Fallen London

The Good
The game has a very good story and reminds me of Alter Ego in the sense that you are presented with situations and have to decide how to deal with them. The writing is pretty damn good and it creates a wonderful atmosphere that allows you to picture Fallen London without needing any visual aid besides the stained colors used on the pages and the light of the wax candle on the top left corner of the screen. There is also a huge variety of tasks you are asked to complete and story-lines you need to follow, plus there are also random events that can change your plans at any moment.

Objectives such as these couldn't possibly be carried out in a two-dimensional world that doesn't really have much back-story or life to it, but like I already said: Fallen London is wonderful. There is so much history to it and there are so many factions that are involved in everything ranging from politics to petty crimes on the streets. I like it how they have random pieces of lore on the right side of the screen that tell you a little bit about Fallen London, but you can find out a lot by just reading the text that comes with all the objectives and events as well.

It's also nice to see a game that doesn't center around killing everything and instead focuses more on been a gentleman and politics which doesn't mean it's all friendly and peaceful. Violence is an option, but I found myself trying to charm my way towards a goal more often then fighting my way towards it, optionally I could also try to sneak my way in or just be a wuss and write a strongly-worded letter to somebody. The game also doesn't fall for the trap of judging you and giving you a morality meter, instead you gain reputation with various factions if you do work for them or choose their side when there is trouble on the horizon.

After a rocky start I discovered that the game is actually very intuitive and finding the right information is very easy. If you want to do mission for example, you'll just have to click on the "story" tab and select which one you want to do. You buy things in the "Bazaar" tab, you go to the homepage using the "home" tab and you find all your items on the "inventory" tab, it couldn't be more straightforward. It's also nice that after completing a job you can select "try again" to do the same job again rather then going back to the menu to select what you want to do again.

The Bad
Like every Facebook game I have seen thus far it focuses almost entirely on friends which is dumb because nobody plays this game. I tried to ask some friends if they wanted to try it out, but it's clearly not a popular premise and asking around on game websites only yielded three other people. This time around it's even worse because you can't interact with other players AT ALL, unless they are you friends in which case you will have a few optional missions to score. Not only is it wasted potential, but it also leaves you with little to work towards.

I stopped playing this game on several times before after which I started again after a month or so, I did this because you don't work towards anything (partly due to the lack of other players). There isn't real a goal or a quest you are on, you just kinda go around town and do stuff you like. It's fun for a while and the writing can keep you hooked for a few days in a row, but it just doesn't have any point to it when taken as a whole. It reminded me a lot about Runescape, you just don't go around doing some quests for guy A or grinding your skills up, so you can make more money, there is no threat to the world of a villain to vanquish.

A lot of stuff is really unexplained and I often ran into problems when I had to find certain items. For example: some weird story-line has you receiving nightmares that just kinda sit around on your rap sheet and these are very easy to worsen, the game keeps nagging me to get rid off it, but doesn't tell me how and all objectives related to nightmares either make them worse or only help once out of ten times. It's really annoying to go through a whole adventure only to find yourself stuck having to find some bullshit item before you're allowed to undergo your next challenge.

The Bottom Line
I really like this game, but as you may have figured out it's mostly due to very good writing and the atmosphere, there are some serious gameplay and story issues that keep bothering me and taking me out off the experience. I am still very positive about this game and if you love a game that makes it's world feel so real and interesting then this is certainly your cup of tea. If you are like me an reviewing your games is your job, then you might want to look for something that actually has a story, preferably on consoles because I found it hard to justify having six systems and still playing a browser game.