![]() Machinarium is a point-and-click adventure game executed to near perfection. With its stunning aesthetics, Machinarium immerses the player into its world entirely, with all the wonderful quirks that go along with it. The music is also fantastic, creating a sometimes playful, sometimes sad, and always engaging feeling throughout the game. Similar to the storytelling in Wall-E, the narrative is expressed mostly through gesture and a few emotionally charged spurts of sounds from the characters, and the result is something endlessly charming and always heartwarming. The game's backstory is told largely through a series of animated dialog bubbles that were always a treat to watch, as the hand-drawn sketch style used in them really lends itself well to the overall theme. Machinarium casts the player as a simple little automaton known only as "The Robot" who must find his way back into the city after being taken out with the garbage. I honestly can't put into words how well-done the visuals are in Machinarium-it's probably better expressed through a quick Google image search. In fact, sometimes the game looks so good it can be difficult to see items that can be picked up or used in some way. Every single area, even the small enclosed ones, are so painstakingly detailed and stylistic that it really fells similar to playing an episode of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. The open areas that overlook the rest of the world are absolutely breathtaking, and at the beginning of the game the scenery looked so good that I thought I was playing some sort of introductory cinematic and the in-game graphics would be coming soon. Saying that Machinarium looks good simply does not do it justice-this game is jaw-droppingly beautiful. Machinarium, the recent Flash-based adventure hit from Amanita Design, does both of these things and does them extremely well. The other is to wrap a familiar set of gameplay mechanics in a good package of style and substance to make the experience feel fresh. One is to make the puzzles and other obstacles interesting and challenging enough to make the player feel like he is actually progressing through the game rather than just tagging along for the ride. The formula really hasn't changed all that much in about ten years, so any new adventure game's mission consists mostly of two things. It's easy to think that adventure games are a stagnant lot. WTF: The oddly convenient series of pipes in one of the puzzles. HIGH: Overlooking the city from the game's high points. ![]() ![]() You Won't Even Notice that All the Humans are Gone ![]()
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