Update Three Hundred and Twenty-Three: 9 July 2019
the Samaritan Paradox
8.6 hours playtime, 3.5 hrs actual, 17 of 17 achievements
3/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Well that was certainly a game I played.
The Samaritan Paradox is an incredibly dated (somehow at only being five years old) point-and-click adventure game that… has no idea what it wants to be. Is it a personal murder-mystery investigation? A fantasy point and click? A thriller where you stop illegal arms dealing? All three, somehow, I guess.
You play Ord, a… really underwhelming guy who is in a kind of crappy place in his life just… because. Basically just for the hell of it he gets wrapped up in helping investigate the suicide of a famous author so the author’s daughter could get his inheritance. You know, as one does on a whim. The author has left one more book behind for his daughter to read, and that’s where the fantasy stuff comes in to play. You stop some weapon smuggling in the meanwhile, too. The secret the book was hiding? The author had groomed and raped the daughter when she was very young, but the daughter had suppressed those memories. Now the author… wants her to remember again… so he can apologize…? Also the nurse killed him and she was justified. Ord gets together with the daughter in the end.
?????!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I just… I just woke up and I already wish I was into drinking so I could, like… drink.
EVEN IF we set aside using a serious matter in such a fuckin GOTCHA way, in what fucking world does any of this make sense. The book sections you play through take up a decent amount of time and are functionally meaningless, because they end up tying into nothing except that one big jerkoffedness of a reveal.
This game is a real pale imitation of Wadjet Eye games, with worse music and voice acting for sure. Art was… okay, though the portraits were muddy. Skip this shit, even if it was a relatively easy 100%.
Next up: I’ve gotten my ‘games I REALLY want to play’ section and my ‘games I kind of want to play’ section to the same amount, so I’ll be switching off between them. Good game next!
See you soon!
Looking forward to reading your thoughts on The Gardens Between! I noticed it in the Xbox Games Pass list and it reminds of Oxenfree (which is definitely a good thing).
Aesthetic-wise? I can see parallels between this and Oxenfree. It plays very differently, though. I’m liking it!
I barely gave attention the rest of the review but i read the spoiler and that is certainly a thing they did. At least it was on the short side
HA the understatement of the century. This comment paired with Giselle’s immediately below is the perfect yin-yang of reactions.
It WAS on the short side, thank fuck, yes.
HA the understatement of the century. This comment paired with Giselle’s immediately below is the perfect yin-yang of reactions.
It WAS on the short side, thank fuck, yes.
holy fucking shit that spoiler tag what the hell is this stupid plot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m noping away from this game and pretend it doesn’t exist
Yes, I’m jazzed with letting this stupid fuggin game fade into obscurity once more.
I’ll be curious what your thoughts on The Gardens Between are, completed it myself back in March but haven’t heard many others talking bout it.
It made a little splash when it first came out, yeah, then faded from memory. It’s a shame, bc I like it!
Awww! I was really looking forward to your review of The Samaritan Paradox cause I wanted it pretty badly a gazillion years ago, when I added it to the backlog. I’ll lower my expectations when I finally get to it.
Oh yeah, fuck it. Play literally every other Wadjet Eye game instead. Even the ones that are kind of duds (like ‘A Golden Wake’) are better than this one. Hell, if you want something European, there’s ‘the Lion’s Song’, which is spectacular. This is incoherent from beginning to end.
I remember re-reading that part in Samaritan Paradox a couple times. It was so messed up, I could believe. It’s weird how I don’t remember at all about the game, but I still remember that part after years. Shock value at its best, I guess >.<
I’d say it comes completely out of left field, but I definitely thought ‘okay, what the hell’ at all the times the narration mentioned the father’s characters ‘old yet handsome’ looks. It just - it -
why. … okay, well, the game is utterly forgettable otherwise, so I guess that’s why.
The Gardens Between is on my wishlist! Have fun playing =)