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55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good for a pleasant afternoon, but not much more., September 17, 2005
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
Despite the picture on the box, most of the scenery takes place in Czech Republic, followed by small bits in France and Mexico. The storyline becomes apparent during the game play, and is not difficult to follow, even if you pay attention to a television program instead of this game. The play involves talking to people, finding objects by mousing over them, combining and using objects in the inventory, and solving a few puzzles.
The good parts of the game:
.The graphics are pretty good, and include rain (lots and lots of rain), a bit of snow, and realistically walking people.
. The puzzles are easy enough to solve without being a pain or a bore.
. You can't get lost anywhere, because the game will not let you either use the wrong items (match on the map to burn it up) or get lost, because you can't go too far without performing certain tasks or finding certain objects.
. You can turn this game off and go to bed without an aching to get back.
The bad parts:
. The game sometimes hangs, usually if there is another program running in the background.
. The tasks can be tedious and annoying, such as talking to a certain person, then another person, then back again, then walking away for a bit, then walking back and talking again.
. The characters have odd accents - there are several cockneys, and the bad guys sound like Sean Connery. The main character, Martin, has a deep, pleasant voice.
. If you miss a bit of dialogue, or even an entire conversation, you can't go back and play it again, unless, of course, you saved the game just before that point.
. The grammar, punctuation, and spelling in the dialogues are severly lacking.
. Every so often Martin exclaims, "I'd better get out of here quickly" as he saunters off slowly. Luckily, everyone else is even slower so he easily gets away.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Easy and Beautiful, December 5, 2005
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Martin Holan is a young archaeologist working at a rather boring research project when his uncle, also an archaeologist, calls to tell him of an interesting discovery. Roadworkers in Prague have unearthed a WWII-era bunker. Its contents have interesting implications for uncle's lifelong work. Will Martin go check it out?
NiBiRu is a lovely point and click game from the people who brought us Black Mirror and it shares many of that game's strong points while having overcome some of the glitches. The sound and graphics are beautiful, of course. The voice acting is quite good. The many characters have a variety of accents --appropriate, as Martin is the only American in the game-- and they are all quite understandable and realistic. Incidental music only appears from time to time, but is low-key and interesting enough not to be annoying. And other F/X, such as storms, traffic sounds and the like, give fullness to the gaming experience. Pre-rendered locations are nicely detailed, although there is less animation than in Black Mirror. Characters are believable, rather than super-real. Movement is somewhat limited, but what there is works.
Puzzle-wise, NiBiRu is extremely easy. Most of the puzzles are inventory-type, with only about half a dozen discrete mechanical puzzles thrown in. Of the latter, only one was at all difficult, and that one was VERY difficult; I worked at it for probably six hours over the course of three days before giving up and consulting a walkthrough for the answer. There was one other sticky place with an unlikely solution that you pretty much had to stumble on by chance, as Martin gave no clue what he was thinking. There were a couple very easy timed puzzles (I got through them without a problem on the first try) and one place you could die (I only found one, anyway). However, at that point if you died, the game automatically reloaded right at the beginning of the sequence, without playing any annoying "consequences of failure" sequence. So you could try over and over again without too much frustration.
There are a couple things to keep in mind while playing this game. First, as in Black Mirror, you have to right-click as well as left click on every hotspot, as well as every item in your inventory, as this might reveal more information. Some people have a very hard time keeping track of this; it didn't bother me. On extremely rare occasions, you can't pick up inventory until you know what you need it for (or at least have visited the location where you need it). On the other hand, there are several tasks you CAN do without the faintest idea why you're doing them, before you have all the necessary parts. This can lead to a lot of wandering around and head-scratching. You can't replay or revisit dialog, but I didn't see any reason why you would have to. I liked that the dialog took care of itself; that is, once you clicked on a topic your characters just conversed about it until they were done, without your having to click on interminable conversation trees. I also liked that when a task took time--as when Martin had to wait for something--a clock simply appeared and ticked around the dial a couple times; then the game proceeded. This did away with the problem of wandering around looking for something else to do to advance the action.
The endgame showed up pretty abruptly and there wasn't much you could do but watch it unroll. I think I would have liked the possibility of a couple different endings, or more possible interaction. All in all, NiBiRu played more like a piece of interactive fiction: fairly linear, with a predetermined outcome the gamer could not influence much. After a brain-bending, puzzle-heavy game, it was a nice relaxing change of pace that took me about 15 hours, maybe less. If you like classic point and click, you'll like this one.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
There are many more worthwhile games to play, July 26, 2006
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars
My list of complaints about NiBiRu is very long, but it can be boiled down to a few items:
1. The most frustratingly linear gameplay I've ever experienced. You must often talk to people (that your character says they have nothing to say to) two or three times before you get results, and often in a certain order. If you solve a puzzle before the game 'thinks' you should, it has no effect - you must proceed to click on items or people in the right order until you reach the scripted 'puzzle solving' point.
2. Bad (and somewhat racist) voice acting. The main character speaks in a stunted manner that becomes very annoying. Everyone but the main character has an accent, and all of them are poorly done. The NPCs are almost all bad stereotypes of various nationalities, too.
3. Wildly varying puzzle difficulties. Some are so easy they're no fun, and one is so hard I was ready to quit the game even when I had the printed solution sitting right in front of me (that's right, I had to look it up before I smashed my computer). Most are middling in difficulty, but you must still do every single action in the right order to complete them, even if you have it solved in your mind and can do it faster.
4. The main character is totally unlikable. He whines, he lies to almost every NPC just to get his way, he does really underhanded things to proceed in his quest, he is a poor depiction of an archaeologist... Not someone I can relate to as I play through an entire game.
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