Gemini Rue

Year: 2013
Genre: Graphic Adventure
Website: http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/gemini-rue/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 8.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 8/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (3/14/20): I was thrilled to see a game like this appear in one of the Humble Bundle packs that Shane and I picked up. This reminds me so much of the decades-old point-and-click games "Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle" and "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" from Lucas Arts. I played hours and hours of those old CD-ROM games on my Pentium-90 PC, especially DOTT. (Note: A quick Google search of these games led me to spending $5 on Steam for "Fate of Atlantis" just now. So I guess you'll be seeing a review of that one someday too. Damn you, Lucas Arts AND Steam...)
  
  Gemini Rue starts off with you controlling a character named Azriel, and right away you find out that you are looking for a man named Matthius, and your partner is hanging out in spaceship in orbit. This is a film-noir-style game set in a future, dystopian version of the city of Pittsburgh, which has become controlled by Yakuza-like gangster space thugs. Far out.
  
  The storyline would also flip to a sort of rehabilitation facility, where each inhabitant would have his or her memory erased upon arrival, then be "retrained" into a different person and released back into society. The character you are put in control of at this location had only just had his mind erased again after an apparently unsuccessful escape attempt.
  
  Like the few other point-and-click adventure games I have played, this one involves interacting with the objects around your character on the screen in various ways. You select an object, then select an action to do with that object (look at it, use/touch it, speak to it, kick it, shoot it, etc.). In this game, you can hold your finger on the screen, and the game will label all of the objects that are available to interact with. Note that many of these objects are there just for decoration and are useless to the game (at least at that particular point in the game), even though you are allowed to interact with them. When performing an action on an object will not progress the story, your character will usually tell you so: "There's nothing useful here." "I don't want to start a fight with him." "I'm not going to just walk around shooting everything I see."
  
  I played through the first half of the game, only getting stuck and needing to search the intarweb for clues a few times. Some of the puzzles in the game are quite tricky, and eventually I grew tired of grinding at the puzzles. Each roadblock would require you to locate the correct object to manipulate and choose the correct action for that object. I did, however, enjoy watching the story unfold as the proper solution for each puzzle was selected. I wanted to see how the game would end, but I felt that logging a 30-hour playthough would be a waste of my time. That's where this fancy walkthrough came in handy: http://www.gamezebo.com/games/gemini-rue/walkthrough-cheats-strategy-guide.
  
  I feel pretty good about my approach to the game. I think that I beat my head against the wall in frustration an appropriate number of times, poking around at random objects until something advanced the story. I ended up feeling satisfied after solving some of the puzzles on my own, but I didn't feel too bad when I had to cheat and look up the solution to a few of the them, especially in the second half of the game. I do have a life...and I have a lot more video games to play and review. All in all, this was a great game. On to the next one!