Exploring The Broken Age! (Part 2 Update)

I am not going to go over the first part of the Broken Age, but you can read my thoughts here.

I loved Broken Age part one by Tim Schafer and Double Fine games, and for the most part I love part 2, but it lacks a little something from the first half.  That little something is discovery.  There are only a couple of new areas in the second half of Broken Age, and they come towards the end of the game.  Discovering the beautiful areas Tim and his team thought up were a lot of what I enjoyed in the first part, so going back over the same areas wasn’t exciting.  This may have been less disappointing had I waited to play the whole game once it was finished instead of playing the first half so long ago.

That doesn’t mean I think the game is a bad.  Far from it.  People wanting challenging puzzles should be happy, they upped the puzzle count a lot, and none of them are as obvious as the puzzles in the first half, so you really have to think things through and go back over all the areas to find what you missed.  I know this made a lot of people angry, but it is an adventure game so what were they expecting?

Also the wonderful characters are still here, and it is great to see Vela and Shay try and save the people they love while continuing their coming of age tale.  Story telling really is the strength of adventure games, and Tim Schafer doesn’t waste this opportunity.  The story feels a little rushed at the end, but everything leading up to the conclusion is wonderful.

Games like Broken Age are why I love Double Fine studios so much.  They create games from the heart that tell great stories that charm and delight.  You may never get your action game fix from them, but you will get something unique and thought provoking, so I think you should give Broken Age a shot.  It is going to be out on pretty much every major platform (except Xbox), so there is no reason not to give it a try.  Well unless you hate adventure games.