Review: Mortimer Beckett and the Time Paradox
“Hey, this game is for kids, and it’s not geeky!!” Yeah, yeah, I know that. But truth to be told, the games at Reflexive Arcade are fun, addictive, and while you hate to admit it, you can’t get enough of it. Otherwise, why do you think they keep churning out more and more games? The Reflexive Arcade games can generally be breaking down into several simple categories: seek-and-find, puzzles/arcade, “dash” games, and others. Of course, they also combine them from time to time, and hope to come out with one that you would actually like it and keep buying it. This game is one of those games.
So before I go on, let me just go on record and say that yes, I like Reflexive Arcade games (well, some of it), and yes, I will keep reviewing them whenever I finish one. They will generally be breaking down into the similar review style that I will do with this one, because ultimately, this isn’t some hardcore game that took them over years to make (and for those it really deserve a thorough, detailed review, possibly from both myself and Taro!), but one of those fun quickie games that can be sum up in no more than 5 sentences. Still, they deserve some thoughtful review, and I will try my best to give them to you. With that said….
Graphics: The graphics of this game is not bad, in certain aspects. Since, as the title suggests, this game travels through time, they try to put in some interesting time zones for each stage. The graphics ranges from high mediocre to beautiful in some, but nothing spectacular. For the animated scenes beginning and end of the game, they have a semi-3D animation that’s made in the Pixar wooden people style, senza the joints, like the picture on top. It’s more a comic-book style CG, not extravagant or anything. The main problem with the graphics is that since this is a seek-and-find game, the game has a tendancy of hiding dark-colored items in dark regions of the picture. My computer has a really good graphics card and a HD monitor, and I was still having trouble seeing the items ’cause they were hiding in the dark and completely invisible. I mean, how are you suppose to see a dark eyepatch in teh darkest shadow of the tree branches?! So, a definite major drawback there, but countered by its gameplay as discussed below.
Music: The music is gorgeous in this game. I really enjoyed all but the French time zone’s music (the music for the French time zone was a bit depressing, but perhaps it’s because of my understanding of the time that they are using) that I was feeling a bit down when playing this time zone. The music tries its best to fit all time zones, and it has genres from grandiose to meloncholy. The composer/arranger does a good job tying in bits and pieces of well-known music segments from people’s association with the time zone that even for those with no classical music background can relate to it quite well. For instance, in the French time zone, you get to hear some measures of the French national anthem, and it tapers off quite smoothly to the arrangement. The sound effect, on the other hand, is little to none, as I only noticed a couple off small, stock sound effects that seemed to just be there for the filler. But it doesn’t ruin the overall audio experience of the game, thankfully.
Gameplay: This is the classic seek-and-find plus problem solving, in which you need to find all the hidden items in each places of the time zone. There are some puzzles in which you need to solve using the key pieces of hidden items so you can get to the next item that’s hidden beneath. The puzzles aren’t terribly hard, just to the level of amusing, so it doesn’t tire people that are above the age of 13 out easily. The main drawback, of course, is the graphic problem I mentioned above, where a lot of pieces are hidden in a complete black background that even for a good monitor/resolution/graphics card it’s still hard to see. The good thing (at least for me, though I’m sure some hardcore seek-and-finders will protest) of this game is that there’s no time restraint on this, and the hints are unlimited. As with all unlimited-hints games, you must wait for the hint to recharge itself before using it again, but the recharge time is short so it’s not too bad. And really, you need the hints, because, well, the graphics problem. Another small problem I noticed is the mapping, where the region that your mouse tells you an interaction is available is generally too small, and you’d end up passing them over and getting frustrated because you don’t know where you need to go next. This happens especially more in the later stages, where there are more places to go in each part of the stage and you end up going, “What the hell… I know my cursor changed, but… Am I hallucinating?!” a lot.
Overall: In conclusion, this isn’t a bad game to play. It’s definitely a time killer for at least 2 hours, and if you’re seasoned you can beat it faster. There are minimal annoyance to the game, and the overall graphics and music is spectacular. Its story plot is done in a nice, clean, straightfoward way, and you do get a general satisfaction of beating the game, even though it’s not horribly hard. There really is no replay value, though they do offer you the chance as they would change every item’s hidden places, but it’s entirely up to the individual player to decide whether to replay this game or not. I personally never replay them, so I don’t see the need for it. It’s amusing with a decent challenge, so both kids and adults would all enjoy it for the time it takes them to play, however short-lived that is.
