Over the last few years Humble Bundle and GoG have handed out dozens of free games, most of which I've yet to even try. I think it's time I at least acknowledged their generosity.
VirtuaVerse is a point and click adventure game. I have a bit of a problem with point and click adventure games.
My problem is that I never seem to have the same mindset that the writers of adventure games do about how to solve puzzles. I might get through the first couple without much difficulty, but then hit a halting brick wall that ends with me trying every random object in my inventory without success on the subject in question, then giving up entirely.
This problem only gets worse as the game continues and the number of items in my inventory and the number of ways I can try to use them increases. That's probably why I can usually solve the first few puzzles - because there are very few options available by that point.
The rest of my time in point and click adventures is spent moving the mouse very slowly across every screen to try to find the one tiny thing I haven't spotted yet that will suddenly allow progress. Or in certain games, suddenly discovering that some areas are slightly wider than a single screen and the thing I needed was there all along if only I'd walked a bit more to the right.
It all feels a bit frustrating. It's like being in a first person shooter and being unable to jump over a very small wall. In reality such an obstacle wouldn't be a challenge, but here we are, having to adhere to the limitations of the game in order to progress.
I think the problem is that I don't encounter any kind of difficulty curve. I experience a binary state - the puzzles don't get slowly harder, I can either solve them or I can't. And then I'm stuck.
And yet I love the idea of point and click adventure games. You don't see them so often these days, but the genre has produced some undeniable classics - the Monkey Island series, Machinarium, Day of the Tentacle, Beneath a Steel Sky, Sam and Max Hit the Road - beautiful, intricate masterpieces of thought and creative effort. There are plenty of others that I'd love to find time to try - Full Throttle, The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
VirtuaVerse is probably a really good game, but I've not managed to get very far into it yet. I basically got stuck after I think what was only the first puzzle, and I only solved that through random chance.
To be fair though, it's interesting from the start, it's set in an intriguing world, and it's got a great retro hand drawn look. I just hope I can solve some more puzzles before I get frustrated and give up for good.