1954 Alcatraz Reviews

So… They’re in love! Then boom! She has the option to cheat, and if you take it, she does. Right out of the gate. Next, you walk into a church, and the vibe is marriage is a prison, and confession? Not real. A nice little jab at religion. "Check" (as the character says at the end of one piece of dialogue) that box. And just when it couldn’t get more predictable, the story conveniently reveals that he cheated in the past too. Because of course we need a reason to excuse her toxic behaviour. Alright feminism, we hear you... cue “Woman, hear me roar!” Would it be too much to ask for a game that doesn’t revolve around body politics? Do either of these characters need to cheat after a couple in love opening for the story to be compelling? I stopped playing at this point. Regardless if the rest of the story was amazing, Asking me to continue playing with a character that said I love you and then cheated, then throws shade on marriage and religion (i'm not even religious but still).. Come on.. whether you are a free spirit or not, what percentage of guys are going to be thinking good for you lady! Who's the next guy we can test those cold, lonely mattress springs with! I get it's part of life, but no self respecting guy likes the receiving end of that part of life. Since the audience is mostly male, would we really want to play that one out? Fair? Hear me out: Look at what Broken Sword 1 or 2 did right: no forced agendas, no cheating-as-character-building, no political undercurrent. Just story. Just adventure. Sure, it was a different time, it's overdue for writers to get back to that kind of storytelling. Can't we just have this quality? From 2015 to 2025, we’ve watched storytelling in games and other media take a backseat to political posturing and woke bias. Two other gaming examples, because I could list several and if your woke, you highly likely feel this is a slight towards you personally and are already switched off mentally well before now in the review and if you are not woke, you know exactly what I am saying: Monkey Island 1 & 2 vs the latest entry, where the players get a let's look at your choices lecture as Guybrush gets a thorough dressing down and belittled in what was once a clever, entertaining series. Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 vs the latest entry, where every character seems to make a move on you regardless of your chosen preferences. Apparently, everyone is horny as hell for some homosexual action! Not to mention the very interesting “refugees have a justifiable right to your home because you have money and are ready to kill you for it" messaging. Thankfully, the rest of the game holds up. Right now, we’re stuck in what feels like woke Alcatraz 2014 - 2024 and it's time for writers without agenda to break free and enjoy writing again. Not every story needs sexual politics, or ideological soapboxes jammed in for woke relevance points. Most of the time, morals in game writing used to be less abrasive and they managed! They were successful! For decades!

Decent, great artwork, good writing, good voice acting.

Entertaining, good writing. Some puzzles get difficult due to the design of the game, like having to do things in the proper order or talk first with someone for something to work as intended, making you discard the correct option because it is still not activated. However, I have played harder graphic adventures. Right now achievements seem broken because I played the game and got none where I should. If you tab to get out of the game it stops working and you may lose your progress, this happened to me three times right now, so I will watch the end of the game on Youtube. I am on windows 11.