The Raven Remastered Review
By Steven Seggerman
A long thought dead master thief, The Raven, has resurfaced and is out to steal the world’s greatest treasures. It’s up to Swiss Constable Anton Zellner to stop him using his top-notch detective skills. He isn’t an inspector tough, hasn’t even seen a murder scene before. In fact, you’ll spend most of the game feeling like a third wheel by the rest of the cast, even after having saved many of them from certain death. The Raven Remastered for the Nintendo Switch does a pretty good job of making you feel like a third wheel too.
Moving Zellner around was clunky and often infuriating. He would get stuck in hallways or around corners, slowing to an aggravating, glitchy crawl. This is often the case in slow, point and click games like this. Here, it’s taken it to an all new level. The cinematics and animations were unusual, sometimes not making any sense. Characters or objects would move, or react in weird and unintelligible ways, leaving me confused about what had even just transpired.
The puzzles were, for the most part, simplistic and easy to solve. Rarely did I have to stop and scratch my head over what to do next. In some instances, I had put together many of the items I would need for future puzzles without even knowing why. Being so easy, I felt no sense of accomplishment when I solved a puzzle, which is one of the main reasons to pick up a point-and-click adventure! Between Zellner’s mind-numbingly slow speed, the clunky controls, and a ton of loading screens the game can quickly put you to sleep at times.
The various characters you’ll meet along the way each has their personality quirks that will have you continually suspecting each one and trying to figure out whodunnit. Conversations can be engaging, but mostly drag on to the point of just wanting to skip past the dialogue. The voice acting isn’t terrible, but the script could have used some work. Lines were cheesy, sometimes to the point of embarrassment. While the graphics might not be winning any awards, the music was phenomenal.
Having played many point and click adventures, after three chapters of The Raven I found myself not overly satisfied. Perhaps it would’ve made a better movie or book than a game. The story and music were the only redeeming qualities I could find. Swap out the bad graphics for a live-action cast, and you may indeed have something! I found myself willing to give up control just so the game could progress faster, and I could find out the ending. The story has charm, and I wanted to reach the finale, I just wasn’t always willing to put in the work to get there. I give it 4 raven feathers out of 10.
Rating: 4.0 out of 10
