The Room 4: Old Sins

Jeu d'escape sympa à faire mais plus facile que ses prédécesseurs

The first entry in the series that feels genuinely professional quality, polished and coherent in terms of story and gameplay, which is funny because it's the first entry where I encountered significant (although not game-breaking) bugs. Ten bucks might be a bit much, but I got the whole series at a major discount, so I'm in no position to complain.

excellent rien a dire

super entretenido ,ya cuando te das cuenta han pasado horas

At around the halfway point, I'm honestly pretty disappointed. The interconnected rooms are an interesting idea, similar to The Room Three, but they feel much less logical. In the previous game, puzzle pieces usually stayed close to where the story progressed, making it clear where to go next. Here, I've often carried items in my inventory for a long time with no idea where to use them. The Room Three handled this better by separating the main room from the side rooms so your inventory didn't become cluttered with items you couldn't use yet. There's also a lot more backtracking, and constantly sitting through the movement animations between rooms quickly became annoying. The Room Three had much less of this, so the pacing felt smoother. It also feels a bit too easy and streamlined. That could be because I've played the games back-to-back, but so far it hasn't been as satisfying as its predecessor.

I'll start of by saying i think this is a good game, if i were to score it i'd give it a 8/10. I'd like to start by stating that i don't necessarilly think of the games in this series as puzzle games. Now they certainly contain puzzles, and solving them is the main objective, but i think this game wroks a bit differently. If i'd have to put a genre on it, i'd say it's a fidget game, since almost all puzzles are about fidgeting around, turning knobs, flipping levers, opening boxes and such. the best way i can destribe it is someone plopping down an old radio in front of you without a manual and saying "figure it out!". For me personally i think this approach to puzzles works well, but if you are expecting a myst/riven you'll probably leave dissapointed, as these puzzles hardly ever demand to much from your logical thinking, and most puzzles take no more than a minute or two to solve. Now lets list what i think the game (and to an extent the entire series) does well, and what it does less well. Since i like the game i'll start with the negatives, as they are short and easy to mark of. 1. Almost always one puzzle. Unlike a lot of other puzzle games, this game almost never lets you progress with more than one puzzle at a time, this leads to a very focused experience, but most puzzle players are used to being allowed to handle multiple puzzles/mysteries at once. The benefit of this being that when you get stuck on one puzzle you can go try to solve another one. Now this is a minor gripe as i think vere few people will have any major problems with this games puzzles, but it is essentially a linear sequence of puzzles. 2. Difficulty and variety, as stated above i found most puzzles to be on the easier side, and i think the late game would have benefited from a slightly higher difficulty of puzzles, i will also say that while the puzzles are visually viried, the actuall solutions to most is almost always to slide something, turn something or flick a switch somewhere. Now, onto the good stuff. 1. Presentation. Being developed by a smaller team you'd think that would show, but for the most part the presentation is absolutely fantastic, and it really helkps the game by giving it a dark, forboding atmosphere. The areas are also surprisingly varied with almost no asset reuse, for a puzzle game it hink this is the right choice as it means you always get to see something new and interesting as you progress. I also can't heap enough praise over the mechanical design of things, it really is a small marvel to look at all the different cogs turning inside some of the machines in this game. The audio is no slouch either, while the music isn't realy anything special, it adds to the atmosphere, and the sound effects for interacting with things are overrall stellar. 2. Hint system. I like it when the hint system comes prebuilt into the game, you can tune it to your own liking. It also never intrudes on you, just giving a subtle UI ping that there is a hint available for you, should you want it. This also ties neatly into the linear structure of the game as it asures the player wont ever get completely stuck somewhere and have to go to the internet to consult a guide. If i were to give it any critizism it's that the first hint, at least the times i used the function, was compeltely useless, as it would with 99% guarantee give me a bit of info i already knew. The following hint was always good though, so i can't fault them to much on this. 3. Story and FMVs. That's right baby!, while very few, this game uses FMV sequences here and there, giving me strong reminders towards the adventure games of the 90s, like The journeyman project, myst, and, riven. I hope this is something they build on in their following games, as i found it very charming. The story is also pretty good, detailing a marriage that falls appart due to otherworldy research. I'd say you get a lot more from it if you've played the previous games in the franchise, but i also highly doubt thisd game will be someones first stepping stone in the series. If you don't care for story though it's also perfectly playable as a stand alone experience. All in all, i don't think this review will sway anyone, you've likely played any of the earlier three games in the series and already made your opinion on wheater or not you like what they are cooking. And weather you liked the previous games or not, this really is just more of the same. And for me that's a good thing.

Bom Demais!