Simon the Sorcerer II. Originally, I planned to open a thread about this one, but playing the game was such a chore I can't even be arsed to do it properly. Simon the Sorcerer is a good, although not top tier adventure game; Simon II is just
. The humour, which was fresh in the original, becomes forced, and most of it (like when the series starts referencing itself, or when it is as lazy as a honking clown nose) is plainly unfunny. The anachronisms, used well in Simon I, are ratcheted up until they just come across as embarrasing (compare the swampling encounter in the first game with the swampling encounter here). Supposedly funny dialogues and scenes are stretched out way beyond their limits. The unique graphics of the first game are diluted, moving towards a generic cartoonish mishmash (interesting parallels with Monkey Island I and II, which went through a similar evolution). The entire first half of the game feels padded. It kinda picks up towards the end, but then it ends with the dramatic equivalent of falling flat on its face. The ambient music is too loud to hear the dialogue well, and there are noticeable synchronisation problems.
All in all, major disappointment, since I really liked the first game. This one is not good comedy, and it is not a good game. I grew bored and annoyed fairly quickly, and afterwards, it was a slog to wait until it ended.
And a few actually good screens, showing the mistake lie in the art direction, not the artists' ability: