Recenzii recente de stardustsunday

Not a fan of visual novels. But the pros outweigh the cons for this one.

Pros
- Nice music
- Not that much text to click through
- Pretty girls done in Victorian era sailormoon manga style
- Lovely artwork and visual style
- Interesting enough story to keep you reading

Cons
- Story felt awkward and contrived in places, especially the ending
- Music suddenly cut off at certain points; I thought my speakers had suddenly failed!
- Could be more concise; some redundant text that doesn't contribute to the enjoyment of the story
- Intro was way too long (blah blah blah)

Overall a short & sweet offering. Might as well give it a try since it's free.

Disclaimer: This review may be biased as I'm not a fan of visual novels in the first place. I only decided to try this one as the trailer looked nice and the reviews were mostly positive.

Story starts off with a guy (you) meeting his supposed girlfriend or love interest in the park. Tons of clicking through pointless conversation between them then follows.

They talk about things like rice balls, cooking, co-workers, and shopping, and other supremely mundane stuff. As one of the things I greatly abhor is small talk (I find it a waste of time - either get to the point or scram), I found myself quickly losing interest and patience.

However, it turns out I still managed to finish this game. And that's because it lasted a mere total of 3 minutes.

I couldn't really see the point of why this was made, frankly.

This was like a mash-up of the movie "Her" (2013) and "Uncanny" (2015). I would say, watch "Uncanny" instead.

Not a fan of visual novels at all. But this game has fantastic music! That theme song... I just couldn't get it out of my head!

That aside, I actually managed to spend several (accummulative) hours on this game as it was pretty immersive, and the lure of solving several mysteries at hand pushes you on. Ultimately though, all that clicking to get through the text made me lose patience, and I gave up about midway.

Absent doesn't quite get off to a very convincing start, but don't give up on this game just yet! Hang in there and things get a lot more fun pretty soon!

Pros
- Fantastic voice acting (I loved Danielle in particular)
- Catchy music that entirely matched the scene (near the end especially)
- Surprising plot (be patient and you'll see)
- Great length (for a free game): many hours of fun and adventure puzzle-solving
- Many acts and different scenes to explore
- Interesting and memorable characters
- Can switch characters at certain points of the game
- Some creative puzzles that utilise different modes of solving

Cons
- Some parts of story not fully explained, & a bit nonsensical
- No option to skip or cycle thru text using mouse; instead you must use the keyboard
- No ability to directly choose "walk", "use", "look", etc; instead you must keep right-clicking till the action you want appears
- Screen resolution too small (I played on a 1920x1080 monitor and it was a tiny window); no option to change this or play full-screen
- The girls in this game are drawn really ugly
- Needs a better title

Overall I enjoyed Absent. If you're an old-school adventure game fan (think King's Quest, Monkey Island, etc), definitely check this game out!

Nice graphics, lousy voice acting, and absolutely retarded game system. Does the developer not have any idea how other point-n-click adventure games work?

Examples of what I mean:

1) Your character has to walk up to any object before he will comment on it, regardless of whether your chosen action is "look" or "interact". Such a completely pointless waste of time! This is made extra irritating by the fact that your character walks slower than a snail and there is absolutely no way to control walking speed!

2) Why make your character walk if the walking animation is ugly-looking as hell?! He actually "overlaps" the doctor when he walks towards him! Even 8-bit pixel adventure games have better walking animation!

3) To look at or use any active object in the playing screen, you have to double-click on that object, wait for that object's menu to pop up, then select "look" or "interact". As if the double-clicking isn't bad enough, each time you double-click, your character starts to walk towards the object, even though you haven't selected an action to perform and may not ultimately select one! Bearing in mind how ugly-looking and painfully SLOW the walking is (see point #2 above), this just makes doing simple things like looking at stuff a painstaking, tedious affair.

I just didn't have the patience for this one.

I would suggest that the developer look at and play other good adventure games, then follow their example in terms of controls and interactivity.

Nice little completely playable point-n-click adventure game, which the developers say was made in 48 hours. (Wow.)

Graphics
I had no problem at all with the graphics - in fact I kind of liked the style. There's even animation! Bravo!

Story
A bit silly, but a fun kind of silly. The language was subpar though. Wish the developers could've got someone whose native language was English to vet through all the captions, as the phrasing and grammar occasionally spoiled the effect of what was trying to be communicated.

Puzzles
This was a short game, but it still managed to fit in some OK adventure puzzles. One logic puzzle near the end took me quite a while to figure out - so fun!

Overall this was a good experience and a pleasant way to spend about 30 minutes.

Fun enough point-n-click. Lots of replay potential due to missed points (I was almost 100 points lower than the max scoreable the first time I finished the game) and alternate endings. There's a good mix of simple adventure puzzles and having to make the right choices during your character's stand-up shows. There's even a fun taxi chase and an easter egg! Highly recommended, especially if you like lame jokes.

A must-play for old-school adventure gamers. It's your regular point-n-click but with loads of humour, great dialogue, a corny story, and loads and loads of gross body parts! There are 13 achievements to unlock; if you're a stickler for not missing any story details, this is a great way to ensure that you've explored everything and tried everything possible. (I personally loved "Too Toasty".)

Choose what to say during your chats with your friend Emily, which will influence the way the story plays out. Short but poignant. Will probably replay this again some other time to see if I can get a different ending.

Fantastic story; I liked the way it slowly unravelled as you play on and discover more objects. I would recommend this game solely for the story alone.