Point & click adventures at one point were plenty to look for, you had your Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Broken Sword, to nowadays your Thimbleweed Park, and Tales from the Borderlands among other Telltale titles and such others inspired by.
Which here brings me back to the 2D era, pretty obvious from the start when the protagonist is an old, gruff middle age man who self monologues all the time. I mean, I'd understand, especially if I'm dragged into a conspiracy involving kidnapping, experimentation, monsters, and secret cults I guess. This whole thing feels like it ripped a page from Edgar Allan Poe's work, then shuffled into a draft for the Fugitive. It's high stakes, engaging sequences, and honestly the most hooked I've been.
- Lost in the decrepit
In a dark, dreary night, slumbering within the cargo car of a train, Carter's fellow denizen within is drop-dead asleep. As he is wondering how to get out now that it stopped moving. As he jostles the guy to get something out of him, after taking off his sleeping blanket, man was not too pleased.
He mouths off about how Carter is going to get them killed, and thinking he sounds like a lunatic, throws his blanket over to disarm him. Once Carter budges the door open with the crowbar, what he saw later was the worst mistake he made that has left him on an endless chase for his life. That man gets up to an intense beaming light, and the worst came, he was gunned down.
So our protagonist quickly shifts to the other side, avoiding gunfire, opens the upper panel and jumps out to a downtrodden area near an ocean port. Place full of squatters, and his phone is almost out of charge. He had to make it to his mother's funeral quick.
It's pretty much the case of "try interacting with anything as much as possible to see what works", which helps to easily figure out where to go and move on with the story. But it's never easy because of the low polygonal art style, and less precise boundary for interactive places. Nonetheless, a lot of interesting development have happened so far.
To charge his phone, he has to jump start a trashed car, I went from filling it with oil from a can, to fixing an oil leakage in the engine. But I needed help, and there was a reporter asking too many people. Somehow getting in almost everybody's nerves, turns out the case she was involved had to do with people suffering from psychosis, and disappearing as well.
The thing about Carter, though, he's very sardonic, reticent, and his comebacks are witty, snarky and this has made it less helpful for him to catch up with the situation. Rather, the situation takes hold of him entirely. Basically, he was a witness, and that girl got too close to something, so a bunch of guys wearing night vision goggles kidnapped her, and knocked him before throwing him down the ocean water to drawn with a bag on his head. This is where the high stakes part came.
Not only did I die multiple times trying to piece together what to use to cut the rope, get rid of the bag over my face, and yet somehow push coming to shove, using the oil gallon to get some air in it despite guzzling some into his throat. He survives, but it wasn't over.
- Escaping the sirens
After getting out of the water, freezing close to death, finding out his friend Ben who tried to help his phone charge was killed, he stumbles onto a cassette in Ben's jacket, and someone armed with a gun is now telling him to surrender. What does he do?
This guy imagines his dead son calling to him in a tunnel, I work around a Molotov to distract him before making it for the muddy tunnel. Making it to the girl's office, I got some levity talking to a beggar who was high on denatured alcohol. Stealing a leaf blower from a gravedigger because he was too much of a jerk to help. As well as his handkerchief, soaking it with the beggar's metho.
I wanted to believe this was like a PG-13 rated thriller of sorts, but there was an awful lot of swearing after chapter 2. I'm shocked to see that Carter keeps it more cool than these guys, considering he's now wanted for murder, has another group of people chasing him. Can't attend his mother's funeral in peace, and is hallucinating things like his son helping him out.
Not to mention the frustrating times I failed to get out of another situation. What's even crazier? The plot twists, the whole time I thought this was more grounded till this freaky monster with tentacles crawling out of its body. This game has put me at my wit's end more times than I could count.
It's a hell of a joyride, I think I'll try to finish this one. The Drifter is something truly special. The darker look, less saturated art style, yet perfectly distinct to draw attention to. The voice acting is brilliant, all the cast are British, and yet it seems to take place in the UK.
Not a long game, but if you're bad at those quick events requiring you to solve things at puzzle difficulty, you might be held back quite a lot. Really puts your mind to test.
Above screenshots and GIFs are from personal recordings only
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