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Broken Age Review

Broken Age
Developer: Double Fine Productions
Price: $25
Platform: PC, PS4, & PS Vita
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for Broken Age

Double Fine caused quite a commotion a few years ago when they launched their Kickstarter for Tim Schafer’s first adventure game in years, managing to score over $3 million and basically being the catalyst for the influx of Kickstarter games. The first act of Broken Age released last year and now the game is finally complete with the second half now out.

Broken Age opens up by letting you choose between playing as Shay or Vella, both characters having to deal with ridiculous situations that will inevitably affect the both of them. The game starts out interestingly enough with Vella being chosen to be sacrificed to a giant monster for reasons nobody knows and Shay being trapped on a spaceship whose sole purpose is to keep him “safe”, but the two story lines feel so jarringly different. When you play through Vella’s story she has a sense of purpose with every action moving the plot forward while Shay’s just has you sort of messing around on a spaceship. After the big twist at the end of the first act both characters switch places but their pacing stays practically the same. Vella uncovers the reasoning behind everything (and it’s the biggest disappointment ever) and works towards solving the problem while Shay is just sort of messing around on the beach the whole time. Shay’s half of the game is just so damn dull with absolutely zero story progression that it makes me wonder if they did this on purpose. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t stop the overall plot from being a massive disappointment.

When I see the Double Fine stamp on a game I’m expecting a funny, witty story with a colorful cast of characters. In Broken Age I get what starts out as an interesting story that’s occasionally funny and quickly becomes the most uninspired thing ever with a totally monotone cast. Conversions with characters feel more like exposition dumps than genuine conversations and it really doesn’t help when the characters themselves are just so bland. The voice actors even sound bored without any sort of emotion in their voices which makes me wonder how someone could get such a solid team of actors and make them sound bored out of their minds.

Now on to the puzzles, or should I say the shocking lack of puzzles. I’m totally okay with adventure games focusing on plot over puzzles, Telltale does this very well with their newer games, but Broken Age was supposed to be similar to older adventure games that had satisfyingly challenging puzzles. Instead you have this game that’s built on a foundation of back and forth fetch quests with some stupidly vague and tedious puzzles rearing their ugly heads out of nowhere in the later portions of Act 2 and one other at the very end of the game that’s decent but a total chore. The game doesn’t even make use of its supposed gimmick of being able to instantly switch between Shay and Vella until the very end of the game. That could have been a cool way to solve puzzles if there were any besides that one at the very end.

Not once did I feel satisfied or have an “ah-ha!” moment during this game’s 5-6 hour length which really bummed me out because those are some of the best moments in adventure games. The lack of puzzles (and the sudden introduction of those few very tedious puzzles at the end) also contributes to some poor pacing in Act 2. Having maybe 80% of a game be a complete breeze and then suddenly the last stretch of it introduce this puzzle element is just poor design and a jarring experience. I honestly would’ve preferred no puzzles at all instead of the weak handful that were shoved in at the last minute. There’s also a stupid amount of backtracking in Act 2 of Shay’s story that grinds the pacing to a halt.

It might seem that I’m coming off quite harsh, but I’m pretty damn disappointed with this game and rightfully so. This was supposed to be Schafer’s glorious return to the genre but instead I got a somewhat decent adventure game that honestly could have been made by any other developer out there. I’ve waited years for Double Fine to make an adventure game and I got something I’ll forget in a week that’s easily surpassed by many modern adventure games.

The Final Word
Everything about Broken Age should have been fantastic but the lack of puzzles and a lame plot that edges too heavy on the exposition turns this into a decent, but extremely disappointing package.

– MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre

Written By

Reviews Manager of MonsterVine who can be contacted at diego@monstervine.com or on twitter: @diegoescala

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