5.9 hours played
Written 5 years ago
After the other 3 of the Surface series I've played, this came as a bit of a disappointment.
It's still a fairly good HoG, and I'm still recommending it as such, but there's an undefinable lack of... something... in this one compared to the others.
Here's a quick brain-dump of some of my thoughts:
- Compared to the others in the series, it seems very linear. Although you sometimes have quite a few items in your inventory, it's usually the case that only one ever does anything at any given time. The other games somehow seem to mask things so that there [i]always[/i] seems to be plenty to do. In GoG, I frequently (i.e. almost the whole time) was road blocked because a single specific task had to be done to proceed.
- Seemed like less variation in the activities you do. In Pantheon there was always something new and different turning up. Here it's the same 'Use item A on location B to do C' or generic HoP D. There were one or two nice moments, but overall the whole thing felt decidedly cookie-cutter.
- Far less plausible. The premise is no less realistic than the other games. Yet somehow those seemed to obey a general principle of logical cause and effect. Here you can, for instance [/spoiler]play a whistle to a vulture and suddenly it transfers to your inventory. wtf?[/spoiler].
- Occasionally I noticed slight glitches. Clues incorrect, or text completely wrong.
- The writing/voice acting was significantly less polished and engaging. The characters, like the rest of the game seemed generic and off-shelf.
- Frequently when you got to a new scene, you'd look about for a while and then click to make your first interaction. And [i]then[/i] it jumped to a cut scene. I don't know why exactly, but I found this [i]really[/i] annoying.
- Cursor positioning (for interactions) seemed a bit off/inconsistent, sometimes.
- There are very few collectables. 16 in the whole game. Which means they are easier to miss, as you aren't always looking for them. I guess that might be the point, but it just felt cheap to me.
-- Others games in the series had a truly excellent approach to music; trigger a piece of fixed-length, appropriate music when certain events happen, and then stfu. Here we seem to be back to the 'play a constant, repetitive dirge in the background endlessly, regardless of what's happening. Maybe an exaggeration, but this is the first in the series where I found the music genuinely getting on my nerves.
It's not all negative.
+- The premise of the story is interesting. (Although not especially original; Think a dark version of Jumanji set in multiple locales). But I never felt it made the most of its potential, and the ending is just far too weak.
But the outright highlight for me has to be:
+ The hilarious accent of the Viking guy you meet near the start of the game. It's somehow a mixture (to my ears) of Scottish, Irish, Dutch, and.. South African?
So what we have is a lot of slightly niggle negative points that wouldn't probably even get a comment in another HoG. But in this series, where all of these things have already been completely nailed, it seems like a bit of a lacklustre effort.
