On this melancholic and hungover Sunday there is only one thing I know with certainty to be true: Broken Age is a terrible game. I know this because for the past week I haven't been able to spend more than ten minutes at a stretch on it without wanting to give up on everything. Broken Age. This blog. All video games. Doing anything at all ever.
Even the act of typing out my justifications for this frankly unexpected level of loathing feels like a too tiresome task, which is one more notch against it (though this one, at least, is not its fault). This is not enjoyable to write. Fuck knows how it reads. But that is the pact.
I guess I should frame this: Having bought it from the Steam store, for some now-unfathomable reason, for $8.50, Broken Age and I had previously spent nine not-particularly-memorable hours together, threeish years ago, in which I guess I got through a fair chunk of the story but ultimately lost patience with and never finished it. For whatever reason, I decided this time that I would start over, with the thought that I'd probably breeze through the bits I'd already played and get to the end no problems, all while having a fresh look that would, hopefully, be recompartmentalised into a fresh take.
Big mistake! It is - ha ha - waaaaaay worse than I'd remembered. God, where do I start? Most of the dialogue is dull, endless and mostly meaningless even to the point of like, establishing broader things about this game and the people who inhabit it. Here in Broken Age conversations mostly serve to illustrate how everything else is silly, or how this particular character is silly. For some reason this requires you to read the entirety of your responses written fully first (rather than helpful indicative shorthand), before they are parroted verbatim by whichever of the main characters you're currently in cahoots with, and it all just takes so fucking long and goes nowhere of interest.
The story (bar any late salvation I never reached) is flimsy. The characters are numerous and empty. There's a leaning on tropes and smirked sentences and like, weird, as though weird itself is substance. Most NPCs seem just dumb, basically, which is not only a lazy recurring gag but kinda makes the whole, strange, angular world feel like a bad storyboard joke. Which I guess it is.
The puzzle design/environmental layout is more laborious than anything, but by now it's a moot point. Broken Age's aggressive mediocrity is particularly disappointing (and perhaps to a certain degree, inevitable) because of the kickstartered hype that pre-empted its existence; also because it is quite pretty - I mean, look at those screenshots and weep for what could have been. I guess I should care more that famous people did the voice work. I don't, though.
Perhaps there's also a piece missing here for me, some lack of experience with certain old adventure games or the Double Fine lineage. Something that would help me make sense of this excruciatingly banal game. In any case, I'm very happy to chuck this one back into the figurative "unfinished" box, then leave it there forever. Peace.
up next is Broken Sword 1 - Shadow of the Templars: Director’s Cut
