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This is one of those titles where I’m incredibly torn on where to put it. Starting with the concept, mixing together elements of a platformer (favored by Dan) and a classic point-and-click adventure (favored by Ben) is smart right out of the gate. This keeps the engagement a bit higher as you solve platforming and action puzzles interspersed with some more cerebral challenges as you’ll need to use inventory items and solve some tougher puzzles in another style. The main benefit to this mix though is that there’s plenty of opportunity for the two of them to interact, argue, and get into a humorous banter at times… tapping into those old school LucasArts kind of feels. Pretty much everything works really well until you get to the controls for interacting with objects and the environment… which are unintuitive, a bit awkward, and sadly quite terrible. Without being given any real direction on how they worked I ended up simply experimenting to work it out and conceptually what they went for was so odd I hesitated to even try it since I couldn’t believe that’s what they’d choose. I suppose that could be a casualty of mixing the styles together but it’s really hard to ignore or dismiss as a concern. The result is what’s generally a great game brought down a few points by the fact that you’re almost constantly using clunky controls that never get comfortable.
Justin Nation, Score:Fair [6.2]