Wailing Heights Reviews

Although it does do things its own way its still at its core an inventory based point and click adventure game although you can't actually point and click. Overall its worth a look. Great value if you get it on sale. Pros - Nice art-style - Interesting story and world building - unique and enjoyable puzzle design and game mechanics - Good voice acting, as an Irishman it was surreal to hear this many Irish accents in a game. - Funny dialog - Decent music, it is a big focus of the game after-all. Cons - Can't play exclusively with the mouse, needs either mouse+keyboard or controller. I used the controller in the end and sometimes the navigation could be awkward just due to the 2D style and invisible walls but otherwise it was perfectly playable - Some bugs such as occasional missing voice overs for dialog lines or more serious issues such as the game getting stuck when swapping characters or characters glitching through graphics, I did always manage to get the game going again without quitting but it was touch and go a few times. Save Often!! - There is a little mini song every single time you switch characters, there is a different one for each character but after awhile they just get super annoying and there is no way to disable them or interrupt them. If you don't just stand there and listen these mini songs will play over other dialog or other music sequences in the game. - The voice acting and sound effects are not normalized, it was hard to find the right position on the slider since some sentences and effects could be super loud and others super low at the same setting.

Music-centered point’n’click that might be a bit uneven at times but wins you over with its uniqueness and deep love for the world of music. You play as a Francis Finkelstein, a music manager of used-to-be popular rock band “The Deadbeats”, and you start in the jail cell. How did you get there is a good question there seem to be no immediate answer for; oh, and you are accused of simply “being alive” in what happened to be monster-filled town of Wailing Heights, where common hard-working folks is dead, thank you very much. While your ghostly lawyer lets you know that it’ll take decades to sort your matter out, a mysterious creature offers to teach you soul possession in exchange for a stale cookie. Sounds like a sweet deal (pun intended), so you learn the trick and posses the first soul you encounter – your lackadaisical lawyer - and start on your soul possession jaunt to get the hell out of Dodge. If all of this sounds odd and loony – it is. The intro bit may have you worrying of what did you get yourself into, but when the game stars really going – it’s turns into a wild ride of music, adventure, music, opinionated monsters, music, a band manager trying to find the souls of his now-deceased charges, and music. And it takes the concept of originality in the point-n-click world to a whole new level. First you get caught by game’s groovy cartoon-ish visuals that make NPCs look like a comic-book cut-outs on the softer, more subdued backgrounds and wonderfully play into the overall funky game style. Various species-appropriate animations that allow you to glide as a ghost, run in a slightly awkward manner as a werewolf, or flap your wings as a bat add flavor to an already delicious, colorful soup that is “Wailing Heights” graphics. The way the color scheme changes when you use special abilities of the creatures makes for a successful combination of different visual styles, which is quite a rare feat for an adventure game. This is “sort of” a classic PNC. Classic in way that you have your usual fare – inventory, dialogue progression and the story you’re unraveling by investigating what happened, and the “sort of” part comes in with the unusual mechanic of soul possession. While your main character is Francis Finkelstein, he won’t be able to complete the quest alone, so he goes onto journey of possessing souls of different creatures (werewolves, vampires and zombies) to get into the areas that are otherwise off-limits to him as a newly minted ghost. This is a musical soul possession, of course. You need to find 3 key items to unlock the soul you need, learn the lyrics to their song and then – transfer right in. Sounds wacky and a bit complicated, but it is a delightfully weird mechanic that makes traveling around Wailing Heights fun; on top of that – each creature has their own special abilities that make their movement around town even more unique. There are a few rough patches here and there – controls are on a stiff side and take some time getting used to, and the “hit-boxes” can be an annoyance, as you need to walk your character just right to interact with them at times. Also said fun mechanics of consistently possessing souls can wear out a bit if you get stuck. Puzzles are generally logical while still requiring thinking, but some “what do I do now” moments can lead to some frustrating “transferring” back and forth. The writing is solid and lets you play without thinking of “the writing” much. There’s an ironic take on the modern cell-phone culture and a few other puns directed at different behavioral stereotypes, and they hang somewhere in the middle, ranging from decent observations to a slight cringe. While the script is not laugh-out-load funny and won’t be a contender for a “best writing” award, it’s also not trying to be. The purpose of the narrative here is to support musically heavy plot and it does the job well, standing humbly behind game’s main feature. What kind of music-centered game it would be if it would drop the ball on the soundtrack? It’s terrible to even imagine. Good “Wailing Heights” is not one of those and is ALL about that sound. True to its core mechanics – the tracks that are used in great abundance are of fantastic quality and represent wide variety of genres – soul, pop, rockabilly, indie, country and more. All the songs and bits used for effects are catchy and can get stuck in your head or even make you want to learn how to play them. A bit unusual is that these are actual songs (with lyrics appropriate to the characters) and not just ambient tracks, which makes the soundtrack stand out amongst adventures that follow a more traditional path. There is a full voice-over and the quality is on par with the music – the accents are phenomenally well-done and certain characters have specific intonations to their speech that highlights their personality better than the words they’re saying. This is where the game truly shines. Great sound in a game about music makes occasional rough patches a lot more forgivable, and the game itself – memorable. If you’re in the mood for something “different” while still wanting to keep close to the genre of point’n’click adventure, “Wailing Heights” will deliver what you’re looking for. If you’re a music lover – this is an adventure that’s built on musical mechanics and with your classic “put the no longer talking to each other bandmates back together” story that many managers are still trying to pull off with stubborn aging rock stars these days. There may be an occasional discord or a few jarring notes to encounter in this work, but the overall tune is upbeat, fun, and catchy as hell.

As many have already said its just the gameplay that's lacking! The art, the music and everything else is so great! but its so unbelievably obtuse and tedious its kind of exhausting to play. if i have to hear the goddamn jingle while changing between characters one more time my head will explode. If you're patient go for it. the art and comic panels are great. if you get tired of clunky mechanics like me. i'd avoid.

Just finished for the 2nd time. Had a TOTAL BLAST (Sorry about the Out Of Date term)! I thought the Great Old point and clicks were gone forever. An actual storyline! WOW! What a concept! No timed puzzles, FAROUT! ( another antiquiated term) Needless to say, I would recommend this game to the Old Timers everywhere! Had more fun than a tornado in a trailer park! Great music, really! It is part and parcel to the story and adds hints at the same time. The music is closer to the younger group than the older, but I am 65 and enjoyed all of it. There are glitches, but none that ruined the game play. Do it again with a sequel or just another game like this that does not have this killing that to score points. I think I may write a walkthrough after one more run, still haven't gotten all the awards.

The artstyle is nice, that's all the good that can be said about this. Everything else seems to be designed around the will to annoy the player as much as possible and they barely finished this unpolished mess. Gameplay is minimal — find something this character hates or loves, ask, hey, do you love this, do you hate that, okay, thanks, nice puzzle — and the story and characters are not half as interesting as the setting might suggest. Finally decided to give up when the game got me stuck in the scenery and overwrote my savefile with me in that spot for literally no reason even though I quit the game with alt+F4. Having my nose waxed from the inside is more enjoyable than this.

Too many adventure games that forget the adventure part... this one starts to feel like a chore after a few minutes... just draaags and it thinks it's far too clever than it actually ever gets.

A musical adventure game about monsters living (mostly) in harmony together in the afterlife, filled with puns? This game is *so* my jam. Which is why I was really disappointed that I just couldn't click with it. The writing didn't hit home for me, and the game's controls are stiff as a board, making the whole thing pretty unpleasant to play. I wish I enjoyed it more, but I just didn't, to be honest.

Absolutely novel game! At first I wasn't going to get it but I finally pulled my own leg and I'm glad I did. The whole story of the game seemed kinda campy, much like a Scoby-Doo cartoon but it redeems itself with interesting gameplay, narratives and amusing characters. I would love to see an option to lower some graphic-intensive addons seeing as my laptop drudged along through the beginning portion, but instead of going for a refund I let it go. The game plays smoothly enough once my crappy laptop made it through and I love the musical possessions! Again, a really good game and I highly recommend it!

A fun, bizarre, puzzle adventure game. The best way I can describe it is CAMPY. Like a B horror flick this game is full of bugs, missing odd pieces of voiced dialogue, limited voice actors and subpar recording, goofy glitchy visuals, and some corny music. But for all that the games just bursting with heart. All the problems above almost add to the ambiance and sense of the game. The characters and world is bursting with color, amazing detailed enviroments, and while some of the music is silly and repetitive, the main hits in the game are really catchy. The game also features beautiful comic styled cutscenes that all really fit the vibe of the city. Some of the puzzle aspects are somewhat vague, and if you miss something small you may be stuck for a little while, but overall the game does a good job of guiding you between objectives. The possesion mechanic is great albiet a little confusing at times when trying to solve puzzles that require specific characters. So while this game is definitely unpolished and rough, it manages to do well with what it has, and over all a very enjoyable experience. One has to wonder if the developers had the means to really polish this game what it may have been, and if maybe it's almost better this way...

I wanted to like the game, I really enjoyed Hector so finding other game the writer(s?) of that worked on seemed like a good idea. But I only managed 2 hours... and as explained later this was only because I was forced to restart the game from the beginning due to a bug. I liked the visual style of the game, just not anything else about how it was implemented such as the weird walking animation of Soul for example. The game didn't really give me the comic feel I was expecting and at most times the game seemed very condescending with how it blatently tells you "LIKE" "LOVE" "HATE" and all that. I also just couldn't like any of the characters, they just weren't likeable. I played for a bit, got stuck for half hour trying to find clotted cream, then gave up and searched youtube where they somehow had clotted cream in their inventory without showing me how they got it, so I searched again and it seems I actually hit a bug where if you don't collect the clotted cream and leave the screen it's gone forever. Despite this I started the game again because I had no saves at that point, collected the cream this time, got merely 5 minutes further and hit another game breaking bug after following a book into what looked like a graveyard at he bottom left of the first area, I got stuck outside of the screen before even entering the gate and gave up. So in the end I was going to get a refund but didn't, as I want the creators to try harder to fix the bugs and try again in future, but I think they have the aility to come up with good things.