FedSearch - Federated network search engine

Grissallia 🏳️‍⚧️ · @grissallia

892 followers · 4352 posts · Server aus.social

July 3, 2023 - Day 184 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 203

Game: Broken Pieces

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 10, 2022
Library Date: Jun 21, 2023
Unplayed: 12d
Playtime: 89m

Broken Pieces is a third-person puzzle adventure game. You play Elise, a woman stranded alone in a French town called Saint-Exil, trying to work out why everyone else in town has vanished.

It's largely puzzle-solving, with the occasional combat encounter thrown in.

Which is one of my two major issues with the game.

The first, however, is the script. Broken Pieces is set in France, and was built by a French dev team.

I suspect the script was better in French, and then it was just run through Google Translate or something, because it's really clunky.

Because Elise is the only character in the game, she's commentating things constantly. She doesn't use contractions, and some of her phrasing is like nails on a blackboard. This is not a game where you can get lost in the well designed environments, because as soon as Elise starts narrating something, you're pulled out of the game with "wait, what?"

The only thing clunkier than the dialogue is the combat; the "bad guys" suddenly appear out of a swirl of dark mist that will suddenly surround you. For whatever reason, in spite of the fact they seem multidimensional, a very normal gun will kill them. If you can manage to target them.

You can't hit a key to unholster your gun, and begin to target them. You have to wait until the game does it for you, and then start shooting. There's a combination of keys to dodge, which I have yet to successfully manage.

Sadly, while the game is atmospheric, and it has some nice ideas, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I kept plugging away for almost 90 minutes, drawn in by the puzzles, and repelled by the user interface and how little you can actually do.

Broken Pieces feels like an appropriate name; it's just:

2: Meh

#BrokenPieces #ThirdPerson #Adventure #Mystery #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay