Machinarium
Netbook Game Review
This award-winning old-school-style point and click adventure game puts you in the tiny metal shoes of an itty-bitty robot who’s down on his luck. The back story, as told to us by the game description, is that
…you’ve been thrown out into the city’s scrap yard and now must fight to confront the evil Black Cap Brotherhood and rescue your beautiful robot girlfriend.
Though none of this is very clear for the first half of the game, really.
The game play is… well, it’s a point and click adventure. But if you’ve read that and gotten it in your head that it will be easy, you are sorely mistaken. This game is HARD. Okay, maybe it’s not Super Meat Boy hard, but it’s hard nonetheless. Ruthless, even. The best way to approach a game like this is with a notepad and a pencil by your side to scribble down puzzles, sequences you’ve already tried that failed, possible colour combinations and so on and so on. It also helps if you’re the calm and rational type. Anger will get you nowhere fast in this game, and as you may know by now, I’m a rage-quitter so I had a particularly difficult time trying a puzzle more than 20 times without slamming the escape key with great contempt.
Be prepared to spend hours staring at the same screen trying to figure out the puzzles or learn to deal with the feelings of guilt associated with looking up walkthroughs online.
I was very thankful to see that this game doesn’t suffer from inventory bloat — once you’ve used an item in your inventory and have no need for it in the future, the robot will throw it away to avoid any confusion. Inventory bloat in games like Silent Hill have robbed me of hours of my life in the past and I’m glad to see a game that realizes how frustrating that can be, especially in a game as difficult as this.
There is hint system available in two formats. The first option gives you a broad clue as to what you should be trying to do. Like all in-game information, it’s presented as a doodle with no further explanation. If that’s too obscure for you, the second option spells out exactly what you need to do in the form of a comic strip… with once catch: In order to get to said comic strip, you need to beat a relatively difficult Frogger-esque type mini-game.
Navigation feels a little basic. In some levels I would have given my right arm to be able to double-click to run somewhere. Without the ability to run, the game has a tendency to lock your robot into a course that can’t be canceled should you click off-screen by accident. The game’s unhurried pace is a pleasure in many ways, but can be really frustrating when you’re trying to get on with it and beat the level you’ve been trying at for two hours.
In the end, I recommend giving it a go — it’s inexpensive, a good challenge, visually stunning for all you steampunk fans out there, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment when you’ve beat it. Finally.
