Lace Mamba A New Beginning review

Throughout the game, you’ll be confronted by a range of puzzles. Many of these involve assembling items in your inventory to create objects that you’ll hopefully find a use for, but there’s also a smattering of logic and spatial orientation puzzles, which can be skipped if you’re not a fan of such things. The object puzzles embedded in the narrative provide sufficient challenge on their own, and even experienced adventurers may at times be stumped. The try-everything-on-everything-else approach common to many adventure games isn’t the most effective way to progress here. Instead, stopping and thinking about the most logical way to achieve something often gets results, whether it’s the potential location of a screwdriver to remove a hinge or the best way to forge a medical certificate.

The 2D hand-painted backgrounds are beautiful, and we grew accustomed to the slightly cartoonish character designs and movement animation that at times looks super-imposed on the background. The game’s exceptional music is often both evocative and moving and the voice acting, although a little flat at times, is generally competent. Cut-scenes are told in graphic novel style stills, which make for an effective narrative device, although a couple aren’t timed to line up with the narrative on the sound track entirely correctly, leading to a few seconds’ delay.

Serious adventure games are few and far between, and A New Beginning is certainly a departure from the slapstick of franchises like Sam & Max. Whether you can get into it or not depends on how you feel about your techno-thrillers. Hardened sci-fi fans might raise an eyebrow at the explanations of time travel technology, although the idea of algae-based bio-energy is rooted firmly in reality. Others may find a story based around environmental catastrophe to be a tad heavy-handed, although it’s a well-rounded scenario rather than a preachy lecture.

Despite a few flaws, A New Beginning spins an engaging story. It lacks the painstaking attention to detail of titles such as Gray Matter, but it’s deep, challenging and worth the money if you’re looking for an adventure that doesn’t place comedy before plot.