I am on a Point & Click bender.
When I think about it, it all started last year when I finally managed to play Discworld Noir. I originally started it as a sort of project in Discworld completionism. It's one of the only Discworld stories not covered in one of the novels, so I was playing it for that, rather than to sate a need for point & click gameplay. So imagine my surprise when I found myself not just enjoying the story (which was pretty much a given) but also the game itself as well.
Yes, the game is archaic, and on the PS1 at least, adorably low resolution and crashy, but it's also well written, well acted and truly brain testing. I'm not ashamed to admit I used a walkthrough in places. Once I had finished it, fond memories of the Broken Sword series, the only other Point & Click adventures I've played, began to surface. I waxed lyrical about them for a while and then moved on to the next game.
Those memories probably would have stayed just that if it hadn't been for the remastering and rerelease of Grim Fandango. A game many consider to be Tim Schafer's magnum opus that was sadly overlooked, and until now, practically unplayable on modern hardware. It's a game I've been curious about since I first played Psychonauts way back when it was first released. So when I spotted Grim on sale on the PlayStation Store I bought it. Then shamefully, I didn't play it. Disgraceful.
My redemption arrived in the form of Broken Age on PlayStation Plus. Another one of those games that I was curious about but never played. Mostly in this case because of an old laptop that was incapable of playing it. And now here it was for (sort of) free for my console. I started it straight away, then didn't really touch another game til I'd finished it. I enjoyed it that much. Broken Age is charming, funny, pretty, well written, well voiced and everything you expect a good game to be. But it also harked back to the brain bending old days of Point & Click that I'd experienced with Discworld and Broken Sword and I liked it for that too.
The floodgates opened when the Steam Sale arrived. Armed with a new and moderately powered laptop, I wound up buying Machinarium and Broken Sword 4 & 5. I've spent the best part of the last week playing Broken Sword 4, and whilst it's ropey and doesn't really work too well on modern hardware I'm still happy with the time I spent with it. It kind of ended abruptly, but the story was still better than 99% of what other games have to offer. And if I'm being honest, the stories are what are attracting me to these games. Plus it's Broken Sword! Few genres can tell a story as well as Point & Click can and the Broken Sword games are shining examples of that. I went straight into Broken Sword 5 as soon as I finished it.
I use the word gorgeous to describe games a lot, but Broken Sword 5 is the real deal. After two games of industry trend dictated (and pretty rubbish if we're honest) polygons, Revolution Software have gone back to glorious hand drawn 2D roots. Every single background is a work of art comparable to any cel animated film. The advent of high definition has really bought 2D back. The high resolutions let highly detailed and colourful backdrops burst from the screen. Games like Broken Sword 5, Ori and Dean Dodrill's excellent Dust really make me think that we're in a new golden age of 2D at the moment.
I finished it yesterday, and I can safely say that Broken Sword 5 is every inch a proper Broken Sword game. I particularly love it's very English sense of humour and the callbacks to the rest of the series. Once I've finished it, I plan to give my mouse hand a rest so that I can finish the bundle of papery joy that is Tearaway, and then I'll finally get started on Grim Fandango. And after that: Machinarium.
The pointing and the clicking won't stop there though. PSPlus has given me Kings Quest to have a crack at, and I've added Monkey Islands 1 & 2 to my steam wishlist. Then there's the remasters of Full Throttle and the seminal Day of the Tentacle on the horizon too.
What a time to get back into the genre,
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