Machinarium – the world of machines. A world where wacky and challenging puzzles will keep you thinking, or perhaps just pulling up the hints or a walkthrough!
Machinarium is not easy but at the same time it is easy. While some puzzles will just present themselves to you, others will have you hunting around for a good period of time before you finally figure it out. If I hadn’t been playing it with a good friend, I probably would’ve had to pull out a walkthrough, or use the built-in hint system, more than a few times.
The game is absolutely charming though. All you want to do is be reunited with your girlfriend and you will often daydream of times with her if you start just sitting still for awhile. However, in this quest to reunite with your girlfriend you end up getting involved in a crazy bomb threat! The art style and sound effects of the game help add to this. Your little guy will stand there shaking his head no if he can’t do a certain action or is too far away, or he will happily go do it – even if it means getting shocked or fried in the process!
I played the game on both PS3 and Vita, though also have the option to play it on Steam if I so wished. The game controls about as well as one could hope for an adventure game of this style. Using items can be a pain, and there is definitely some weird scrolling if you do so while zoomed in, but once you figure out some quick tricks to navigate menus it gets a lot better. The Vita version does somewhat use the touch capabilities on both the front and rear screens. I don’t really suggest using it at all – it doesn’t just move the cursor to where you touched, it just moves it around as you move your finger around.
Machinarium is definitely a game with its own charm though. However, there was some absolutely frustrating parts in it even WITH two people. Well, one main frustrating part – playing Tic Tac Toe. If that part didn’t exist I would have liked the game so much more, even if I would’ve had to pull up a walkthrough had I been playing it alone.
Between the Tic Tac Toe and the fact it was on the brink of being so difficult to solve at times that one person alone likely would’ve struggled, I can’t give this a perfect score. However, I can very highly recommend it to fans of point-and-click adventure games. Just be warned that it is really going to make you think (or just pull up a walkthrough)!
Machinarium Review Score
4/5
