Gray Matter

Now THIS is what I’ve been waiting for, people.  A new adventure game, not just a new one, but a good one.  Not even a good one, but a great one.  Gray Matter has the potential to become one of the next classics in gaming.  It doesn’t really introduce anything new and innovative and doesn’t hold up to Jensen’s previous Gabriel Knight series, but it’s still a damn good and polished game that that I’ve been yearning for the last couple of years.  Strap in, folks, it's going to be another long one.

You play as Samantha (Sam) Everett, a young, slightly goth street magician on her way to London in search of the Daedalus Club, an exclusive club for the top magicians of the world.  In an almost comical fashion, she gets lost (apparently there is still one road in England with a wooden signpost pointing to “London” that can switch around in the wind) and ends up in Oxford with her bike broken down.  All is not lost though, and she soon finds herself at a creeptastic mansion posing as an expected lab assistant in order to crash somewhere for the night.

The mansion belongs to Dr. David Styles, a character you will also get to play as throughout the game.  He’s a neurobiologist who has gone slightly off his rocker after a tragic accident killed his wife and left him severely burned.  He’s become obsessed with the paranormal side of science and is conducting experiments both to research the psi abilities of the brain (telekinesis, pyrokinesis) and to contact his dead wife.

As you can see, there’s a lot going on in this story, and it’s what carries most of the game but then Jane Jensen’s strength has always been story.  Yeah, when you think carefully about it, it can seem pretty melodramatic and slightly clichéd.  For goodness’ sake, the name of the house is Dread Hill House.  When you first meet Dr. Styles, he emerges looming out of the shadows sporting a Phantom of the Opera half-white mask.  It doesn’t get more melodramatic than that.  But this is one of the best examples of how good writing can make an old story feel fresh.  The writing is so engaging that I didn’t care that I had heard this type of story before.

The characters, too, are well thought out and relatable.  Sam is the classic drifter: smarter than she appears, resourceful, never really able to settle in any one place before whisking off to the next.  David balances her off as the mad scientist: mourning the loss of his wife and becoming a recluse with a reputation for mysterious experiments.  Both have trouble trusting and relating to the human race in general and both are haunted by past secrets that are revealed throughout the game.  They're not just pawns for gameplay to move forward.  Their personal emotional journeys are integral to the game and the player can't help but get swept up in their stories.

Along with the strengths are the sound design and voice acting.  The music to this game is superb.  I just bought the soundtrack.  Yes, I'm a nerd.  No, admitting that doesn't stop me from buying random game soundtracks.  The instrumentals to the game are very reminiscent of the Gabriel Knight games, as they should be since it's the same composer.  The music really sets the atmosphere of each scene in the game and sometimes even when you're standing in a happy and bright setting, the slightly ominous music makes you feel slightly uncomfortable being in your own house.  It doesn't overpower, thoughAs well as the instrumentals, there are songs performed by a band called the Scarlet Furies (which I also found on Itunes).  These songs are great to listen to alone as well as in the game, and for my one reader who might be into Indie music it might be worth checking out.

The voice acting was well done all around.  At times, Sam just seemed a bit too cheerful and enthusiastic in her readings, especially after something serious had happened like say, oohhhh, someone finding out she wasn't really a student at Oxford.  Her responses right after the cutscene often involved things like "Wow, I'd better find out what happened!" which was a bit jarring since during the cutscene she was in tears.  David was a bit better, able to play the brooding scientist while adding some nuance whenever remembering his wife or showing a bit of compassion for his disagreeable assistant.  His pain is clear throughout and the actor did a fine job conveying it.

In fact, Gray Matter gets a lot right period.  There are fetch quests a plenty, but like Gabriel Knight they make sense to the story.  There's a real emotional reason to be doing them, which A LOT of games don't always understand.  Most of the fetch quests are done on Dr. Styles side as he collects items to try and rebuild his memories of his wife in order to perform an experiment to contact her.  Each time you find an item or place that he connects to, there's a flashback sequence and bit by bit David's backstory is built through that.  This way the player becomes just as invested in finding these items because it builds the story for them as well as accomplishing tasks in the game.

Another great feature, and I can't stress this enough, is the map system.  This is a huge improvement on most adventure games in general.  I mentioned last post how in Gabriel Knight if you got stuck there would be a huge amount of back-tracking by revisiting every single location in the game.  Thankfully someone's finally clueing that this creates more frustration than fun, and implemented a colour system for the map.  Locations on the map coloured in gold means you have important tasks to do there.  Silver means there are bonus tasks, but not tasks needed to end the chapter.  Dark grey means you're finished, and you don't need to head back there.  This doesn't stop things from being frustrating as you're wondering why on earth a location is still coloured gold when you thought you were finished, but it cuts a lot of time and frustration that's for sure.

As for the graphics, they are gorgeous to look at in terms of the 2.5D backgrounds (I love me some 2D painted backgrounds, I can assure you of that) but in terms of the character design fall a bit short.  This is kind of standard for the medium, though, and it didn't bother me one bit.  The Longest Journey continues to be one of my favourite games and those character models are horribly polygonal.  The main characters in Gray Matter are pretty good, actually.  Sam kind of sashays around and David when left alone will put his head in his hands in deep thought.  But the supporting cast can be a bit stiff. And yeah, most of the time handing off items or doing any sort of activity kind of looks like a dilapidated game of charades.

The puzzles are mostly inventory based and I'm afraid are a bit of a mixed bag.  Not because of their difficulty, but because there's just a bit too much handholding in this game.  In this game, you can't really fail or die and while that's always a plus in my books in this case I was actually craving a bit more tension to my gameplay.  A few of the puzzles involve using Sam's magic skills to trick people into doing what she wants, but if I selected the wrong spell from a book she would simply say "that one's not right for this person".  So really, by process of elimination I could easily get the spell.  There weren't any real consequences for choosing the wrong one, and I think I would have liked to see a little more punishment on the game's part.

When it comes to riddles, though, the game does well.  Most of these involved getting into and through the Daedalus Club and were extremely enjoyable to work through.  I love these sorts of puzzles and even when I got stuck it wasn't the sort of stuck where you feel like throwing your moniter against the wall.  I would end up pondering instead and when I finally worked through it it would be all the more rewarding.  The only time I had to use a walkthrough were when I didn't quite understand the game mechanics and so it would be impossible for me to solve something.  There's a difference between difficult puzzles and challenging puzzles.  These riddles were challenging: they weren't easy and required me to think outside the box a bit, but they weren't simply put there to stump me either.

As I said before, Jensen doesn’t really introduce anything new with the game mechanics, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t play around with the medium a bit.  The biggest part of this are the cutscenes.  Like the first Gabriel Knight, they aren’t animated but rather presented in an animated comic book sort of style.  This did disconcert me a bit at first, but when I considered it I actually liked it better than if it had been CG animation.  It told the story beautifully and conveyed all of the emotions of the characters both  visually and through the voice acting.

All of these elements together make a great game.  The atmosphere is mysterious and occasionally spooky, the characters are believable and well thought out and the supernatural elements are intriguing and handled with subtlety.  There’s stage magaic, ghosts, psi abilities and scientific theory all rolled into one and it somehow all meshes really well together.

I did guess the sort of final mystery twist ending long before the characters did and admittedly, that was a bit frustrating to go through especially as it was so glaringly obvious what was going on after a while.  (Me: It’s this person.  Character: Maybe I should go and investigate this other person.  Me: IT’S THIS PERSON!”  Character: Hmm, it’s not that other person, who could it be?  Me: DAAAHH)  But then the game still surprised me in the end and I won’t ruin the final twist for anyone.  And then…things are left fairly open.  In the end, not everything is resolved, and you’re still left with more questions than answers but that’s how all good stories (and life, really) work.

I would definitely play this game over and would recommend it to anyone who loves a good adventure game or even just a good story.  It was a game that I didn't want to end and that I ended up putting down not because I needed a break but because I wanted to draw out my game experience for as long as possible.  For the most part, it pretty much just perfects everything about the adventure genre and it’s pretty rare to see that these days.  Play the demo first if you’re unsure (ignore the German, Europe is the only place with a lot of adventure games), it’s free and it gives you a good chunk of gameplay.  I’m hoping there’s more in the future for Jane Jensen, she’s proof that adventure gaming can still make a comeback.