Double Fine have a fanbase much like Nintendo's, they only buy the titles to try to satisfy some need for unsatisfied nostalgia somewhere in their brain. With each new release they eagerly anticipate their next fix only to be given something that isn't quite what they expected, not bad by any stretch, but not quite what they wanted or what they hyped it up to be. Just like every new Nintendo title, Double Fine's releases are eagerly anticipated, the subject of conversation for a week or so after release and then it fades into the background completely for the rest of eternity.
So with Tim Schafer claiming to return back to the roots of adventure gaming with Broken Age the internet went barking mad for the PC exclusive point & click title and helped it hit its Kickstarter goal in a very short amount of time. What was delivered was a nice homage to the point & click's of yore, but at the same time it shows just how far the genre has become and feels old in comparison.
Broken Age follows two teenagers with no apparent connection to each other in very different circumstances. First up there is Vella Tartine, living in a world terrorised by a mysterious creature known as Mog Chothra. Mog Chothra threatens the lives of every single inhabitant of her world unless a yearly pageant known as the Maidens Feast takes place. At the feast, the towns most beautiful young women are offered up to Mog as a sacrifice, it is seen as a great shame to not be chosen by Mog and girls actually strive to have their lives cut short by this murderous beast as not to shame their families.
Vella however sees things a little differently, she wants to rise up against the creature and kill it. To stop it from terrorising any more towns and to stop any more girls dying for no reason. When she escapes from the maidens feast she goes on an adventure across her land to try to gather an army to fight Mog Chothra before the feast season ends.
Shay however is a young man imprisoned on a spaceship. Well I suppose imprisoned is the wrong word in this situation, I suppose its more of a smothering by an overly protective mother. Imagine Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey but in the form of a mother protecting her only child from the horrors of the outside world.
Anyway, Shay is in desperate need of some independence, some adventure! But unfortunately his mother keeps getting in the way, so when he meets a mysterious talking fox who wants his help to save an alien race, Shay seizes the opportunity with both hands and ends up getting in way over his head.
Broken Age has a pretty good story once it gets going, but the big problem is that Vella's story is a lot more interesting than Shay's and she is a much better character. Shay is pretty blank beyond being a teenager that wants to escape his mothers gaze even for a few moments to have his own adventures, but that's as far as it goes. Vella has views on things, she has a personality, she wants more from life than to be food for a monster, hell she wants to start a god damn war! There is a serious pacing issue between the two stories, Vella's has a steady pace that starts off slow and builds to an exciting climax, Shay's however starts off slow and never gets going...not until the last cutscene anyway when the games big twist suddenly becomes clear. Oh and as for that twist, its a doozy and I genuinely never saw it coming.
But here is another problem with Broken Age, its told in two Acts. Once you finish Vella & Shay's episodes you are shown the big twist as a finale and then it ends on a total WTF cliffhanger. Act I is an introduction through and through, things never get too exciting and the ending only left more questions about Shay & Vella than were answered as we got to know them over the games run time, which took me around 4 hours to do. Hopefully this problem will be rectified in Act II, but that doesn't stop Act I from being dead slow and at times outright boring.
The game is presented in a 2.5D style where you walk from screen to screen talking to characters to get hints to puzzles and collecting random objects that make no logical sense to completing the puzzles...much like traditional adventure games. It has a hand drawn kind of feel to it with distinct visual differences between Vella & Shay's worlds. It uses a wide range of colours & is in general a very pretty looking game. There were no performance issues that I spotted and the game will run fine on most mid range PC's. The GUI though was pretty fiddly and took some getting used to, using items was easy enough but actually getting to the items in your inventory took a bit more effort than it should have done.
As for sound, Broken Age had an enjoyable soundtrack but its nothing I wouldn't listen to out of the game and some of the voice acting was also a little wooden. Some characters gave the game a lot of life and were a blast to be around but especially with Shay & Vella, the voice acting was a little bland and lacked emotion.
As a what is at the moment a half of a whole game, Broken Age is pretty solid and generally enjoyable. It has its moments of greatness but for all them moments there is also another of not so greatness. Whether certain not so great aspects will improve when the 2nd half releases is the only question left to answer but for now, unless you are a huge Double Fine fan, or a big adventure game fan I would hold off buying it until both parts are out and maybe even on sale depending on how good Act II is.
Much like I stated in my introduction, Broken Age is not a bad game, but it just goes to show how far we have come in the genre since the 90's and just how arbitrary some of those classic adventure game cliché's really are when used in a modern game.
Broken Age: Act I – 6/10
+Vella's Story
+The Twist
+Gorgeous Visual Style
-Shay's Story
-The Cliffhanger
-Old Adventure Game Cliché's Make It Feel Dated
