| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 9.00 |
| Overall | 9.00 |
|
What a year for indies this year, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes continues the streak of excellent indie games and this might be the best one. This is one of the most compelling interesting puzzle games I have played. With a focus on logic puzzles, rather than mechanical video game puzzles, its a game anyone can enjoy. An extremely stylish and unique story wraps the puzzles up into a package that is a gem. The story of Lorelei is a puzzle in its own right, you are dropped into tthe game with absolutely no information, no background. The only info you get is an instruction manual which you can miss if you dont examine the glove box of the car you start in front of, even then the manual simple sets the player into the right frame of mind, be observant, you must know basic math and take notes. It also warns you the story won't make sense at first as it is told completely in the order the player so happens to explore. There are a few cutscenes where you get some text communication from this mysterious person who invited you to an old hotel for an "art exhibit", from there you need to piece together who you are and WHEN you are. What unravels is a mystery between different significant years where certain players lifed and died and what connects them all, this is told through a series of notes and even the puzzles themselves. Thats part of what is so compelling of this puzzle game, yeah nearly every room is a puzzle but its also expanding the story, the puzzle solving and the story are one. The puzzles themseleves are just the right amount of devious, of head scratching but solvabe when looked at it in the right way. I will say the difficulty of puzzles can vary wildly and with no real care for progression, easy puzzles can be found in certain areas of the house right next to a puzzle that is maybe too clever for its own good. For the most part observation and some critical thinking will solve any puzzle, the trick is you might not know when you have the information needed to solve the puzzle. In this game you are adding information from notes, letters and in game books found all around the hotel. Any document you find is stored in a section of the in game menu titled photo graphic memory. This is crucial as many puzzles clues to solving them come from the information in the notes. It may get frustrating when you aren't certain if you have the clues needed for a puzzle or not, many times I would give up and leave a puzzle for later thinking I didnt have the piece of info i needed and it just so happened I didn't realize a note I already had more pages. The non linearity of the game is a strength and weakness. For one it allows for every player to forge their own path in their own way through the hotel, the sense of exploration and solving major puzzles that lead to new areas is so rewarding, I haven't felt that since The Witness. The downside is getting stuck and being unsure where to go to progress, seeing that the game is very open and non linear you can have multiple leads on where to go but not have the information on how to solve the puzzles yet, leading to an easter egg hunt for perhaps something you missed. Also navigating the hotel is not that easy early on, many one way paths, locked doors and a strange layout is done on purpose to make you feel disoriented. You don't get a map until you solve a puzzle which I didn't even realize I could have solved early on. If you get easily frustrated when you feel lost and don't make progress you may have issues with this game, but you can always use a guide. The fun part is many times when you make a breakthrough with a puzzle it leads to a flurry of new areas and new puzzles, these are exciting parts. The variety in the ways the puzzles are presented is impressive, I think that is key to any puzzle game. One style of puzzle over and over gets boring, I enjoy when a game tests me with all kinds of puzzles. There are logic puzzles, there are word play puzzles, plenty of math puzzles, observation puzzles, pattern recognition and some simple reading comprehension. Most of the puzzles are part of the hotel, mostly locks stopping your progress but some rooms are puzzles of their own that relate to larger scale puzzle that leads to the eventual end game area. Not everything takes place in the hotel though, there are some wild surprises that changes the kind of game you are playing so to speak, I really loved these moments. There is a fail state in the game and save points scattered around the hotel like a survival horror game of old. This doesn't happen during the entire the game but after you activate a certain moment, a man chases you around the hotel at certain points and when caught you enter a life and death puzzle, its a simple observation puzzle but if you fail you will die and have to reload your last save. If you were not saving regularly well you just lost loads of progress. The reward for solving the puzzle is an important aspect of the story and necessary for the end game, so you will get caught by this man and you will have multiple life and death questions throughout the campaign. There is a short notice that he is coming giving you enough time to reach a save point before hand, as long as you stay vigilant you should be fine but it might be stressful if you end up forgetting to save. Graphically the game has this stylish look that reminds me of Killer 7, mostly in black and white, its a beauty to look at. It has preset camera angles so I felt just at home wandering the halls of a strange location while I was getting cool camera angles while solving puzzles. There is some pop jazz litered throughout the game world which you can turn on through record players around the hotel, the music in general fits the vibe perfectly. This is a large game, took me about 30 hours to complete, I did go for nearly 100%, its not needed but I enjoyed my time, also I used a guide only about twice so many times I was stuck wandering in circles. I loved this game, it hit all the right notes for me in the presentation and how the game unfolds. When exploration and puzzle solving are one and the same the game feels so interesting to me, its why I love the Witness so much and now Lorelei enters that group. The puzzles are almost always great, I loved the variety and enjoyed piecing together the story. I don't think the story left me wowed in anyway, but I enjoyed the ride, I wanted to solve every puzzle and man there are so many, puzzles on top of puzzles. All fans of this genre needs to give this game a try. |
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Posted by Dvader Sun, 14 Jul 2024 10:48:23
Reading nao
I regularly play puzzles in adventure games and hidden object games.
But they never really sit that well with me. Either they're too easy, too hard, or poorly explained and can be darn annoying.
I have a relatively low tolerance for getting stuck. I can imagine failing one puzzle, moving onto the next and getting stuck again, then just giving up.