I can’t help but admire Mechner’s 1990s. After an enormous commercial success as a young man (“Prince of Persia”), he travelled the world collecting experiences, then spent his entire fortune on this single work of impeccable artistic integrity and daring experimentation despite it taking several years and a large team.
It flopped, but he got up and took another shot at “Prince of Persia” and made it all back several times over. Bravo. The world is richer for these long shots that got taken and missed.
The Last Express is a singular experience, one of the best "adventure games" ever made. So much richness and depth, there's even a cult following online which thinks the story should be turned into a movie.
That's the problem. It wants to be a movie, and so it's a lousy game. If you get off script, you have to "rewind" to a previous point and get back on script, you loser.
Finding a good place between a track ride game (you will do all the quests in order) and a plotless open-world game ("what do I do now?") remains a hard problem. Especially for MMOs based on movie franchises.
It benefits from the immersion of being a - not exactly a game, but an interactive experience. Yes, there are some plot points that you have to hit. But just being able to walk around and see the characters and conversations at your own pace is hugely rewarding (kind of like immersive theatre). For me it was a great success, as was Life is Strange - and interestingly for both of those, the most "gamey" parts (the puzzles and quick-time events) were the least satisfying.
Yeah. I fell in love with the game when I was sitting in the prince's car listening to the lovely violin/piano duet. I was so absorbed in the music and the scene and wondering about the characters, that I didn't realize until the concert was almost over that it would have been a great opportunity to be somewhere else since all these characters are here. Which is exactly what I needed to do.
So fun to be snooping and lurking and listening to conversations you're not supposed to overhear, and piecing together the story and relationships.
Mechner always had that film sense. The rotoscoping used since karateka created a complete new genre, the cinematic platformer and many years later influenced a complete saga, Asssasin’s Creed. Last Express is full of innovative resources as other Mechner's creations, but it didn't reach the correct audience
Thanks for having the balls to say this. It’s a terrible video game but a masterpiece of a story. In fairness, it was far from the only game of its time where not knowing things about the game could cause you to kids large swaths of it.
Personally I would rather someone remade it with a modern user interface. I bought it a few years back because I am a huge fan of adventure games and bounced right off because of its abysmal UI. All I remember of the game is clicking one arrow and then going back and mysteriously ending up somewhere completely different from where I was before, trapped in a proverbial maze of twisty little passages, all alike. It's a train, for crying out loud, how can you make a train unintuitive to navigate? In any case, the story walked away and I was left wanting to throw my mouse out the window of my apartment.
There are several other games doing this real-time clock gimmick now, and I think enjoyment of them hinges very much on how deeply invested you get in the story before the frustration sets in. I bought and returned Outer Wilds because of its tedious dialog, janky user interface, infuriating insta-deaths and enforced time limit that had me suffering the pain over and over again, while professional reviewers would have you believe it's the best game of 2019. On the other hand I bought Consortium years before that, had one great playthrough and remember it as one of the best sci-fi games I ever played, whereas other players chose a path they didn't enjoy or encountered bugs and jankiness and decided it sucked. I have a couple other games buried in my wishlist with the same gimmick, but every time they come up for sale I'm reluctant to buy them because the whole "genre" (if that's what it is now) seems like such a crapshoot.
In general I'm not sure the concept is really successful as a gameplay mechanic, despite it sounding like a more realistic and immersive way to play. I think the constantly running clock thing ends up feeling more "gamey" than triggered events, because the player is forced to adjust their real life to fit the game instead of escaping into the game as a place distinct from real life. I think this sort of mechanic is ultimately more appealing to roguelike fans than adventure game fans.
An amazing game. The article hit the nail on the head when it comes to its few shortcomings:
* the fighting sequences are stupid.
* the slideshow gameplay makes it difficult to navigate.where a game like Myst can hit away with it since it's mostly in the open, The Last Express really struggles to make it easy to understand where you can go/are in such a confined space.
The "real time" mechanic was so great. It felt so refreshing to think that spending your time searching a compartment may cause you to miss an important conversation for example.
This game should get a remaster similar to RealMyst.
It flopped, but he got up and took another shot at “Prince of Persia” and made it all back several times over. Bravo. The world is richer for these long shots that got taken and missed.