"Gemini Rue" Review

Publisher:  Wadjet Eye Games

Genre:  Adventure

Summary:  On a gang-run planet, a weary assassin-turned-cop searches for information.  Elsewhere, an amnesiac prisoner tries to escape a mysterious facility where graduation means a new personality.

Gameplay:  Pretty much all interaction uses right-clicking, which lets you look or touch or kick and also opens the inventory.  I wish that had been split up a bit, maybe by setting looking aside as its own action or offering a separate way to open the inventory.  Unless I missed something, there wasn't any way to look at an inventory item without interacting with something else, which was a little irritating.

The puzzles generally don't stand out as bad or good, although I did get a bit tired of combination puzzles.  There were also several times in the game when it wasn't that obvious what to do next.  The game also features actual action-sequence gunplay, which felt well-integrated and varied but not too complex.  I liked it and felt like there was just enough of it.

Style:  Graphically, the game looks fairly rough, which must be a stylistic choice, since it came out in 2011.  I suppose it works to give the setting a run-down and serious air, but it can be jarring when coming from an adventure game with brighter and clearer graphics.  It also makes some of the puzzle elements harder to spot.

Story:  When it comes to "Blade Runner"-esque adventure games with action shooter elements, it's hard to top the amazing actual "Blade Runner" game by Westwood Studios.  And this doesn't!  But it does have an excellent story of its own with some good twists (as you might imagine with mindwiping in play as a plot element.)

I'm usually pretty good about picking up background understanding about a setting, but this was one of the few games where I wanted more establishing information.  I still got the general gist of things, and that's all that's needed, but I would have liked a way to read up and clarify more.

Also, and I know this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but a solar system is not a galaxy!  It's just that the mistake is consistent throughout the game, so by the fourth or fifth mention I got twitchy about it.

There are several instances where the dialogue gets overly philosophical and tells what's already been more subtly shown, especially near the end.  And while I was impressed in the beginning at having such a large area of city available to explore, at the end my suspension of disbelief was shattered as everybody on the planet possibly needing contact lived within a two-block radius.

Of the two plot threads, I preferred exploring the rainy streets of a downtrodden city to navigating the sterile facility, but I appreciate the ability to switch between the two (and they converge nicely in the end.)  I do wish there were more options, though that's a purely personal preference.  It just seemed like there were several moments in the game where a player choice could have been integrated.

Conclusion:  Although it has its quirks and weaknesses, "Gemini Rue" is overall a good adventure game with an interesting story.  I had fun!