izigame.me

I wish I could recommend this game the way it was recommended to me.
On the surface, it's a fun point-and-click adventure that tries to follow some great old titles like Monkey Island and Grim Fantango. And while the first game is actually quite alright, the experience quickly drops off during the second and especially the third installments (which I own on another platform).
First of all, the protagonist is incredibly unlikable, with virtually no redeeming qualities, and while he has some flashes of conscience, the moment that you think he'll take a turn and we'll get to experience an actual character arc, he quickly turns back into being the good ol' sleazebag that he was at the beginning of the series. Having grown up with the Lukasarts adventure games, I can't shake the feeling that Rufus is trying very hard to imitate Guybrush, while being an overall terrible individual and having none of the swashbuckler's charm.
The humor in general, while it starts of somewhat strong, it really fails the further you get into the game, with good, funny moments coming less and less frequently.
As far as puzzles go, the game can be pretty alright, but one design decision that I didn't agree with, is that at times you don't have the option to see or interact with items that will become relevant later. That was probably meant to clear some of the clatter and help players focus on the task at hand, but it makes you overlook things instead, or not take them into account, thinking that they are not there. There have been a lot of times that we considered an area was clear, only to come back after hitting a dead end, only to realize that an item that was blending into the background was now interactable.
I will add a few more points that apply mostly to the second and third game, but I find them very relevant if someone is to play this particular one, and therefor get invested into the series.
From the second half of the second game and on, the dialogues seem to drone on for ages, without actually saying anything. They are supposed to develop the world or at the very least be funny, but they fail on both ends. I'm all for some good ol' edgy humor, but if the jokes fail to land one after another, after another, the whole thing ends up being cringe.
A HUGE gripe I have with the presentation also has to do with unskippable moments in scenes. There have been points where you get to trigger some very VERY annoying sequence (for example, there is a situation where you trigger a billboard to play some incredibly cringe-worthy rap video clip that goes on forever). The normal skip dialogue (left click) doesn't work on those situations, and if you start trying other things in an attempt to save what remains of your sanity, you might end up pressing the escape button. That will solve your problem, but joke's on you again! Because those annoying sequences are often connected to other cut scenes that progress the plot, and you end up skipping the entire thing, without any option to go back and rewatch it, so you are not in a new area, standing there like a moron, with no idea what happened in between, and what you're supposed to do. That alone, for me, would be a reason to not recommend the game. It became the reason of a lot of frustration more than once. Oh, and did I mention that there's no way to pause the game mid cutscene? Say, something happened to your kid, or your cat, or the phone rings. Did you start a cutscene? Tough luck, buddy! You'll either ignore everything and watch it, or you'll lose it forever. Escape is the menu and pause button, so if you click that, you just skipped it all.
Overall, I don't think I would had finished the game if I didn't feel like I just need to see how it ends after the hours I've spent, and the fact that I played it with my girlfriend, so it was an activity that we enjoyed doing to spend time together. There are many games that do whatever this one does way better. Go play the classics, and if not that, try Machinarium or something. If I had nothing better to play, I'd still go through Deponia, but overall, nowhere near my top list of adventure games.