzles, but after solving them, you felt admiration for their creator: here, you feel only frustrated.
My two main objections to this game don't concern the technical aspect. My first objection is the inadequate relation between the serious and the comic in this game. How come people get annihilated by evil servants of the Omnibrain, the whole nations live in fear for their life, Feeble himself is being sadistically tortured - and still the game continues to employ the "Monkey Island" type of a tongue-to-cheek humor? Are we supposed to laugh at the suffering of innocent creatures? I'm not against humor in a serious game - if it's a dark, grotesque kind of humor à la "Zork: Grand Inquisitor". With all its macabre qualities, the humor in "Grand Inquistitor" never loses its warm, human attitude.
Which brings me to the related second objection. Yes, this is a computer game, this is not the real life. But if in a computer game your hero is a cheap, mean coward (he IS like this at the beginning!) and some of the puzzles involve the most low actions, that cause death to innocent people who never did you anything bad - I think, this goes a bit over the top. I never liked the behaviour of Simon in the second "Simon The Sorcerer" game, but at least it was a comedy, and Simon was never as low as feeble. After playing for a while, I just lost the desire to identify myself with such a person. And what made me very angry is that the game didn't really blamed him for that - he didn't seem to regret what he had done.
The Bottom Line
Well, this is an interesting game... An epic, a political satire, just another comic adventure à la "Sam & Max"? I don't know, and I think it's a pity this game couldn't really choose its way. A mixture of light-headed humor with á tragic storyline is unforgivable.
