Review: Yesterday

My review of the recent adventure game Yesterday is up on The Adrenaline Vault. It's telling that a terrible game can still be a pretty good example of the genre.

My aunt lives on a farm in the middle of the Wisconsin countryside. Like Keepers of the Citadel, innumerable cats run around, performing secret but essential tasks. As needed as they are, no one’s taken care of them in years. Once you could wonder into a barn and be greeted by a furry tribe of cuteness, but now you find a swarm of hideously inbred monsters. Adventure games are like those cats. Leave them alone in a vacuum for a decade and what comes out is a sickening mixture of all the recessive genes of 1990s point-and-clicks. Yet, where there’s a will, there’s a market. Some studios actually manage to craft fun games out of inventory puzzles. Adventure vets Pendulo think they can straddle the line with Yesterday and still deliver an approachable yet hardcore classic adventure game. Wrapped up with the styling of a horror thriller, is Yesterday a cute and cuddly kitten, or a mangled, inbred beast?