Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller

[Jaesun]

http://www.raindg.com/title/cognition-season-pass

GamersGate, and GameStop, Episode 1: The Hangman has been released! If you've pre-ordered the game, head over to download and play. If not, the Season Pass is now available for $29.99 and packaged with the prequel e-comic, and the individual Episode can be purchased for $9.99.

One year after the launch of our Kickstarter, you can finally step into the role of Erica Reed as she investigates the mysterious and brutal hanging death of an unidentifiable man. Who was he? Who killed him and why? Using the power of post-cognition to delve into the secrets of the past, Erica is determined to find out these answers, and whether there is someone out there who has somehow learned her secret.

Remember, adventurers, leave no stone unturned and no path unexplored! Pick up anything that isn't nailed down, and if it is, find a hammer!

Need a hint along the way or some technical help? Or maybe you've finished the game and want to give us your feedback, talk with other fans, and theorize on what Erica will be up to in the Episodes to come? Drop by our forums!

Once again, and as always, we owe all of you a huge thank you for helping us to get to this day. Without your support for The Silver Lining, our Kickstarter, and now Cognition--as well as just plain believing in us through the years--we wouldn't be here and celebrating this amazing milestone and accomplishment!​

There is a demo available at the above link. I just have not had the time yet to play this.

 

[Eyeball]

Call in sick from work and play it. I've eyed it with some interest on Gamersgate and am considering getting it, but I'd like a second opinion first.

 

[kaizoku]

Will have to try the demo.

Was the KS just for the 1st episode, or for the whole thing?

And what exactly is an episode? Similar size as Telltale episodic games?

 

[udm]

Adventure Gamers has a review up. They gave it 3.5/5. Here's a quick rundown of their review:

The Good:
Detailed and gorgeous artwork; outstanding soundtrack; gripping third act and solid ending sequence; reasonably strong voice acting.

The Bad:
Supporting characters are generally thin and not likable; setup for puzzles sometimes stretches credibility.

Our Verdict:
Though flawed, the first episode of Cognition leaves a great final impression and sets up a series that could become a major achievement for episodic adventure gaming.

 

[Eyeball]

Based on playing the demo, I find very little to recommend in this game. Puzzles are so simple as to be more or less nonexistent, voice acting seems sub-par, I don't like the artstyle, the story seems to be trying too hard for grimdorkness and the "second sight" ability seems to be based on the "smell" ability from Discworld Noir, only it is more cumbersome to use.

Gonna give this one a pass and wait for Wadjeteye to release something more interesting. The next Blackwell game can't be that far away, can it?

 

[Tramboi]

On the opposite, i bought the game and I'm playing it right now.
I like the art style, the tech is decent for the budget (cell-shaded 3D characters), there are lots of cosmetic animations.
I think the voiceovers are quite good too. Very good music, and the ambiance is well set.
A bit on the easy side, though, but I don't considerate it a problem since the puzzles are "logical" (in a gaming sense).
I recommend it.

 

[MaskedMan]

You can get the first episode for 1$ on www.indiegamestand.com atm.

 

[ghostdog]

^ If you're a cheap bastard like me, with 1,5 dorraru you can buy the game + OST + comic.

 

[Tramboi]

The new one is out.

 

[ghostdog]

So I started playing this last week. First thing I notice, nice graphics. Second thing I notice, nice soundtrack. Third thing I notice, bland/forced dialog. Fourth thing I notice, pretty unrealistic super serial killer who creates an unbelievably convoluted trap that requires almost completely rebuilding a mausoleum with intricate machinery, in a public cemetery, in order to lure our feisty FBI agent along with her useless partner. Presentation-wise It tries too hard to be like a movie, but the dialog doesn't really work. I finished the prologue, a friend came by, and then I forgot all about it till now. I'm not sure if I should give it another go.

 

[Tramboi]

It gets better afterwards.
There is a meta-history with Erica (the prologue) and episodic stories that are more interesting (for now at least).
I agree writing is not great but voiceovers are ok.
Finish the episode 1 at least, it is quite decent.
I'm starting the second one right now.

 

[Cool name]

If you do not care about unrealistic super serial killers who do create extremely convoluted traps do stay away from it. The entirety of both the first and the second episodes can be described as 'Erica does follow an extremely convoluted trail of clues that by the end do turn to be even more convoluted than it did first appear to be.' Some of the actions Erica does take do not seem very realistic for an FBI agent to take: She does routinely break the law while solving the cases and she does seem to think that to wait for backup is for the weak, which at least does come back to bother her in the second episode as her boss is not very inclined to believe some of the weird shit that went down. I do feel pretty curious about how is she going to explain the second episode's one. That's either going to be LOL worthy or facepalm worthy. And both the characters and the dialogue do reach some pretty low points. There is a bit of character development with Erica but as the episodes do pretty much run back to back there is only so much of it that can happen in the order of... what, two days? Tops. What character development there is does not come across very well given the dialogue does go from mediocre to bad. Key emotional moments do come across as forced.

Yet it is not all awful. The supernatural thriller part is nicely done. The game does play a bit with your expectations and does use Erica supernatural powers to make some of the 'super serial killer' genre nonsense actually make sense, and it could be said it does turn that nonsense into a plot point at several times. The overarching story about Erica and Cain and O is pretty interesting and O does come through as a cool and intriguing character so I do want to know where it is going. There are some nicely done puzzles, the atmosphere at key points is very good, and the overarching story does make a good job out of building up tension and setting up future installments so it does kind of work as an episodic thriller. Do consider however the current episodes are just the 'build up' half of the ride: The first episode does establish the characters and situation, the second episode does confirm what we did suspect after the first and does set the stage for a pretty interesting conflict to come. Whether this will pay off or will be crap is still up to debate.

Do give them a chance. They are not AWESOME. They are not TERRIBAD. They are kind of good, and they are so short you would not waste a lot if you do not enjoy them. You do have to suspend your disbelief a bit to enjoy them as for as good as the supernatural thriller part is the 'realistic' part is kind of bad. If you do take it as a supernatural thriller it is fun and exiting. If you do take it as a crime thriller it does not work so well.

 

[MaskedMan]

2nd episode for 1$, both for 1.57ish$ at indiegamestand.

 

[ghostdog]

So, two new adventure games on Steam, both actually released some time back but only recently greenlit.

Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller

http://store.steampowered.com/app/242780/

Codex thread for Episode 1 can be found here.

==============

1953 - KGB Unleashed

http://store.steampowered.com/app/248490/

A Myst-like made by the Outcry/Sublustrum developers. See iqzulk's post here for more info (tl;dr he recommends it and it sounds pretty good).

==============

New free text adventure, Jaws:

http://toys.usvsth3m.com/jaws/

You play as a shark.

I played episode 1 of conginton and wasn't impressed. I wont follow it up. KGB looks interesting.

Jaws: I ate a naked woman and a boy right before I died from electrocution from eating a submerged cable. :D

 

[Bubbles]

Episode 4 of Cognition is the worst of the series. It's not terrible, just short (60-70 minutes), consists mostly of cutscenes, and manages to feel both incredibly rushed and kinda boring.

 

[jfrisby]

Episode 4 of Cognition is the worst of the series. It's not terrible, just short (60-70 minutes), consists mostly of cutscenes, and manages to feel both incredibly rushed and kinda boring.

and they added a 'emotion thermometer' to the conversations.

Phoenix Online is also apparently the [new?] developer on Jane Jensen's mystery game X (along with Moebius).

 

[Coyote]

I played episode 1 of conginton and wasn't impressed. I wont follow it up. KGB looks interesting.

Jaws: I ate a naked woman and a boy right before I died from electrocution from eating a submerged cable. :D

KGB is great, you should definitely give it a try. Awesomely complex; at any given moment, you have ~10 different actions you can perform as well as several different inventory items you can try using on several different screens, which frequently containing several different items with which to interact. Puzzles often require you to figure out clues on your own and make sure you're in the right place at the right time and/or involve complex, multi-step sequences of actions for which missing even a single step will lead to failure. Nonetheless, it feels less punishing than pre-GK Sierra games with a similar level of complexity because of the wind-back-the-clock feature - similar to The Last Express - and the fact that you can usually trace deaths/failures rather reasonably to one of your actions/inactions; I don't remember there being any dead ends that you wouldn't notice until hours later, either, though I'm not sure of that. (Edit: Started rereading Wyrmie's LP, it appears that there are but you have some kind of intuition mechanic that you can use to avoid them. Don't remember that at all, so I'll take skyway's word for it.) Great soundtrack and relatively extensive dialogue trees (though they cheat a bit by reusing responses), too, as well as some nice satire. Based on your LPs, I expect that you'll enjoy it.

Of course, you should probably take my opinion with a grain of salt; it's been years since I played it - though now that you've reminded me of it, I'm tempted to try and dig it up - and my opinion is probably colored by nostalgia. Wyrmlord did an LP of it, so you can always check that out to get an idea.

Edit: Just realized that you're probably referring to a different game; I hadn't heard of it until checking the Myst clones thread after posting this. I did think it odd that you seemingly randomly brought it up in the context of this thread. Oh well, I'll leave this here anyway. Maybe it'll inspire someone to give KGB/Conspiracy a look.

 

[ghostdog]

KGB is great, you should definitely give it a try. Awesomely complex; at any given moment, you have ~10 different actions you can perform as well as several different inventory items you can try using on several different screens, which frequently containing several different items with which to interact. Puzzles often require you to figure out clues on your own and make sure you're in the right place at the right time and/or involve complex, multi-step sequences of actions for which missing even a single step will lead to failure. Nonetheless, it feels less punishing than pre-GK Sierra games with a similar level of complexity because of the wind-back-the-clock feature - similar to The Last Express - and the fact that you can usually trace deaths/failures rather reasonably to one of your actions/inactions; I don't remember there being any dead ends that you wouldn't notice until hours later, either, though I'm not sure of that. (Edit: Started rereading Wyrmie's LP, it appears that there are but you have some kind of intuition mechanic that you can use to avoid them. Don't remember that at all, so I'll take skyway's word for it.) Great soundtrack and relatively extensive dialogue trees (though they cheat a bit by reusing responses), too, as well as some nice satire. Based on your LPs, I expect that you'll enjoy it.

Of course, you should probably take my opinion with a grain of salt; it's been years since I played it - though now that you've reminded me of it, I'm tempted to try and dig it up - and my opinion is probably colored by nostalgia. Wyrmlord did an LP of it, so you can always check that out to get an idea.

Edit: Just realized that you're probably referring to a different game; I hadn't heard of it until checking the Myst clones thread after posting this. I did think it odd that you seemingly randomly brought it up in the context of this thread. Oh well, I'll leave this here anyway. Maybe it'll inspire someone to give KGB/Conspiracy a look.

WTF happened ? I was replying to Crooked Bee 's posts here and here. I may have done it accidentally but I'm pretty sure I never opened this thread and that my reply did show up in the aforementioned thread. Did some mod move it ? It's a mystary.

Also my PC crashed/rebooted while I was writing this reply... :aliens:

And yes as you can see I was referring to the new KGB game. I've played the old, loved it, got stuck, and then I just followed Wyrmlord's LP.

 

[Crooked Bee]

WTF happened ? I was replying to Crooked Bee 's posts here and here. I may have done it accidentally but I'm pretty sure I never opened this thread and that my reply did show up in the aforementioned thread. Did some mod move it ? It's a mystary.

Hah, yeah, I definitely remember your reply being in the Adventure Game News thread and then wondering where it went. I guess some mod didn't notice the KGB part of your post and merged it with the Cognition thread.

EDIT: I guess I'll edit your message to include my post that you were replying to so people don't get confused again.

 

[ghostdog]

Since JarlFrank is a known slacker, I'd say Jaesun did this. He needs to be spanked.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Since JarlFrank is a known slacker, I'd say Jaesun did this. He needs to be spanked.

Careful, he might like that

 

[Bubbles]

Thinking back, I'd rank the episodes 3>>>>>>>>>>2>>>>>>>1>>>>4. The difference between game styles is insane, like they wanted to make three different types of game while improvising a story to tie them together. Episode 2 is the hyper-gory serial killer mystery with a seemingly non-linear world map (like Gabriel Knight 1 with less charm), episode 1 is its ugly, clumsy younger brother (GK3?), ep. 3 is a tightly focused story-driven adventure with a time jumping narrative and a heavy focus on gimmick powers to solve puzzles (Memoria), and ep. 4 is a short interactive movie with an illusion of c&c (The Walking Dead with a much smaller budget and less gameplay)

 

[Name]

This game is GRIMDARK... characters

Spoiler

dropping like flies.

If only they can get rid of all kinds of ridiculous details(writing, glitches, bad animations)... they break the atmosphere too much.

 

[Redlands]

I know it's old, but I finally got around to playing this lot.

I'd rank the episodes 3>>>>>>>>>>2>>>>>>>1>>>>4.

This is pretty much my feeling almost exactly.

Episode 1 felt a lot like playing a TSL episode, which isn't a good thing. The references and in-game advertising (yes, doubly so since has Episode 5 of TSL even come out?) weren't appropriate for a serious game and got annoying. The puzzles were not memorable, and occasionally I found myself thinking if they had done this one thing differently the puzzle would have been a lot harder and more interesting. I also found characters to be annoying, and the animations kind of laughable in their exaggeration; graphics don't bother me, unless they're either distractingly poor or get in the way, and I definitely was suffering distraction because of this.

Spoiler

Also, if it's impossible to save the brother, then don't let the character save the brother!

Episode 2 improved a fair bit, and I was kind of surprised. It still wasn't good, but it was definitely better. Very gory and not for the squeamish, especially for people who have things about eyes - I'm not, but I'm married to someone who is - so trigger warnings for those who do that sort of thing. However, it does contain something that I'm going to need to go into detail about: the tape recorder puzzle. This is a text-book example of how not to design an adventure game puzzle.

• It doesn't match the tone of the rest of the game: in a game about frat boys pledging, or kids pulling pranks, stealing something from a cranky old lady of authority and pulling the fire alarm as a distraction makes some sense, but it doesn't when you're an FBI agent and you're stealing something from a colleague.
• It requires you to get an object in an unnecessarily elaborate way: FFS ERICA JUST GO TO A FUCKING ELECTRONIC STORE JEEZ! YOU DON'T HAVE TO STEAL FROM THE CORONER!
• It requires you to get an object that is superfluous to something that is already in their inventory: Erica has a smartphone, which surely must have some kind of recording ability or at least an app that has one; instead, you're expected to get something that duplicates the partial functionality of an object you already have.

The last puzzle, though, did require you to think a little, which did help a bit.

Episode 3 was, surprisingly, a good game. The story flowed nicely from the events of Episode 2, and the game made good use of its established mechanics while adding in a new one as well as a second playable character and some nice time-based puzzles. The characters were a lot better in this episode (mostly, I think, because aside from Erica all the weird, stilted members of the previous cast were mostly forgotten about). Even the animation seemed less distracting, but this might have only been because everything else was doing so well that I was too surprised to notice. So well done, POS, you managed to surprise me by making a good game; not something I'd ever think I'd find myself saying but there it is.

And then Episode 4... I just finished this tonight. I would have finished it last night when I started - the game is really short - but it kept crashing on me, and the only way to do it was to click through most of the story, so I don't really know much of what happened. The major problems, aside from the constant crashes and the ridiculous shortness, are as follows.

• Introducing a trust mechanic this late in the game doesn't add much; it's nice, but it would have been much more useful to have included in the previous games and have them build up to this one. Also, why would your actions three years ago affect how much someone trusts you in the present when you've been a complete asshole to them in the intervening three years? Additionally, a lot of the dialogue in the game seemed to contradict the choices you made here, which was really stupid.
• The story seemed to jump from place to place. The stuff with Rose, for example, didn't really serve any purpose (from what I could tell, most of the crashes happened in her section so I don't know what she said). It really just felt out-of-nowhere. And then it was gone.
• Lesbian kiss out of nowhere much?
  
• The best parts of the game - using Erica's and Cordelia's powers in tandem - was already done much better in Episode 3.
• Quick time events.
  
• I'm not sure if this was a bug, or a feature, but in the final puzzle I died and clicked on the "retry" option and the deadly spikes never came down again, at least not until I reloaded the game.

Honestly, it was the equivalent of the ending of Gabriel Knight 2, if that was the whole game, worse, and it crashed every minute. And also if the top half of Gabriel's wolf body spun around like an out-of-control ferris wheel, because that's the other bug I encountered prominently (this one was more hilarious and less annoying than the other. SPIN, ERICA, SPIN!)

It's pretty obvious to see what they were trying to go for: they're trying to be Sierra and this is their version of Gabriel Knight in episodic format. It's a modern story with supernatural elements where the protagonist has an important power, with traveling around the overland map to solve mysteries (Ep. 1 + 2), ends with an enemy the protagonist has grown close to (Ep. 4), with a lot of normal puzzles as well as a few creative ones (and even their own "cat moustache" puzzle!), with action segments where they usually make sense and the deaths occurring at/around the end of the game.

The big problem is that they're not Sierra: they don't have the skills or resources to pull off what one of the top studios in the genre was managing at their height. More to the point, where they've done their best has been when they've diverted from Sierra's track and taken their own. Episode 3 works well because all of their energy is focused in one limited area, making use of it by presenting it in different times and with different characters' perspectives. Not only that, but coming up with some good uses of the protagonist's powers. Please, if anyone in POS is reading this, try to do more of your own thing and use whatever limitations to your advantage. And make more characters like you did in Episode 3; they came off far more real and well-rounded and nuanced than most of the other characters (including the protagonist).

 

[Jaesun]

time-based puzzles

Now I will never play this.