After years of waiting, Daedalic Entertainment have brought console users the joys of now being able to play a game which was initially released in 2012 on PC. The new release see’s the main character Rufus make his return.
I personally havent played the original game release, but was ensured that I wouldnt need any knowledge of the first game to be able to play this as it contains a unique, self-contained playable story.
In Chaos on Deponia Rufus strives to leave the junk planet Deponia and reach the legendary floating city of Elysium. However, something goes wrong. A flaming saw blade grounds Goal and Rufus on Deponia again. By accident, her consciousness gets split into three parts and stored to three different discs. Now it’s on Rufus to convince all three parts of Goal to become one again, venture to Eylsium with her and save Deponia from certain doom…
Upon loading, I was treated to some lovely visuals that were reminiscent of the Monkey Island games, but have obviously been seriously improved upon since those great days. Starting the game, I still couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I was playing something that was trying to be a newer Monkey Island, but I kept going.
The dialogue is funny from the start, but then does start to become a little tedious after a short period. You start as most games do with a brief introduction to your controls, but it didnt really help me out as they were all explained within a chat with another character, but not explained as you are trying to do things within the game. This would have been a much better way to implement them and to help work out just what you are supposed to be doing.
The graphics are without question, stunning. All of which have been hand drawn in HD and gives cartoon animations in a comic book style. We are treated throughout to stunning visuals and I did spend my time looking over the scenes closely to see what they had to offer. The art team behind this game should be commended on some fine work.
The gameplay is standard to the likes of Monkey Island (I apologise for bringing that title up, but they did it first and best in my opinion), its a point and click game which involves puzzle solving within certain scenes to be able to progress further in the game. Its fun, but a little tedious at times as there is a lack of someone advising you what exactly to do. The scenes are well thought out and some are funny, especially when I laughed out loud to an early scene that played out with a bird.
The developers boast that both the Xbox and PlayStation controllers have been fully utilised within the game, but it does take a lot of getting used to. It certainly doesn’t come naturally on the PS4 at first, even though everything was briefly explained at the start. My advice to anyone who wants to give this game a go is to run through the tutorial multiple times until you think it has fully sank in, even then it probably wont have.
There are faults with the game, but it is a very enjoyable playthrough all the same and most people will really enjoy it. I started to enjoy it once I had got used to the annoying controls and found myself totally immersed in the wonderful gameplay.
For me, I will give the game a 7/10. It would have been higher if the tutorial niggles were sorted out.