Art | Cookie | FAQ | Index of Posts | Links | Main | Oracle | YouTube
25 May 2014 - 28 May 2014
The mostly-incompetent Kaptain Brawe must save the day and the lives of his invaluable crew (or krew) by engaging in various plots and shenanigans.
OK, so I wasn't paying too much attention to the plot. I don't remember much, except for the big reveal that the snivelling lackey was, in fact, the gender-flipped devastating bounty hunter/assassin woman that wreaked havoc in the first part of the game.
The game is a serviceable little homage to the science fiction operas of old - think Flash Gordon, with a little bit of Duck Dogers of the 24 and 1/2 century. It's silly, and it's camp, and it knows it, and so can revel in its enforced mediocrity and lean on the fourth wall as much as it likes.
As an adventure game, the puzzles are hard to swallow. There are segments of the game where the vital, important things you need to solve a puzzle are so buried and camouflaged that it's impossible to distinguish them from the rest of the scenery. At one point, you're even supposed to know to pick a branch from a tree in the forest - which you won't know unless you purposely hover your mouse over the forest in question. No individual tree stands out, and you can't take a branch from anywhere else. There are a couple of puzzles like that.
Now, adventure games are (stereo)typically about combining everything in your inventory in strange and unusual ways in order to surpass the obstacles in front of you. But when you can't even locate the objects to place in your inventory in the first place without having to complete a hidden-object game, that's a serious problem.
If it sounds like I'm disparaging the entire genre, I don't think I am. I like adventure games. I've played all the old classics: Space Quest, King's Quest, Police Quest, Gold Rush ... hmmm, come to think of it, those are all from Sierra. Monkey Island, too, as well as it's sequels. I'm familiar with the tropes. I expect them. But they all made sure that whatever you needed to pick up would be obvious, with a twinkle or something. Kaptain Brawe assumes you'll pick up anything and everything, even the things that aren't given proper labels.
And that's probably true of most adventurers. It could just be that I'm bad at video games. I find them fun, and I did have a bit of fun with Kaptain Brawe (maybe even at the game's expense), but it's not the fun that I really remember when I look back at my time with the game. I remember the frustration, even with the difficulty dialed all the way down to "give copious hints."
If you're really looking for a rollicking space adventure, I suppose this might fit the bill. Play once, and then never again.