The Blackwell Legacy Review

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The Blackwell Legacy is the first game of a mini-series entitled The Blackwell Series, which revolves around a medium called Rosangela Blackwell and a ghost named Joey Malone. This game’s point and click mechanism works the same as Where Angels Cry’s, which is just one of the reasons why I love this game. After meeting Joey who works as your spirit guide, you must work together to send ghosts to the other world. You’ll have to work out their problems and convince them to leave the human world so they can move on to a magical place, where only spirits can go.

Point and click games tend to be heavily story based, and The Blackwell Legacy is no different. But unlike other games of this genre I’ve played, this game had me craving for more. Luckily for me and anyone else who enjoys the game there are 4 more episodes to sink your teeth into. The story is very good as it introduces you to a wide variety of characters, who all help you one way or another. It’s just a case of how many of them need convincing beforehand. Overall the story is excellent when you really get into it, it’s an amazing concept and with 4 more 2-3 hour long games based around it I can’t want to find out more.

The Blackwell Legacy Review Screen 2

As I mentioned earlier this game is more story based than it is gameplay based, but I felt this gameplay style was perfect for The Blackwell Legacy. Seeing as it’s your job to look for clues to help you understand the needs of the ghosts, it’s only suitable that you have to wave your mouse randomly around the screen looking for the clue that just happened to fall out of vision. However, there is a great feel of relief and achievement when you figure out what to do after being stuck for half an hour. As well as this feeling you’ll see how genius the game creator is for thinking up these complex puzzles, hats off to Dave Gilbert.

I found the physical part of the gameplay was very similar to the style of The Secret of Monkey Island. But I also found this game is very similar to those made by Telltale. You have to make your own choices, decide what to say and see what consequences come with it. This just really appealed to me; it just shows that the graphics on a game don’t stop it from being good (or in this case faultless).

The Blackwell Series very cleverly focuses on different characters in different parts of the mini-series. But not just any random person off of the street, if focuses on people you have heard about in the other games. For example the second game of the series follows Rosangela’s Aunt who is mentioned heavily in this game. Lately gaming has been full of developers trying to create something new and original. And a lot of them are failures just because  they’re not good enough, or due to lack of promotion. But The Blackwell Legacy is a perfect example of indie gaming done right.

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There is an option on the game for those who want to get a bit more insight into the making of The Blackwell Legacy; you have the choice to listen to commentary recorded by Dave Gilbert when the game was released. There is also the option to listen to a 5 years later commentary which, as you can guess, is recorded five years after the game was released. I thought it was a nice touch but I’d personally suggest playing the game through once before listening to either of these, as you won’t get the experience of actually playing the game. Instead you’ll just know I lot about a game you didn’t play properly, but that’s just my opinion.

I’m going to give this game 9 out of 10. It’s just so original and seeing as it was only 3 hours long, it still managed to be amazing. My only complaint was the difficulty, but I’m blaming that on my gaming skills and not the game itself. No matter how hard I try, I can’t find any other faults. The story was executed so well, and the gameplay was great. It felt like a Telltale game seeing as you got to make your own choices. So if you’re a fan Telltale or The Secret of Monkey Island then this is the game for you! And if you enjoy the first episode definitely have a go at the others. Excellent.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.

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