I don’t normally bring up “ye goode olde days” but that’s exactly where I feel Péndulo Studios’ latest title Yesterday belongs. I only got a short taste of the game, and while the story does have me intrigued I definitely have a number of concerns about the game itself. To summarize: this is the type of adventure that other adventures make fun of. Let me explain.
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| Look behind you, a three-headed hobo! |
Assuming the preview build I was playing starts at the beginning (I highly suspect it does), the first thing you’ll see is a short, disturbing, and highly confusing intro video featuring a blood-covered conspiracy-theorist’s wall interspersed with whistling and flashes of people screaming. Also, the most dramatic ‘Y’ since anime fans discovered an all-American live-action version of Akira was in production. If you’re not totally freaked out you’ll at least have a raised eyebrow at the shameless way Péndulo are trying to freak you out.
I was then introduced to the two playable characters, both of whom seem to have wandered straight out of Archie Comics: nerdy Henry White and his goofy jock sidekick Cooper. Henry’s investigating the murders of homeless people for a charity organisation (because six people being burned alive isn’t enough to make the police or newspapers care) and Cooper’s helping him for some reason. They drive to an abandoned subway station for reasons even they can’t explain, and Henry starts exploring. Alone.
Now that we’re in the game itself, I can say that Yesterday is a 2D adventure done in a cartoon style, and graphically is looking quite nice. Scenes have a lot of detail but are almost completely static, at least currently anyway. The animation on the characters is up to the very good Péndulo standard, although at the moment lip-synching is incredibly weird. This is partly due to there being no voice actors at this time, but mostly because the characters flap their mouths around like Muppets (the Jim Henson puppets, not the Cockney insult).
In game it’s the usual adventure game spiel of looking at random items around the place, combining them in weird and occasionally bizarre ways, and working out what the game wants you to do. Not that this is a bad thing, but so far Yesterday makes no leap forward whatsoever with the genre. Do people want that? I guess so. Anyway, there’s plenty of time for surprises still, but I admit my opinion of the game was sullied immediately by Henry picking up an old empty Coke with no explanation except “this might come in useful”. How?! This is the real bane of the adventure – you either only let players pick things up when they’re needed and they’ll complain about backtracking, but if you let them pick up every random bit of trash it becomes laughable. There’s even a bit when Henry purposefully leaves a pipe (described as “the best way to protect him”) behind for no reason – until Cooper comes by later and needs it. So Henry’s psychic now?
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| Think of the most convoluted way of escaping from this situation. If you thought “it involves Chess” you clearly work for Péndulo Studios |
The interface is kept fairly simple, even if it’s currently one of those adventures that refuses to acknowledge the right mouse button. The five buttons (there may be more in the final version) next to the inventory denote Exit, Previously On, Hints, Hotspots, and, erm, Volume Control. Right now there’s no actual Menu or Options, but I’m assuming they’ll be added later. There are usually a couple of Hints available at any one time ranging from helpful to stating the bleedin’ obvious (“tie the cable somewhere”), and rather neatly they can’t be accessed immediately – they have to be “charged up” by trying things first. Hotspots highlight anything that can be interacted with, a feature I wish every adventure had, although the markers do fade a little too quickly here for my taste. I had to click the Hotspot button several times to see where everything was.
The puzzles are, well, I suppose they’re normal for an adventure game, but you do often seem to be doing ridiculous things for the sake of it. This is made even more ridiculous by the third-person narrator. Unlike most adventures, where the main character is the one patiently explaining why he can’t combine a duck and a prosthetic leg, Yesterday is all done in third-person by an omniscient narrator. This god-like voice makes no effort to explain why attaching a toy musical keyboard to a broken payphone is useful despite Henry having in his pocket a) a toy telephone, and b) a f***ing iPhone. More positively though, the game “auto-solves” some puzzles to save you putting every piece together separately – although why it does that for some and yet still forces you to use Van Key on Van Door is anyone’s guess.
As the demo progressed Henry was kidnapped by a pair of hobo religious zealots and a hard-to-please crowd of mannequins. This led to one of the best scenes as Henry tried to talk his way out of being shot by a fanatic, although Yesterday slightly suffers from Mass Effect-itis as I thought the words “higher intelligence” referred to God or aliens rather than Henry bragging about how clever he was. This one however led to the fanatic testing Henry with a selection of Chess puzzles, and yes I did check to make sure I hadn’t started playing Professor Layton by mistake. They were good, if a little reliant on the player knowing the rules of Chess.
I then took over the slightly dim-witted Cooper, who despite being large and strong is scared of the dark and regularly flashes back to traumatic childhood bullying by his scout troop leader. I love how Henry and Cooper have different abilities, which really harks back to LucasArts’ Maniac Mansion and its multiple characters with different skills (like being afraid or not afraid of a green tentacle). This was a really strong idea that has been criminally underused in the 20+ years since that game, so I hope Péndulo really play on this strength.
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| A jock in front of an abandoned subway station. Yesterday |
Reading back over this preview it may seem like I was a bit down on Yesterday - I’m not, I’m just being honest. After recently playing the fantastic Blackwell Deception (a truly modern adventure), going back to an archaic adventure like this feels a little silly. Fine for Sam & Max, not for a serious story like Yesterday. Fortunately there is still potential to shine. The graphical style is lovely and ageless, multiple player characters with different abilities is something only a few adventures attempt (the previously mentioned Blackwell series for example), and last but not least, the story.
After the jarring and somewhat silly start the plot went serious and, most importantly, interesting. A plot twist at the end of the preview build put all the silliness (even the Archie Comics look of the main duo) in a new, creepy light and left me itching to find out what happens next. If Péndulo can sort out the problems the game has in its current state, while making the most of its multiple characters and keeping the story compelling, we could be in for one interesting adventure game. Or to put it another way: I believe in Yesterday. C’mon, I had to do one.
Most Anticipated Feature: Simply seeing where the story goes. I must admit, it got interesting.
