Good and bad about the second episode

[jaeger]

Finished Black Plague yesterday after only two evenings of gaming... What to say?

All in all, I say the first episode (Overture) was way better than the second. Let me get into detail on why the logic puzzles failed miserably.

The game started well with logical puzzles, like putting planks over loose ground, standing on boxes, etc, but quickly took a turn for the worse as the solutions to various puzzles started becoming more like old-school puzzle or memory games, not utilizing the splending physics engine at all.

You know sort of how to solve the puzzle, you just can't find the stuff you need. Searching is boring. Imagine making a game where you repetitively look under pieces of rubble for ten minutes. Zzz. Also, the inventory-based solutions are sometimes far-fetched and, well, it's not as fun to use inventory items as it is to use items that yield to the physics engine.

The final and most annoying portion of the game are the dream and trial sequences. While the rest of the game is packed with eye-candy and atmosphere, these parts of the game are butt ugly and have some really boring trial and error puzzles involving switch flicking and pushing boxes on icons.

If there's a third episode, or similar game in the making, please make sure that all the logic puzzles use the environment. One should be able to walk into a room, find the stuff one needs and be able to think ones way out of it rather than doing trial and error on buttons/switches. Endless searching and testing is not fun.
I was starting to get really bored and by the final trial sequence I just didn't care at all about the story any more as it started going from excellent scifi horror to quasi-philosophical X-Files mode.

The game is still worth purchasing and playing, but if you expect brain knocking puzzle solving you will be dissapointed. The environment, music and sound effects are extremely well done and balanced. As usual, big big cheers to the programmers, musicians and artists!

As a final suggestion to the game and story writers at Frictional: next game must have maximum amount of environment interaction and make puzzles from that interaction.
Also, the game must be closer to 40 hours than 5!

Cheers!