The Pandora Directive and Mass Effect

Hello Danda and JR,

So CCG lasts on my shoulders now? Oh, the pressure!

Well, let me first of all say thanks for the gift certificates for gog.com you gave me. I had never heard of that site before, but it worked very well. I already downloaded The Pandora Directive and I was impressed how well it worked on my super-fast PC, even though it's 13 years old! (I've tried to play old Abandonware before, and sometimes I couldn't even make it work, despite DOSbox). Anyway, I didn't get to install the other game yet, but I will do that soon and report back to you.

So, I played about an hour of The Pandora Directive so far, and of course the visuals are very outdated. Also, the display is rather cluttered (see Mobygames for a screenshot) and I don't think the possibility/necessity to freely move the character around by pressing the spacebar and then moving the mouse makes the game better, even though I'm sure it was impressive back when it was released. However, Tex Murphy is a cool antihero and I find he's likeable enough that I wasn't even bothered by the 10-15 minutes of introduction before the game starts, in which we basically just saw Tex drink and chat. I like that they used real actors for the game (Kevin McCarthy even!), and again I have to wonder why nobody does that anymore, especially considering that it would likely look so much better these days. So the story is interesting and I'm curious to find out what will happen next!

In other news, I got to try out Mass Effect a few days ago and was quite impressed with it - especially with the way they handle dialog in the game.

First of all, the dialog option gives you the basic idea of how you want to react or what you want to say, but when the dialog that is actually spoken, it is very natural. It's well-written dialog, too. Also - and this I find particularly ingenious - you can already choose the next dialog option while the characters are still talking. This way, the dialog flows together more naturally and it makes the game a lot more immersive.

Also in Mass Effect, I like the fact that you can choose to be male or female, which they mostly solved by just giving your character the same last name in both cases, so they can always address him or her as "Shepard". I find that to be a very good solution.

So you see, there are a lot of good games to be played, and sometimes I wish I had the time to be a real core gamer for a while!

Greetings to Spain from rainy Germany,
-- SuperViv

Hey, I must be going!

Hi SuperViv,

In a few hours I'll be taking a plane to Spain for a very long vacation. I must leave this blog in your capable hands alone until 2010, because I won't have a steady internet connection for a couple of months. It's not impossible that I find some internet cafe in the place where I'm going, but who knows!

As a parting gift, JR and I have sent you a gift certificate for two of the best games ever made: The Pandora Directive and Sanitarium. It's been almost ten years since I've played them, but the impression they made was very deep. I hope the 'dated visuals' don't deter you from playing, because the story in those games haven't been equaled. But I'm sure you have a lot of things to do before, like getting stuff sorted out before the long journey you will be making next year. How funny! They say often gamers don't even leave their mom's basement, but we seem to travel a lot. Maybe it's because we are casual core gamers! :D

So long,
- Danda