Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

The Good
What's not to like about this game?

The graphics are beautiful and rich. I really liked the close-ups when you're interviewing people, and the in-game graphics are nicely done. Also, there are several comic-like cutscenes scattered throughout the game, which in my opinion add a lot.
The sounds are breathtaking. Music-wise, I've never heard MIDI sound this good, and it fits the story and world perfectly, contributing a great deal to the general atmosphere of the game, which can give you actual goosebumps. The voice acting is superb, and is my favorite to this day. Tim Curry (as Gabriel Knight) delivers a stellar performance, mixing just the right amount of sarcasm and cynicism in the everyday events in the game, but manages to convey a real sense of warmth, urgency or despair when they are called for. This is not to detract from the phenomenal voice acting of the other characters: Leah Remini (as Grace) is probably my favorite game character other than Gabriel himself, and Michael Dorn (as Dr. John) has the perfect voice for the role. Honestly, each and every actor does the job brilliantly.
The game's interface is Sierra's known point-and-click with icons, but the icons have changed slightly, to make your interaction with the world even richer. For example, there are two separate icons for general chatting and for asking specific questions. Or different icons for pick up, move, and open.
The puzzles are interesting and original, and more importantly fit surprisingly well into the plot, instead of being mix-and-match-items puzzles or the give-this-to-this-guy puzzles. They are there to advance the plot, not just to tease your brain.

And finally, we have the story.

Ah - the story.

Gabriel Knight has the best writing in a computer game ever, bar none. Once the plot grabs you by the throat (should happen by the beginning of day 4 or so), it simply does not let go of you, and you will not be able to let go of the game, until it's over.
What makes it so good? First of all the big story is a solid, interesting, suspenseful story. It's got twists and turns, and it even manages to surprise you several times. But more than that, Jane Jensen got everything done just right. The dialogs are crisp and brilliantly written, with quite a bit of humor mixed in, giving the voice actors real meaty roles to work with.
What's most contributing, at least for me, is the amount of backdrop the player receives. As early as Day 2, you'll find yourself learning a great deal about Voodoo, most (if not all) of which is absolutely correct. You'll even get to hear a lecture about Voodoo, detailing its rituals and customs further in the game. Most of what is said about New Orleans is true as well. Visiting it just a month ago, I actually knew my way around. The game world is so rich, diverse, and detailed, that you feel as though you really know the world and the characters and actually care about them.

Yes. That about describes the game. Perfect in every respect.



The Bad
I'm hard pressed to think of anything seriously wrong with the game.
I did encounter several places where the voiceover was "clicky" or slightly buggy, and some of the puzzles might be a bit annoying (the one with the police officer in the park on day 1, or the arcade-like sequence in the catacombs). But these in no way tarnish the great experience that is GK.

The Bottom Line
I'll use my one-line summary again: Flawless. Simply flawless. Everything, from music to voices to dialogs to story to every other aspect, comes together here.
10 years and countless games after first playing Gabriel Knight, it's still the best game ever from where I'm sitting. An ever-shining gem.

The Good
I don't think there's a whole bunch to not like about this game. For starters, Jane Jensen's masterful writing will keep you on your toes until the very end. This is backed up by great character design, a good MIDI score with lots of memorable themes, beautiful character portraits, and the best voice acting that I've ever heard in a computer game. Tim Curry absolutely makes the role of Gabriel Knight his own. The game also includes lots of other stars and people of note: Leah Remini (Grace Nakimura), Mark Hamill (Detective Mosely), Michael Dorn (Dr. John), and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr (Wolfgang Ritter). The ending is rewarding, the game drips with atmosphere, and the story will stick with you long after you've finished playing.

The Bad
In terms of pure gameplay, I can't think of anything bad to say aboout GK. There are a couple of rough spots as far as technology goes, though. There is a patch available for the game, and as I recall you do have to download and install the patch in order to be able to finish the game. Do it before you start playing, because once you run the patch you won't be able to use your old saved games. Unfortunately, the terrific voice acting wasn't always well recorded. There is much more clipping than there should be in a professional product. (Clipping is the digital version of analog recording's distortion; it means recording levels were set too high.) Also, sometimes the recording levels were set too low and you have to do some quick audio adjustment to hear what people are saying. The game will only allow subtitles OR speech, so you can't both read and hear what people are saying. However, it would take a lot more than this to have taken away from my enjoyment of the wonderful acting. This game is from an era where diskette versions of games were still shipped; in fact, they often shipped quite a long time before the CD-ROM versions were. Make sure you get the CD-ROM version. I still rated the game a 5 in every area - except for graphics. The comic-style cutscenes were a cool idea, and the high resolution character portraits (I believe these were only available in the Windows version of the CD-ROM game) easily rival, and often surpass the 3D graphics of today. However, the in-game 320x240 graphics could have been better.

The Bottom Line
If you're an adventure gamer and you haven't played Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, shame on you. Go out and buy it right now. :)

The Good
Well for one, this is one deep story. Other Sierra adventure games had this "surface level-fun kiddies" kinda of story line. This is the first Sierra Adventure game with a really serious-adult like approach to a game. The mysterious but not so creepy storyline gave a constant adrenaline flow, but not so much to give you a heart attack.

Our main character appears to be a favorite among "men with minds like boys" : a cool, mysterious laidback kinda guy, but always seems to be a corny and horny guy in the background. Gabriel Knight is yet the most "real character" most blokes can relate with. One thing that is probably memorable is the various "useless actions" that ol'Gabriel does especially when he interacts with his lovely secretary. It may not have to do anything with the overall plot, but it certainly was the most memorable ones.

The graphics in this game is astounding, coincidently enough it's about the same period to the breath-taking graphics in Hero's Quest III. I remember just stopping and notice on how "smooth" the graphics were compared to previous Sierra adventure games.

One of the best things about the game was the Sound and the Music. The sound was totally aligned with the game-play: the sound of the motorcylce racing along is one of the most memorable sounds you get. The music cool and mysterious, certainly shall be a reminder of the best music compositions around in gaming history.

The Bad
Can you spell: B U G S?

Unfortunately, the reason why I didn't finish this game was the multitude of bugs which often cause the dang game to crash. Bugs appear to be a favorite feature among Sierra adventure games...don't know why.

Something I've noticed about this particular Sierra adventure game compared to other Sierra adventure games was the lack of "places"...in games like King's Quest there are many places which may or may not have something for the hero to do. In Gabriel Knight there usually is something to do every area you visit, although more than often it's just one of two things. After that, you barely visit them again. It's like the church in the game, the only thing you do there is to get some pastor's clothes. That it. Ho-hum. Oh, well.

To my recollection, the puzzles were one of the toughest I have experienced, even by Sierra's standards. Funny that it was tough despite the it was the "point and click" adventure types. My IQ must've have been not very high back then...not that much has changed now...:p

The Bottom Line
Certainly one of the best mystery adventures around.