Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5 out of 10
Broken Age is a story driven point-and-click third-person adventure puzzle game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4 and PS Vita. Broken Age is the first graphic adventure game from Tim Schafer in 16 years who is known for his work on such classic games within the genre as Day of the Tentacle and Psychonauts. He was the project lead on the original release of Grim Fandango which he stated cost around $3 million to develop and he also lead the project of remastering the game with Double Fine Productions. It has been quite a long time since Broken Age began as a Kickstarter campaign from February 9th 2012 looking for crowd funding which was so successful in how it was received by audiences that the campaign funded the initial figure of $400,000 in just over 8 hours; eventually greatly surpassing it to reach an astounding funding total of $3,336,371 by the middle of March 2012 from a total of 87,142 backers.
The story revolves around two teenagers called Shay Volta and Vella Tartine who find themselves in similar scenarios in their lives despite not knowing each other and being located quite some distance apart. The story unfolds in separate phases as the player can switch between both characters as Shay is living a life of solitary on board a spaceship under the watchful eye of a computer who acts as a caring mother, but all he wants to do is break routine and explore space looking for adventure and excitement, while Vella has been chosen as a sacrifice by her village to have the so-called honour of being fed to a beastly monster, the inference being that both Shay and Vella have the urge to escape from their pre-determined fates.
There are two stories which both consist of two acts with both stories having a separate lead character, therefore Shay Volta’s and Vella Tartine’s adventures can be started and progressed upon in any given order by utilising the bottom right side of the inventory menu or alternatively visiting new game menu and saving to a different save slot which is an excellent design choice as it allows the freedom for the player to experience the game in anyway the player wants to do so with exceptional accessibility.
The character design is charming and amazing as all of the characters have their own unique looks, styles, traits and voices that set each character apart from each other, while Shay and Vella are two excellent lead characters with a host of supporting characters which no matter how short their appearance may be in some cases; all characters have their moment of humorous dialogue.
The environment design is just as great as the character design as the village Vella lives in and the spaceship Shay calls home are perfectly imagined, as are their immediate surroundings which are just as fully realized and picturesque as players would anticipate them to be.
There is certainly a lot of trademark Tim Schafer humour from the outset such as an avalanche which turns out to be two creatures that appear to be made out of stitching materials which have their feet trapped in an avalanche of ice cream which Shay needs to eat one mouthful at a time with a small spoon in order to free them as the creatures seem too young to know how to use spoons, while the safety uniform Shay has to wear when venturing outside the ship looks like a clown outfit, alongside funny dialogue between characters.
Broken Age supports cross-buy and cross-save between the PS4 and Vita. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that players will be purchasing the PS4 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows players to sync the progression of their save file from their Vita to the PS4 and vice versa, so players can start playing the game on their Vita on the way to and from work, sync their save game when they return home and then resume were they left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading the save file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other console.
The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller and are fully customisable, while the default control scheme consists of pressing X to use an item, talk or skip dialogue, pressing square to examine items, pressing triangle to open inventory, pressing O to pick up an item, put an item away or skip a cutscene, pressing R1 or L1 to select the next or previous item respectively, pressing R2 to move the cursor faster, pressing L2 to move the cursor slower, changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move the cursor to another area of interest, changing the direction of the right analogue stick to quickly snap the cursor to another area of interest from the surrounding environment, pressing left or right on the d-pad to select an inventory item of interest, pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. There is no touch pad implementation which is surprising as the Vita version as the touch screen can be utilised to select items, therefore the DualShock 4 controller’s touch pad could have realistically acted as an alternative to the left analogue stick for moving by swiping in the appropriate direction players want to move in or tapping the touch pad to interact with an object or select a dialogue choice, while the light bar remains white during menus and until a character has been chosen in which it remains a light blue colour for Shay or a light pink colour for Vella, alongside no DualShock 4 vibration which is surprising as it could have vibrated during a heavy landing from a failed mission attempt, provided pressure when attempting rescue missions or reflect anything loud within the surrounding environment.
Graphically, Broken Age possesses an absolutely stunning 2D hand-painted art style which makes it look amazing and charming, while having excellent lighting, shadows and fluent character models with an equal charm to the look of every character and environment throughout the game.
The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, options and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left and right analogue sticks, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the touch pad. The background of the menus is quite bright and colourful as birds fly into clouds with stars above the clouds as the title logo takes centre stage with rays of sunshine beaming from it.
The voice-over cast is full of supreme talent which really bring their characters to life such as Elijah Wood, who having previously portrayed Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and voicing Spyro in The Legend of Spyro, voices Shay Volta while Masasa Moyo voices Vella Tartine having voiced a variety of characters in multiple Dead or Alive, Final Fantasy, Star Wars and X-Men games as well as television series including Celebrity Deathmatch and Young Justice. Jack Black voices Harm’ny Lightbeard being known for his roles in King Kong and School of Rock, Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend game and the music duo of Tenacious D; Jennifer Hale voices mum having voiced characters in multiple God of War and Syphon Filter games, Mortal Kombat X and many animated television series, alongside many more talented voice-over artists. The voice-over cast is perfectly complimented by an orchestral soundtrack composed by Peter McConnell and recorded with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, while the sound effects include interacting with objects, items and characters, walking, ambient sound effects such as a crackling fireplace in Vella’s home and much more besides. There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation which could have produced the amazing voice-over cast, orchestral score or sound effects to provide a further layering to the audio.
The trophy list includes 45 trophies with 26 bronze, 16 silver, 2 gold and 1 platinum trophy. The trophies are relatively easy when players know what needs to be done, but the trophies are not exactly signposted, therefore leaving 25 missable trophies which may require a second playthrough in order to achieve if certain things are not done in a specific order or if all dialogue trees have not been exhausted such as the Flawless Execution silver trophy for completing all rescue missions without any errors; the Gary Has His Reasons silver trophy for hearing 20 reasons why the Grabbin’ Gary item on 20 different items to receive 20 unique responses; and the Produce Distributor silver trophy for feeding two different people a healthy snack; amongst many more missable trophies, although there are 19 story related and unmissable trophies which are guaranteed upon completing a single playthrough. The hardest trophy is definitely the Are You Trying to Get Rid of Me silver trophy for finding 30 unique reactions to the spoon over the course of both acts in Shay’s story, although it seems as though the trophy will not unlock unless 33 particular lines of dialogue in reaction to the spoon have been found which makes the trophy even more missable and hard to achieve. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 11 to 15 hours to platinum the trophy list.
There are no difficulty levels, but the difficulty curve is appropriate as there are plenty of puzzles to solve such as dialogue, interaction and exploration resulting in the difficulty level being the equivalent to how hard players find the puzzles to overcome. There will be a few puzzles that may potentially trip some up but with some logic and process of elimination players will figure out any of the puzzles sooner rather than later for the majority of the puzzles as progression is made through the story.
There are no local or online multiplayer features which are understandable given the focus on the story and character driven narrative, although perhaps a local or online form of co-operative multiplayer for two players would have provided a new experience by allowing the players to experience the story together from the perspective of Shay and Vella independently of each other with intertwining decisions which effects the dialogue and direction of the other player’s story. There is no online leaderboards which could have featured time based leaderboards for how quickly each player would take to solve a puzzle, complete an area or act of the game and completing the entire game. However, while multiplayer features and online leaderboards would have added further replay value; the exclusion of local or online multiplayer and online leaderboards do not detract from the experience.
The replayability stems from the two excellent stories which both comprise of two acts in which adventure, exploration, puzzles and witty dialogue with a host of amazing characters will be encountered throughout the game.
Overall, Broken Age delivers on everything which was promised in the Kickstarter campaign as it provides a modern take on Tim Schafer’s point-and-click adventure genre. If you are a fan of Tim Schafer’s body of work in the videogame industry such as Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts or even if you have not played a Tim Schafer game but you are a fan of point-and-click and adventure genres, then Broken Age is absolutely a highly recommended purchase.
Jason Bonnar
Analysis
- Title: Broken Age
- Developer: Double Fine Productions
- Publisher: Double Fine Productions
- System: PS4 and PS Vita
- Format: PSN Download
- Cross-Buy: Yes (PS4 and PS Vita)
- Cross-Play: Yes (Cross-Save)
- Players: 1
- Hard Drive Space Required: 2.27GB