Developer: Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Mac, PC
Chaos on Deponia – Review
Point & click-games are as old school as gaming gets. And it shows. The genre, notwithstanding a recent small surge in popularity, had almost completely been wiped off the charts. Recent years have proven there’s a market for nostalgia, and that’s exactly what these games are: callbacks to a time when witt and clever puzzles were more important than graphical OOMPHs. Queue Chaos on Deponia.
Story:
Chaos on Deponia is the sequel to Deponia, released back in August. Take some advice from us: don’t go into Chaos on Deponia until you’ve played the first game. Not because the story would be too difficult to comprehend, but because you’d be missing out on a good laugh, quirky characters and possibly the rise of the most egotistical self-proclaimed ‘hero’ in modern gaming.
Yes, Rufus is back and so are his pals Doc and Bozo, as well as Goal, the love of Rufus’s life who is still having problems keeping her mind functioning properly. Last time, you spent half the game trying to wake her from a coma, this time there’s a bad case of split personality to work with. Getting thrown out an escape pod, landing headfirst obviously didn’t help. Then there’s the whole saving-the-world-from-exploding thing going on. A busy man, that Rufus.
Most of the adventure is filled with goofy dialogues comical relief and Rufus being an enormous asshole without realizing this himself. And while this approach works most of the time, even bringing back fond memories of the slapstick humor from the original Monkey Island-games, Chaos on Deponia forgets there also need to be serious moments in order for any joke to work.
Granted, there were many times we laughed out loud, a personal favorite being the robot-merchant who enslaved his owner and has since been wooing said shopkeeper’s wife. But when the game should turn to a more serious note, for instance when Rufus gets told by his father he’s actually an abandoned trash baby, the otherwise witty dialogue lacks any sense of drama or urgency.
It’s by no means a giant turn-off, but it is something we’d like to see improved upon when the inevitable the third and final act of the Deponia-saga hits the market.
Graphics:
Once look at the screenshots scattered throughout this review says it all really. Chaos on Deponia looks absolutely gorgeous. Expertly drawn landscapes, a sprawling city and just enough steam-punk to rustle out inner nerd without getting obtrusive.
If this is the benchmark for the new age of point & click-games, we’re anxious to see what the future holds.
We’re especially delighted to see the animations have improved greatly compared to the first game in the series. It shows that while Daedalic Entertainment is a small indie-studio, it doesn’t shy away from fixing their flaws.
Sound:
We adored the short ballads weaving the game’s chapters together. They’re witty and unique and they give an additional sense of actually playing through an adventure, a saga that will be told for years to come.
Our love for the soundtrack ends there though. We’re not saying the various tunes are bad or even annoying, far from, they just lack a certain flair that the rest of the game seems to ooze so effortlessly.
Gameplay:
Most of the time Chaos on Deponia manages to avoid the pitfall so many other games in this genre struggle with. In other words: puzzles aren’t completely illogical mind breakers. The game’s tendency to have you look for details in the scenery is a nice touch and having to deal with a (semi-) girlfriend with three different personalities ranging from ‘total bitch’ to ‘stuck in toddler-years’ just adds to the fun.
While it may not always be clear what you’re supposed to do, it’ll usually be because you’ve either yet to fully explore your surroundings or you didn’t listen to the ramblings of the many npc’s.
One in a while a puzzle shows up that seems to be designed on comical relief instead of human logic, but these puzzles are rare and won’t bother you much at all.
Conclusion:
We’re looking forward on finding out the end to the fate of Deponia. There’re still a lot of questions to be answered, but if the release schedule of both Deponia and Chaos on Deponia are anything to go by, we won’t have to wait too long. Until then you’ve got two episodes that prove there’s still a great deal of worth to be found in a genre once thought extinct.
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