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Mento

Check out Mentonomicon dot Blogspot dot com for a ginormous inventory of all my Giant Bomb blogz.

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Mento's May Madness: #25 - Gemini Rue

01/05/12 - Amnesia: The Dark Descent12/05/12 - Nimbus24/05/12 - Chime
02/05/12 - Blocks That Matter13/05/12 - Puzzle Bots25/05/12 - Diamond Dan
03/05/12 - Capsized14/05/12 - Rhythm Zone27/05/12 - Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time
04/05/12 - Delve Deeper15/05/12 - Starscape28/05/12 - The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom
05/05/12 - Eufloria17/05/12 - Tobe's Vertical Adventure30/05/12 - Gemini Rue
06/05/12 - Frozen Synapse18/05/12 - Uplink: Hacker Elite
07/05/12 - Greed: Black Border19/05/12 - Zen Bound 2
08/05/12 - Hammerfight20/05/12 - Max Payne 2
10/05/12 - Lume21/05/12 - A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
11/05/12 - Machinarium23/05/12 - Avadon: The Black Fortress

30/05/12 - Game #25

No Caption Provided

The game: Wadjet Eye Games' Gemini Rue

The source: The very first Indie Royale Bundle.

The pre-amble: Gemini Rue is a futuristic point-and-click from Indie adventure game developers Wadjet Eye Games. You play as both the mind-wiped prisoner of a mysterious facility and his dogged cop brother trying to find him and break him out. As well as the usual environmental puzzles, there's also a few gunfights which play out with a separate control scheme.

The playthrough: So here it is, the last entry of my May Madness. I purposely left Gemini Rue for last so I could keep playing it after this sorry escapade was over. So far it's been pretty interesting. I'm digging the amount of backstory given to this galaxy, its ruling criminal syndicate the Boryokuden (which somehow sounds Japanese and Russian at the same time) and that of the protagonists, who have clearly been through some shit prior to the game's events. When I left the game to write this up, I had only just unlocked the "Gemini" system of switching between the two protagonists on the fly to pursue their two threads independently. Delta-Six is currently in a "The Island" (or Portal if I'm being cute) scenario of being herded around test chambers in a jumpsuit while maintaining a healthy distrust of his captors and the other inhabitants he is no longer able to remember. Azriel is busy staying off the radar of the aforementioned criminal syndicate, though it looks like I'll be heading into the belly of the beast if I want the answers I seek.

The aspect I was most apprehensive about, since I've played plenty of point-and-clicks that tried to pull off something similar with less than stellar results, is the shoot-out mini-game. The controls are basic - there's two keys for ducking in and out of cover (probably only needed the one if I'm being needlessly critical), one for shooting and one for controlling your breathing for a chance at an insta-kill headshot. The key, I've found, is to wait until the bad guy ducks behind cover to reload, waiting a second and then coming out yourself to prepare for a headshot. Chances are, the enemy will burst out from behind his cover the moment the gauge is in the right spot for the shot to connect, though I don't imagine it'll remain that cut-and-dry forever, though. It's not exactly mowing down the Lambent, which works for me since gunplay is hardly what draws me to these atmospheric and narrative-driven adventure games. As it is, it's an acceptable though not entirely explicable inclusion. The game will at least auto-save before you encounter a situation that might kill you, as the QL hilariously demonstrated.

So yeah, looking forward to playing more of this over the next few days, especially now I no longer have the onus of updating this feature daily. But whatever, I'd be lying if I said that this hasn't been a whole lot of fun. Maybe I'll do something similar again in the future.

The verdict: Still playing.

No Caption Provided
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Mento

4958

Forum Posts

551063

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Followers

Reviews: 39

User Lists: 212

Edited By Mento  Moderator
01/05/12 - Amnesia: The Dark Descent12/05/12 - Nimbus24/05/12 - Chime
02/05/12 - Blocks That Matter13/05/12 - Puzzle Bots25/05/12 - Diamond Dan
03/05/12 - Capsized14/05/12 - Rhythm Zone27/05/12 - Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time
04/05/12 - Delve Deeper15/05/12 - Starscape28/05/12 - The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom
05/05/12 - Eufloria17/05/12 - Tobe's Vertical Adventure30/05/12 - Gemini Rue
06/05/12 - Frozen Synapse18/05/12 - Uplink: Hacker Elite
07/05/12 - Greed: Black Border19/05/12 - Zen Bound 2
08/05/12 - Hammerfight20/05/12 - Max Payne 2
10/05/12 - Lume21/05/12 - A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
11/05/12 - Machinarium23/05/12 - Avadon: The Black Fortress

30/05/12 - Game #25

No Caption Provided

The game:Wadjet Eye Games' Gemini Rue

The source: The very first Indie Royale Bundle.

The pre-amble: Gemini Rue is a futuristic point-and-click from Indie adventure game developers Wadjet Eye Games. You play as both the mind-wiped prisoner of a mysterious facility and his dogged cop brother trying to find him and break him out. As well as the usual environmental puzzles, there's also a few gunfights which play out with a separate control scheme.

The playthrough: So here it is, the last entry of my May Madness. I purposely left Gemini Rue for last so I could keep playing it after this sorry escapade was over. So far it's been pretty interesting. I'm digging the amount of backstory given to this galaxy, its ruling criminal syndicate the Boryokuden (which somehow sounds Japanese and Russian at the same time) and that of the protagonists, who have clearly been through some shit prior to the game's events. When I left the game to write this up, I had only just unlocked the "Gemini" system of switching between the two protagonists on the fly to pursue their two threads independently. Delta-Six is currently in a "The Island" (or Portal if I'm being cute) scenario of being herded around test chambers in a jumpsuit while maintaining a healthy distrust of his captors and the other inhabitants he is no longer able to remember. Azriel is busy staying off the radar of the aforementioned criminal syndicate, though it looks like I'll be heading into the belly of the beast if I want the answers I seek.

The aspect I was most apprehensive about, since I've played plenty of point-and-clicks that tried to pull off something similar with less than stellar results, is the shoot-out mini-game. The controls are basic - there's two keys for ducking in and out of cover (probably only needed the one if I'm being needlessly critical), one for shooting and one for controlling your breathing for a chance at an insta-kill headshot. The key, I've found, is to wait until the bad guy ducks behind cover to reload, waiting a second and then coming out yourself to prepare for a headshot. Chances are, the enemy will burst out from behind his cover the moment the gauge is in the right spot for the shot to connect, though I don't imagine it'll remain that cut-and-dry forever, though. It's not exactly mowing down the Lambent, which works for me since gunplay is hardly what draws me to these atmospheric and narrative-driven adventure games. As it is, it's an acceptable though not entirely explicable inclusion. The game will at least auto-save before you encounter a situation that might kill you, as the QL hilariously demonstrated.

So yeah, looking forward to playing more of this over the next few days, especially now I no longer have the onus of updating this feature daily. But whatever, I'd be lying if I said that this hasn't been a whole lot of fun. Maybe I'll do something similar again in the future.

The verdict: Still playing.

No Caption Provided
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Have fun with it! I just finished it recently and the story is absolutely one of my favorites in years. The portions with Delta-Six reminded me a lot of Moon, a movie I think very highly of. Don't worry too much about the gun battles; I think there are four of them by the time the game is over.