I know everyone has their own opinion, but I got this today and have been playing for a few hours, and I'm so disappointed.

The magic trick sequences are so complicated that I've had to use a walkthrough -- not a good sign for the beginning of a game.

And I'm not very impressed at looking at my character from a distance. It's like a throw-back to the old games when we couldn't get good closeups. There are closeups, but when moving the character around you're at a distance.

Well, I'm at the beginning where she's trying to recruit students. I hope it gets better, but I know for sure I need the walkthrough for the tricks. Sigh. What a waste of my money.

I hope it gets better for you Jean.

Ana

Jean, I too at first thought, that they were complicated.

Waht helped me was to

THanks misslilo. Please no hints here, it spoils it for others.

Thanks misslilo! Hopefully that will help.

I haven't started with any magic tricks yet but I find myself getting seriously irritated by Sam and the way she speaks and moves, the unnecessary amount of trivial information about objects in every area, the trivia titbits and game tips which appear on every load screen and then loop, the sheer frequency of load screens and the text style - to name a few. To me this game feels like corners have been cut, like a game which started off with grand ideas but ran out of budget and had to seriously economise on things. Sam's movement is *so* poor - harking back to older, much more primitive games. She moves like an automaton, unnaturally spins on the spot, takes illogical - and longwinded - paths around objects etc, and on double clicking to make her run, she starts off running but then goes back to walking pace. What is the point of that apart from annoying the player? The cursor often points inaccurately which makes it fiddlesome to correctly click on an object and when you finally get it, Sam reels off some trivial information blurb that makes it all a waste of time. It's like padding - I think it is supposed to add to the atmosphere but it's just tedious. The game creators also have a strange idea of what England is like - ground squirrels? Do they mean grey squirrels or prairie dogs? Steam vents - isn't that a bit New York? It's an amalgamation of American city and 'olde Englande' - I assume it's to cater for both US and British gamers but for a game which dispenses a large number of 'factoids' on every load screen it would be nice if they got the rest of it accurate to match!! What a shame that what could have been an intriguing mysterious game seems to have been so badly produced ...

JeanK...I played the demo...I too very distressed at the fact I couldn't see things well, even with my glass's

I still would like to play the whole game tho...Hopefully I can get it on a trade, cause I won't buy it out right...

I thought the whole interface paled in comparison to the expectations, but I definitely didn't find the graphics and animations to be that horrid.

I think I'm partly aggrieved due to the high expectations and hype and am disappointed that the game isn't meeting them. I think I've realised now that just because it's a Jane Jensen game it doesn't necessarily follow that it will be a great one. There's not really a good excuse nowadays from professional game companies with decent budgets to fall short on things like main character animation, lots of other games manage to make the animated character move realistically etc. I realise that we all have our different views about games, but some issues really bug me, especially about this modern, and relatively expensive game.

I too had a problem with this game. Didn't care for the magic tricks, wouldn't play the game for weeks at a time and then finally got to a part that sparked my interest. I didn't much care for the character animation but found the scenery to be pleasing. So, I ended up liking the game after all and actually was trying to think of a way that a sequel could be done. lol
Terri

I'm glad you enjoyed it in the end Terri, I hope I grow to like it a bit better. I started off disliking Black Mirror 3 and got to like it more as the game progressed but this one is going to be more difficult to forgive I suspect!

I'm glad I'm not the only one not "loving" this game. The magic tricks have me totally turned off. Gray Matter has been on my computer for weeks now, and I just can't get into it for fear I'm going to encounter another magic trick--which means pull out a walkthrough and follow it step by step: not my idea of a good game.

I'm not very far into the game, but I feel that I have to "force" myself to play. I will keep plugging along, and hopefully find SOMETHING to catch my attention.

Hm, maybe I shouldn't post in this thread. I really love this game. Sure, it's not quite as good as the Gabriel Knight games, but I still think it's one of the better games I've played. Certainly the best game I've played this year. Strong, intriguing storyline, two distinct protagonists, fun mystery to solve. I'm not crazy about the style of the cutscenes, and the puzzles aren't nearly as good as GK, but I'm more of a story gamer anyway. Granted, ideally both would be strong, but I'll take the stronger story out of the two options.

As for myself, I would put this game up there with Dreamfall and The Lost Crown, two games that are very high on my list. I wouldn't hesitate to include it in my annual recommendations, and I hope that it sells well so Jane Jensen is able to make another adventure game soon.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course and the game does have some enjoyable elements, I for one haven't had a problem with the magic tricks - so far - and the story isn't bad albeit a familar tale (the doctor looks a bit Phantom of the Opera though, on purpose?).

My gripes are more concerned with what seems like cheap production values which take away from the potential enjoyability of the game. I dislike the animated cut scenes, the drawings are bad, and the odd movements they include are laughably awful. They make almost everyone look grotesque, they are also inconsistent so the same people appear very different in different drawings. There is a lot of waiting for slow scenes in this game, and Sam's movement/walking/running issues, along with the hit and miss cursor clicking and intermittent funnies trying to get to locations/exit places can be very frustrating. It's a shame that these design and programming issues weren't ironed out or improved on and that is why it seems like a cost cutting production.

I wouldn't blame the game for using cost cutting measures with graphics and animations. It's unfortunate, but lack of money is not usually something the developers have any control over. They either use cost cutting measures or they don't finish the game at all.

What I do have an issue with is the repeated use of a tiresome mini-game that wasn't fun in the first place. That's not something we used to see in classic adventure games. One of the characteristics of older adventure games was that each puzzle had something unique about it.

Gray Matter isn't the first adventure game that repeats mini-games. Broken Sword 3 and Dreamfall also did it -- and the repetition was annoying in those games too. Even though I normally enjoy the Sokoban-type puzzles in Broken Sword 3, I didn't want them in an adventure game -- at least not more than once. And the timed lock "puzzles" in Dreamfall were dreadful -- not puzzles so much as timed pattern recognition -- more of an arcade mini-game.

No matter what you think of the "magic trick" puzzles, whether they're hard for you, easy for you, enjoyable for you, tedious for you, impossible for you, or just a nuisance to get out of the way so you can get on with the game, I don't think repeating variations of the same puzzle over and over throughout a game has any place in an adventure game. Even in a casual game it gets old fast -- especially if you don't enjoy the "puzzle" in the first place.

A lot of adventure games do include a minigame element as a matter of course, Nancy Drew being a prime example. Sometimes these are a real annoyance and some of them make playing the game very unenjoyable. That for me is the crucial thing, if you are paying a significant amount of money for a game, especially one that has been hyped, then it's a disappointment when that game has elements that fall short of the expectations that have been raised by the hype. For me the lack of quality in production is a disappointment in Gray Matter and the design of the cut scenes detracts from the game. I know not everyone has the same technical issues with a game but I definitely find that the cursor doesn't always do what it should and at times it's a real bore to get the characters to move where you want them to, at any kind of speedy pace - yawn! I guess I am underwhelmed at Gray Matter in various ways and disappointed it isn't wowing me, when my hopes were that it would.

I notice that the last couple of games I have played that took 3-4 years in making turned out to be a bit disappointing. Don't know if it was me that built them up or the fact they were overworked that did it but I am going to bear it in mind for future games that took a while to make.

It makes you wonder doesn't it Vic if the game developers kind of lost direction or interest in the project? Seeing as Gray Matter took 10 long years IIRC with changes of personnel it would be unsurprising if this hadn't affected the end product I suppose, it definitely feels like something went missing somewhere along the line!

But not usually the same mini-game over and over and over throughout the game. Nancy Drew games usually have a variety of puzzles. One exception might be Ransom of the Seven Ships, where you had to play the same 3 games with the monkeys over and over until you won all the items you needed. That game deservedly gets rated lower than other Nancy Drews.


To me that kind of unresponsiveness is a lot worse than a problem with the graphics and animations. I suppose people have different degrees of patience with watching a character mosey across the screen, but if your computer meets the requirements the game should play better than what you're describing.

The kind of things I've noticed aren't to do with the speed of my laptop which I have set to run faster to play the game and it works. The problems I am encountering are with the game itself, for instance often the character being controlled will walk the wrong way or intead of going to another location will spin round and go somewhere else etc etc It really is like something that would have happened in some games from an earlier time and strikes me as the kind of issues that shouldn't happen now. I think there are some bugs in the game which cause problems with location changing and event triggered stuff. I don't hate the game, it's just not as good as I had hoped and falls down in some areas that should have been sorted in testing.

Anyway I don't want an argument, I am just reporting what I am experiencing and expressing my disappointment at some of it!

Hi Vegpot -- if you're playing the game on a laptop that doesn't quite meet the game's specifications (and has to be set to run faster)I don't think you can completely rule out the possibility that what you are experiencing has to do with your laptop. When I played the game, I did not enounter the problems with controlling the character that you are encountering, for instance.

Hi Becky no it's not that, I have an Alienware M11x laptop that can be set to low or high power as part of its design, for gaming you switch to high power setting. I only got it at Christmas so I would be very surprised if it didn't have the capability to run the game. I had it on low power at first when I posted that Sam was moving in slow motion but when I switched to high power mode that changed and the game ran more smoothly.

I see. Congratulations on your new laptop! I'm sorry that switching to high power didn't also resolve the character control issues you're having.

I just finished the game... I only had one issue with not being able to proceed at the end of chapter 2 I replayed it and was able to get the cut scene. I did grow tired of the magic tricks... they weren't hard.. you just had to follow the book just after the second one I thought enough already. I was surprised with the cut scenes, but if money was an issue I can deal with that. I ran this on my desktop with my old Nvidia 7600GT and had no problems at all.

Yes I figured that was what you meant.
I had those kinds of problems with Paradise -- as well as a few others, like hotspots in the wrong places and screen exits in weird places. Dealing with them wasn't fun. I assume it was because they didn't have enough time to fix the game before the scheduled release date.