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Again
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Graphics & Sound:
Again is one of those games that might be appreciated by a particular audience, but that audience is so small, that it's hard to see exactly how the game made it to the shelves. Don't get me wrong, it's a unique title that presents some interesting experience, but even among adventure gamers, you will be hard pressed to find someone willing to go through the massive story Again possesses.
Most of Again will have you looking at text on one side of the DS and still, semi-animated images of people talking on the other (the DS is to be held in "book" fashion for this game). Since a majority of the experience involved reading tons of dialogue, the few graphics made available have to be really good to make an impression, and what Again displays is okay at best, even given the handheld's low-level capabilities. The graphics of people are photos of real actors and actresses with thick white outlines to make them "pop" on the screen, and each pose has stop-action feeling animations to go between them as the character starts a new sentence (no, there isn't any moving while they are talking, all of the action happens when the new statement is started). Outside of these 2D scenarios, the game presents some fully 3D environments for your character to explore. These are typically smallish areas without a whole lot of room to move around in, but at least they make for a nice change of pace on the rare occasions they show up. An interesting aspect of these scenes is that J (your character) will often have a bit of double-vision where he sees an alternate view of the room at the same time. This alternate view is seen on the second screen of the DS and it has some post-processing done to it to make it feel older. Like I said, these ventures into the 3D environments are nice distractions to the endless conversations and semi-animated character interactions, but they really don't happen often enough to keep the attention of most gamers for very long.
On the other side of the game's presentation, Again offers some okay background music, but since there is no voicework and no sound effects worth noting, the game can be played just as well with the sound completely off. All-in-all, the game doesn't do a lot for gamers who are looking for great visuals or awesome soundtracks, but that's okay if the gameplay is stellar right?
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Gameplay:
Unfortunately, Again doesn't really do anything spectacular in the gameplay department either. There are two major components to Again, and they are briefly described above. Most of the time, you will be reading dialogue as you interview various people involved in the crime and its investigation. This involves showing them inventory items you have picked up along the way (files, photos, letters, etc.) and discussing what they think about them. This also involves some dialogue choices, but for the most part, there is no real branching involved in these choices. Basically, you will sit there and talk to a character until all of the options are exhausted and then move on to the next location in your list of places to visit and move on from there. The game really does feel more like an interactive novel than a videogame, which it says in small print on the cover. The only time the experience gets really interesting is when J has one of his double-vision experiences and gets glimpses of the past.
During these scenes, you need to look around the area and figure out what is different. When you discover something that doesn't look the same in both times, you tap it and make the scenes match up. As you do this, J gets flashes of insight about the scenes he is investigating and we learn just a little more about the strange murders that he and his partner are tasked to solve.
The setup to Again's story is that a series of murders seem to have started up and they are strangely connected to a serial killer who tormented the city 19 years ago. Now J, who we learn early on is connected to these older crimes, has to reopen the old case and figure out what the previous investigators missed in order to stop the current string of murders from running their course. So, since the game follows a murder investigation, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that there will be a lot of talking to suspects and gathering of information. As a long-time adventure gamer, I'm not gun-shy of dialogue trees, but Again's balance of dialogue versus action or puzzles is really skewed and it makes it really hard to push through the game's story and find out what is really going on. |
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Difficulty:
To make matters worse, Again isn't really that much of a challenge. You get presented with a group of people you have to talk to, and you go to them and run through the list of dialogue choices you have. By the time you are done talking to people, you typically have a few more to talk to, or you may have a location to go to that spawns one of the 3D scenes and another encounter with the past. If there was any kind of puzzles to solve or real deduction to do in order to progress, things would be different, but the worst thing that could happen is that you missed a dialogue option, don't think to show someone something or you aren't as efficient investigating a scene as you could be. I guess that is to be expected from a game that touts itself as an "Interactive Crome Novel" though.
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Game Mechanics:
It's pretty obvious that Again runs off of the same engine as Cing's other recent DS adventure title, Hotel Dusk. In both cases, the DS is held sideways, there is a nice 3D world navigation system and there is a solid dialogue system, so those gamers who've tackled Hotel Dusk shouldn't have any issues picking up and playing this game. In fact, I would say Again makes top marks on pickup-and-playability ... but since most of that is simply knowing how to tap the screen to progress the dialogue, there isn't much of a learning curve as far as knowing how to work the game is concerned.
As an interactive novel, Again does the job; the problem is that I don't really know who this game is for. As an adventure gamer, I would say it should be up my alley, but it just doesn't do it for me. Maybe there is a sub-genre out there that this game fits perfectly into and there are gamers out there foaming at the mouth for this experience, but part of me wants to say that if I wanted to read an eBook, I would buy a Kindle. I don't want to seem too harsh, but I would hate for someone to buy or rent this game thinking it was a standard adventure title. What it is, is a unique experience, but unless you are enamored by the idea of an interactive novel (that seems light on the interactivity), Again is not for you. It's not that there is anything "technically" wrong with the game, it's just not an experience that most people will enjoy. |
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
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