2020. 2. 11. 17:05ㆍ카테고리 없음
Is a game about history repeating itself, asking the player to investigate a string of people whose lives mirror those of famous, important figures throughout history. It's fitting that the story itself plays like a knock-off of previously written characters and storylines – most notably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series. The Holmes role is played by Malachi Rector, a highly intelligent antiques dealer-turned-investigator who makes it clear he doesn't want anyone to care about him; Dr.
May 17, 2014 - Moebius: Empire Rising: Unravel the mystery of the moebius theory in this point-and-click adventure. Platform: Mac, Windows. Apr 15, 2014 Moebius: Empire Rising is a strikingly mediocre point-and-click adventure game, adequately checking all the boxes of a traditional entry in the.
John Watson is filled in by David Walker, an ex-military man who puts up with Rector's snark in order to protect him; and Mrs. Hudson is Gretchen Stern, Rector's long-suffering assistant. Moebius plays out like bad fanfiction – the action sequences are dramatized to the point of absurdity, the characters are caricatures rather than believable human beings, and the story is predictable.
Moebius Game
Given the involvement of adventure game guru Jane Jensen, I expected Moebius to have sophisticated characters uncovering a mystery complete with adventure, thrills and, most of all, surprises. As it turns out, I've read better fanfiction. Moebius feels cheap on multiple levels, including its uninspired relationships.
The character animation is on par with 's parody news videos: Characters are stiff, blocky 3D renders, and their lips move in opposition of whatever they say. The point-and-click gameplay is padded with pointless movements and backtracking, while the mechanics that pop up during moments of clue analysis are in need of editing. At its heart, Moebius is a point-and-click adventure, so let's start there. The settings are generally pretty, done in an airy, hand-drawn art style with plenty of detail. Rooms are filled with paintings, knickknacks, flowers and rugs, and most of these things are clickable. Unfortunately, most of them are also unimportant.
In one sitting room, I clicked on several vases and paintings that are 'nothing interesting,' before looking for some clues on the sofa. Upon clicking it, the pop-up says, 'It's a sofa.' There's nothing wrong with adding irrelevant details to a mystery game, things to throw off the player or lead the character to incorrect conclusions before revealing the final, brilliant master plan.
The items scattered around the antique shops and fancy mansions in Moebius, however, are devoid of anything useful in a mystery. Instead, the game is bloated with boring, unnecessary objects that the game itself repeatedly calls uninteresting. The repetition of mundane items only lessens the mystery by making the truly useful things stand out more.
When you notice some florist putty protruding from a basket of flowers, it's obvious you'll need that for a coming puzzle – if only because it's not a sofa. But I couldn't pick up that florist putty, at least not at first, when I knew I would need it later. Another of Moebius' padding mechanisms is a rash of illogical backtracking across cities and states for each mission. Malachi sees the florist putty but can't touch it until he's visited all of the correct locations around Italy, and the story finally says he needs something sticky to solve this puzzle. Then it's out of the canal, back to the mansion, into the flower pot, and back to the canal.
In a point-and-click, I don't want to know that I'll need a particular item until I figure out the puzzle myself. Conversely, if I know an item will be useful, I want to pick it up right away. Moebius' approach to puzzles doesn't make you feel smarter – it makes the game feel dumb. It's not all point-and-click in Moebius, though. The main character, Malachi, is a shrewd detective, which is one reason he's recruited to investigate the historical backgrounds of people around the world.
He lives in Manhattan, has a British accent, wears a suit every day, has a photographic memory and thinks he's the most intelligent person in every room. To his credit, he usually is. He's also an ass. His cold aloofness reaches a point where you don't feel empowered by playing as him; you just feel like a jerk. Malachi's impressive memory and observational skills set up some of Moebius' additional mechanics: analyzing body language and comparing a person's life with that of a historical figure.
The body language mechanic is simple – the screen shows a picture of the person with a few markers next to specific body parts. If a man has calloused fingers, you have the option of assuming he plays guitar, lifts weights or is a gunman. The player selects one of three options for each marker; the correct answer is usually fairly obvious, or it's the one that is repeated throughout the other markers. This gives Malachi an idea of what makes a character tick: If a particular woman is vain and obsessed with status, he plays into her beauty in conversation. The history-comparison mechanic is trickier, and it belies the most intriguing aspect of Moebius: the paranormal storyline.
Malachi is hired by a secret government organization to find people whose lives mirror those of important historical figures. Without spoiling things, suffice it to say that the US government has taken an interest in these individuals and the curious phenomenon of their parallel lives, and it aims to protect them from malicious outside entities. Each fact that Malachi learns about a person is tested against a range of similar people who had a role in shaping history, from Cleopatra to Charles Darwin. If one character was married at a young age, that fact is compared with the age at which Princess Victoria was married, for example. Malachi collects roughly a dozen fact points about each person of interest, and compares those to a lineup of likely matches – the player eliminates historical figures if a fact doesn't correspond to their lives.
This is where it gets tricky: There are consistently more than 10 historical figures in these lineups, and they don't all show up under every fact point. One fact will have three people, and another will have six, and all of their data points are already eerily similar to the person under investigation. Eliminating the correct candidates is more luck than deduction, since keeping track of all these shifting variables is messy. If you end up with three wrong choices at the end, the screen resets and you go through the elimination process again. It's tedious. Moebius has some good ideas. The basic plot is fascinating, combining history, paranormal theory and destiny into one action-adventure narrative, but the execution is cheap.
The puzzles play more like mundane tasks than thought-provoking riddles, and no amount of modern historical revision can save poor gameplay. The dialogue and storytelling mechanics are amateurish. In some cutscenes, Malachi's thoughts overlay the action in white text – again, reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, this time the BBC's modern series, and again it's unsophisticated. Malachi 'thinks' things that are obvious, such as 'trouble' when a gang of assassins is about to execute his ally, Dr. Er, David Walker. (It's an easy mistake to make.) Ultimately, Moebius feels like an early version of a full game, something that needs playtesting and a keen critical eye before it's ready for public consumption.
Even fanfiction authors have editors.
If pedigree is what piques your interest about an adventure game, then Moebius: Empire Rising is the game for you. Developed in collaboration with Phoenix Online Studios, the game is the brainchild of veteran game designer Jane Jensen and composer Robert Holmes (who is also Jensen's husband) under their new studio Pinkerton Road. Jensen is best known as the creator of the Gabriel Knight series and Gray Matter.
An accomplished novelist, she has also served as a story consultant for Phoenix Online Studios on Cognition: An Eric Reed Thriller. Holmes' previous works include the King's Quest series, the Gabriel Knight series, and Gray Matter, among others. Moebius: Empire Rising is the first adventure game released by their studio, after having received over $435,000 USD from a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter back in 2012. The story of Moebius: Empire Rising centers on a fictional metaphysical theory called the Moebius Theory. It argues that certain recurring patterns appear throughout history, in which the outcomes of individuals and events in current times can be predicted from similar counterparts centuries ago.
The theory posits that events ripple through the ages, causing identical or near identical repetitions in different eras. These similarities are more than pure coincidence.
Thus, under this theory, certain individuals are destined to a predetermined station, wealth, or fate in their lives. Upon starting the game after setting the initial configuration, you are presented with the Main Menu: Intro-E-Comic, Play Game, Load Game, Cutscenes, Settings, Credits, and Quit.
Under Settings, you can change options for Gameplay, Audio, and Display. Selecting Gameplay allows you to turn on or off Hints, Subtitles, and Tutorials. The Intro-E-Comic introduces you to Malachi Rector, the protagonist of the game. From the comic, you learn about Malachi's childhood growing up in Africa and the death of his mother during his early age. You also learn that Malachi is a child prodigy with an extremely high intellect and a near photographic memory. Now grown up, Malachi works as an antiques dealer and is a renowned historian with a special interest in rare antiques. The comic concludes with Malachi confronting an art seller about a fake antique, after which he himself is confronted by a group of thugs and gets beat up for exposing the seller's unscrupulous scheme.
The game begins in Manhattan in New York City. At Rector's Antiques showroom, Malachi's shop manager Gretchen informs him of a new potential client named Amble Dexter. Soon, Malachi learns that his new client actually works for a highly secretive US government organization called FITA—Future Intelligence Technology Agency. After passing a screening test that demonstrates his unique powers or abilities, Malachi is told that the agency has been investigating the Moebius Theory, together with governments from other countries, as a means of planning and securing a stable global political future. Malachi is also told of a brutal murder of young woman in Venice a week ago which the agency believes to be related. As Malachi, it is up to you to determine who Bianca Cardolo, the victim, really is.
To do this, you must investigate the facts of her current life and try to discover the connection between her and an important historical figure. The investigation will take you from Venice to other exotic locales such as Cairo, Paris, and Qatar. Thwarted and betrayed at every turn, only you can uncover the mole and unearth a global conspiracy that threatens to destroy the world's political system. Gameplay uses typical third-person point-and-click mechanics. The game supports a number of hotkeys: the spacebar to highlight all hotspots, the P key to access the smartphone, the M key to bring up any maps in use, and the Esc key to return to the system menus.
The inventory is located on the right side of the screen, where objects can be viewed, magnified, and combined. A pullout tab is located at the top left corner of the screen, from where you can access the in-game menu, smartphone, maps, and hotspot finder. Clicking the hollow cursor anywhere on the screen will slowly walk Malachi to that spot, while double clicking it will immediately teleport Malachi there. The cursor will highlight and display a label whenever it is hovered over an object with which or a person with whom you can interact.
Once selected, a rosette of icons will then appear detailing what types of interaction are available: an eye icon to identify or describe, a gear icon to do or operate, a talk icon to talk, an envelope icon to use from the inventory, a hand icon to take, and a brain icon to analyze. The game supports an unlimited number of save slots. No autosave is created whenever you exit the game.
The plot is best described as a mystery thriller. Clues can be gleaned at each step of your investigation, though it is not until the very end that you will know who the mole is behind the global conspiracy. The concept of the Moebius Theory is interesting, and the story goes to great lengths to try to explain it. Unfortunately, the portrayal of FITA is disappointingly generic—just yet another government shadow organization that secretly spies on its citizens under the guise of national security.
Still, each country you visit during your investigation seems to open up a new can of worms that deepens this global conspiracy theory. The friendship between Malachi and David seem underplayed and at times ambiguous, though it is clear that David is both a loyal friend and a capable bodyguard to Malachi. The blending of 2D and 3D graphics is well done, as are the pre-rendered cut scenes.
The backgrounds are detailed and show off the different architecture and landmark of each country Malachi visits. Lip sync of the characters is decent. When speaking, the characters express appropriate facial expressions, emotions, and body language. The only disappointment is the character animation. All of the characters are stiff looking and walk with an awkward gait, including Malachi. All of the character voiceovers are professionally done and sound excellent.
The French and Italian accents are believable. Although sound effects are minimal, they are solid. The musical score by Holmes is superb, intensifying the atmosphere of the game in every scene.
Most of the puzzles in the game are about analyzing people and objects by leveraging Malachi's power of observation and deductive skill. Other puzzles include rewiring a broken light switch as well as decrypting and encrypting a cipher, among others. There are a couple of mazes in the game, including a maze near the end that can be somewhat frustrating to solve. There is no provision to skip any of the puzzles. However, a hint system exists that is relatively helpful if you are ever stuck. In sum, Moebius: Empire Rising meets all my expectations for a superb adventure game.
The game is surprisingly long and can take up to 20 hours to finish. The complexity and intrigue of the conspiracy plot is masterfully handled by Jensen, keeping you riveted throughout the game and leeching out enough clues to maintain your interest until the end. Young gamers may struggle a bit with this game, as some of the puzzles require meticulous attention to details. The game offers some 30 achievement awards for added replay value.
I can envisage Malachi working on a new case in the future, using his encyclopedia knowledge and keen detective skill to save the world once again. Technical Data Publisher Developer Year Platform Language Medium 1 Subgenre System Requirement Minimum System Requirements. Operating System – Windows: XP/Vista/7, Mac: Snow Leopard (10.6.X). Processor – 2.0 GHz. Memory –2 GB RAM.
Video Card – ATI or NVidia with 512 MB RAM. Hard disk – 3.1 GB free space Recommended System Requirements. Operating System – Windows: XP/Vista/7, Mac: Snow Leopard (10.6.X). Processor – 2.0 GHz. Memory – 4 GB RAM.
Video Card –ATI or NVidia with 1 GB RAM. Hard disk – 3.1 GB free space. For Mac systems, an Intel-based processor is required. Not recommended for play on Intel systems with integrated/shared video memory. All logos, trademarks, and media related to commercial software are copyrighted by their respective owners. All copyrighted works are reproduced here under the fair use clause. All opinions expressed within are those of the authors alone and do not represent the views of this site.
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