One of the chapters is a complete departure with regards to structure and perspective, and the change is a welcome one. Each episode is always engaging and well-paced, even if the pay-off doesn’t always feel satisfying. There’s no complicated control scheme that would be an issue with touchscreens. They’re an especially great fit for an iPad, since you usually just select choices. There are meaningful deviations in the narrative based on your decisions, which encourages multiple play-throughs, but the stakes for our main characters ultimately feel low. Dark Nights with Poe and Munro I’m a big fan of full-motion video (FMV) games, or interactive movies, if you will. The UI does try to remain unobtrusive, but at the cost of clarity in what decision you’re actually choosing. These decision points are a bit glitchy, and given the urgency of making a decision before the timer expires, the cursor is sometimes unresponsive. These “decision points” as I’ve dubbed them, can affect what actions our heroes take, how the characters interact with each other, and even their fate. When it comes time to make a possible narrative-altering choice, the game goes into a split-screen view of your possible decisions, reminiscent of the television show “24”. There’s also some meta humor about the age-old philosophical debate of free will versus destiny, which feels appropriate, if a bit too on-the nose, given the mechanics and narrative branches of the game. The humor mostly lands, and there’s innuendo to spare, with Poe and Munro often having cheeky dialogue exchanges. Solid production values with some noticeable inconsistencies. One could argue the semantics of calling “Dark Nights” a video game, given how little “gameplay” there is, but I’m reviewing this title on my Xbox, so a video game, it is. It’s very similar to Netflix’s choose-your-own-adventure film, BANDERSNATCH, where you choose the actions of the main character at key points in the narrative. The word “episodes” is intentional, as the studio describes the game as an interactive TV series, comparing itself to David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS, and “THE X-FILES with humor and chemistry”. 3rd-Person Cinematic Action Gameĭeveloped by D’Avekki Studios, “Dark Nights” is an FMV, or full-motion video game, with 6 episodes in total. However, after being exasperated by the gaming industries bloated AAA offerings, getting an opportunity to play through and review “Dark Nights”, a game outside of my normal taste, seemed like a welcome one. Due to my child-like attention span, these games just weren’t really my bag. Two games which touted many narrative choices and outcomes. Full Throttle had a linear narrative with only one possible outcome for the story and its characters, which is a contrast from the branching narratives of Telltale’s “The Walking Dead” or “Tales from the Borderlands”. The closest I think I’ve gotten to said genre is Full Throttle, a point-and-click adventure game, developed by LucasArts and released back in 1995. Full Disclosure: I’ve never played a Telltale Games-style adventure game before. Chris Penwell chats with Lynda and Tim Cowles from DAvekki Studios about their latest FMV title Dark Nights with Poe & Munro, the evolution of the medium.
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