At the time Twin Peaks supposed what could be called transition from series to modern times. Surely we would find more, but few with the impact that the Lynch series had on the narrative future of the series. We went from a cloying innocence to a brutally
realistic discourse at its core despite being decorated with the surrealisms of the American creator. We could also put Wadjet Eye games on the front line of the
narrative change in graphic adventures. Neither have been the first, but the most constant offering adventures of quality, adult theme, and a strenuous realism, whether it is science fiction, as the supernatural or as in the game that concerns us, cyberpunk.
And that should be careful when dealing with such recurring atmospheres in the world of video games like this one; from Blade runner to Neuromancer, passing through DreamWeb. But Wadjet Eye games bet again and brilliantly for a game developed by
Technocrat Games and considers it with enough quality to publish it and put its stamp on it. Currently and with the amount of high quality adventures they have,
Wadjet Eye games is consolidated as one of the great brands of the genre. If you have not had occasion, Gemini Rue, Resonance, A Golden Wake and to a lesser extent the Blackwell saga, are essential in the homes of any lover of adventure.
We are in the year 2087, in the city of Newton. A dystopian world where corruption, mind hacking, junk food dispensers and control are the order of the day. During our adventure we will take control of three characters: Dr. Charlie Regis, Max Lao and Latha Sesame.
The first two are agents of the CEL, something like a police force run by an artificial intelligence, and Latha is a Trance addict, a kind of virtual reality
where we can interact with the first level computer programs. What in principle does not stop being a detective plot in an alternative world, soon becomes something much bigger that crosses the lives of the three protagonists.
As we mentioned, the game uses an adult discourse. From the beginning, our role is clear, we are hunting for a hacker of minds without scruples, capable of
committing the most brutal crimes. The interesting thing is the intelligent use of the different points of view of our characters, and the amount of subplots that at first could separate us from the main story,
but in this case it manages to hook us completely. We will find ourselves immersed in a dark world, where the subplots will take us to the past of Regis,
or we will find blackmail, blood and conspiracies; In short, the best ingredients to make an excellent cyberpunk story. Little by little the argument grows and all the pieces fit together enriching the plot.
Technobabylon is a graphic adventure that, like all Wadjet Eye, plays with low budgets and uses the AGS (Adventure game studio) as its engine. A free engine that gives excellent results, but which evidently can not compete with specific and more modern proposals. The result graphically is an old-school adventure, with little detail and low resolution.
But graphic excellence is not what is sought in these adventures, if not an exciting experience and in this sense Technobabylon complies with more.
The world that surrounds us, like a good cyberpunk, is marked by pale green, dark and gray, with weak neons and most claustrophobic environments. The game hardly gives margin in the locations, each one has a sense and probably a puzzle,
The puzzles are really attractive to the little that you like this type of setting. They are not complicated for an expert adventurer, but their wide range of situations (we have puzzles in the Trance, hack puzzles, classic puzzles, or dialogue to move forward) give a lot of play without being easy or boring.
However, one thing is certain, almost all the puzzles are solved with objects that are in the same location, making it much easier to solve them. The positive part is its logic, which is that unfortunately currently few adventures can be free of the horrible “try and fail” of all the objects in your inventory until you happen to find
the solution. In Technobabylon, the puzzles usually resolve with overwhelming logic (if I want to change the personality of a robot, before I have to download
another one from a machine), and even in the most physical puzzles we will not need a rubber chicken with a pulley in the center. It is also positive not to load the inventory with thirty thousand unnecessary objects.
