More than a year ago, Broken Age proved that adventure games aren’t dead, they just weren’t being given the proper attention. As expected of Tim Schafer and his Double Fine crew, the first act of Broken Age is filled with wildly inventive characters, locales, and a sense of humor all its own. And while the second half has many of the same wonderful qualities, a sense of inertia and poor payoff prevent it from being a triumphant conclusion.
As before, much of the second act is split into two halves, one continuing the story of Shay and the other of Vella. In the first act, Shay is a boy that dreams of a life beyond the over-protected walls of his spaceship. His mother sends him on missions that usually end in presents, hugs, or ice cream when all he wants is something that requires true courage.
Vella has the opposite problem in act one. She lives in a small village that loves to bake sugary treats. Everything is perfect, except for a roaming, rampaging monster known as Mog’Chothra. Out of fear, the various villages present a handful of maidens as a sacrifice, hoping it’s sufficient tribute. Vella has the unfortunate honor of being one of those maidens, but her quick wit manages to save her and she escapes Mog’Chothra’s clutches at the last moment.
From there, various other extraordinary events occur. There’s a small hamlet in the sky whose inhabitants remove letters from their name in an effort to reach spiritual lightness. Shrieking, terrified trees prevent a hipster lumberjack from making furniture. And a talking space knife seems intent on slicing up the entire universe.
Most of it is exceptionally creative and quite funny. The problem is that the second act reuses almost all of it. Except for a few rooms at the end of the game, everywhere you go in act two is somewhere you’ve been before. The difference is that the areas previously explored by Vella are traversed by Shay and vice versa. Things have changed, such as the lumberjack developing a love for working with metal, and Shay’s ship is in a severe state of disrepair. Yet, while it’s great seeing all of the differences, act two ultimately lacks the sense of adventure of the prior half. Even many of the jokes build on what was previously established.
Adding to the frustration is the main antagonist. His motivations are explained so hurriedly, it’s as if the game itself doesn’t really care about any of it. Act one does an excellent job of investing players in the stories Shay and Vella because we see how miserable their situations are and we want them to get out. The ultimate conflict in act two feels so thrown together that it doesn’t have the same emotional pull.
The puzzles are far more elaborate than anything found in act one. On one hand, we enjoy needing to get out a pen and paper to figure out some of the solutions. The best puzzles require you to think about a situation in different ways. Yet there’s also a fussiness present that can drag things out. Some sequences have a few too many steps or require you to travel long distances back-and-forth. At several points, the puzzles feel like busywork, rather than problems that are genuinely enjoyable to work out.
Despite these complaints, the character and tone of Broken Age are hard to resist. Act two may not capitalize on the potential of act one, but there are still plenty of moments that can bring a smile to your face or cause you to laugh-out-loud. Even at its worst, the world is a pleasure to be a part of, putting Broken Age in one of the most frustrating positions. There’s already a lot of goodness within it, but it’s almost impossible not to think of what it could have been.
Reviewed on Sony PlayStation 4.
Written by Ben Moore.
Summary
