Well I certainly enjoyed playing it Dave, and I'll be going through the commentary shortly.
For those that are still dithering, here's my review:-
Think back to the first Broken Sword (Circle of Blood to the redneck Americans). The intro sequence. Remember how it made you feel? I know how it made me feel, brilliant animation, music soaring as the wee bird flies towards the Eiffel Tower...
I knew I was in for an adventure.
That same feeling came back as far as The Blackwell Legacy is concerned, the overall feel brought everything back and I knew I was in for something special.
In the beginning...
As we should all know by now, if you all have kept up with the previews or played Bestowers of Eternity (the freeware taster of what was to come, released some years ago now), you'll know that the main characters are Rosangela Blackwell, a young New Yorker working as a freelance book reviewer and Joey Mallone, a ghost who has no idea why he can't leave the Blackwell women alone (apart from them possibly being physically attractive to him perhaps).
Without spoiling too much of the game, the basic premise is that Rosa and Joey act as a pair of ghost savers (as opposed to Ghostbusters), dealing with ghosts who have lost their way and moving on to the afterlife (whatever it might be).
It's Tetris Jim, but not as we know it...
Moving on, the inventory system and clues are handled much the same way as Dave Gilbert's previous release The Shivah. Except this time, Rosa has a notebook to combine clues she gets and to talk about with others (which is nicely presented) plus there aren't any "use X inventory object on Y character" type puzzles - this makes the game alot easier in one way, as you're not manically using every inventory item on a person just to see if it'll work.
It also means the puzzles that are presented to the player are more conversational in nature, and it also means actual sleuthing is required. Allow me to explain...
In your average adventure game, puzzles eventually become silly - something along the lines of "pick up worm, use worm 2 hours later in the game for fixing a warp drive". With adventures such as The Blackwell Legacy, this never happens and everything is logical and straightforward. As it should be.
To give a quick example: if you have a key labeled "F.B." and Rosa has already seen a fusebox that requires a key to open it, it's logical and straightforward that the key with "F.B." written on it would be the key to the fusebox.
Speech...the final frontier
How many adventure games have you played that are from a company such as Lucasarts or Revolution? Or even more scarce: Access Software? Usually, there's at least one slightly hokey voice in the game somewhere.
And this doesn't happen in The Blackwell Legacy. All the characters - however minor - come across as right. You're never thinking "Hmm, that wasn't quite right" - you just instantly accept it, and this is how voice acting should be. You just accept it and you're not thinking about the voices until you're typing up a review such as this.
On screen!
The character portraits are quite nice too, the voices match the character portraits - and they animate appropriately. The backgrounds are detailed yet not overly so. The character sprites are nigh-on perfect. For comparison sake, it's somewhere between The Dig and Broken Sword 1 quality and that means, for an independent game, it's very special indeed.
The final countdown...
And if you think you're only going to be getting a game that's going to last around 6-8 hours (depending on how good you are, I reason a skilled adventure gamer could do it within 4-6 hours) - think again. There's an extensive blooper reel, full of humourous outtakes and adlibs and the Director's Commentary that extends the replayability. For those of us who love DVD special features, these are things not to be missed.
This is one feature that really shines, you can go through the game with the Director's Commentary enabled, and Dave Gilbert's animated self will appear to discuss the part of the game that you're at throughout.
Score: 8.5/10
Price: $14.99 (£7.85 approx)
Difficulty: Moderate.
Also consider...: Sam & Max: Culture Shock - A far easier title and far shorter too, add to this the voice acting isn't that great. Broken Sword 1 & 2 Compilation DVD - Available on the Sold-Out range for £4.99, buy this if you haven't played them already (and let's be honest, BS1 has been out for 10 years now...if you haven't played it by now - shame on you!).
With regards,
Yickle.
