Many are near-impossible to comprehend and complete without a guide too. Act 2’s puzzles feel so thinly spread across a large area, making for an awful lot of backtracking to and from already familiar areas. Well, at least it’s better than a hashtag.Ĭombine this huge tonal shift with Act 2’s over-reliance on 90s-era adventure game puzzle logic, and you’ve got a recipe for a stunted and awkwardly paced plot that even Shay’s spoon would hesitate to touch. Without delving into spoiler territory, Act 2 makes some huge narrative missteps, and in doing so manages to wipe away an awful lot of Act 1’s simmering teen angst. This is no longer a tale of independent teenagers rebelling against their parents’ curious and frustrating natures, it is a story about parents reeling their children in, and saying: “That’s enough. Though there are still plenty of laughs in Act 2, the whole thing feels blanched by a thin but noticeable layer of cynicism. These elements are all in place to deliver a really satisfying story, but it feels as though something’s missing, like all the tension and atmosphere left with Mog Chothra.
Shay learns about Vella, her family and what it’s really like to live in a world of danger and unpredictability, whereas Vella comes to sympathize with Shay’s molly-coddled childhood, and respects the similarity of their situations.
One thing’s for sure: no game has ever made me feel such strong emotions towards cutlery.īy retreading far too much old ground, Act 2 essentially throws away all of the wonder and discovery of the game’s first act, and instead attempts to develop its characters by forcefully swapping their perspectives. Though there’s still plenty to love about these places and characters, it’s easy to feel a little short-changed when presented with wholly repeated environments and characters. Re-meeting familiar faces from Act 1 feels nostalgic (particularly if you’ve waited a year since playing the first act), if a little trite, given that most of these supporting characters remain largely unchanged since the game’s first act. On Shay’s end, Curtis the hipster woodcutter, the talking tree, and Jack Black’s hokey sky-cult leader all show up to deliver satisfying performances packed with typical Double Fine wit, but back on Shay’s ship, Vella finds herself relatively isolated in a story which painfully lacks the high concept whimsy (and ice cream avalanches) of Shay’s Act 1 story. Act 2 picks up with Shay and Vella essentially swapping roles, as well as locales – Shay finds himself wandering the beaches, forests and clouds familiar to Vella, whilst Vella must explore and repair Shay’s ship, once thought by her to be the great beast Mog Chothra.
If you’re unfamiliar with Broken Age‘s set-up, I’d advise you to go back and read my Act 1 review, since there’s an awful lot of back-story to digest at this juncture. As before, every line of dialogue in Broken Age is a sweet, tasty morsel of humour.
Though Tim Schafer’s dialogue is as witty as ever, and the characters introduced in Act 1 are predictably lovely to spend time with, Broken Age Act 2 struggles with awkward pacing and crushingly difficult puzzles, which makes for a story that never quite takes off and certainly never finds its feet. Its writing was sharp, its puzzles were tough but well thought out, and its brilliant dual set-ups made for two of the finest fictional worlds created since Adventure Time.Īct 2, delayed after alleged financial issues and disruptions in production, shows us what happens when these worlds collide, as space-faring Shay and would-be-maiden Vella are forced to survive and thrive in each other’s worlds. Though I was somewhat reluctant to list half of a game as one of the most outstanding pieces of interactive entertainment I’d experienced all year, such was the majesty of Broken Age. Review Copy Provided By: Double Fine Productionsīroken Age (Act 1) was one of my favourite games of 2014.
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