Gray Matter Review

Has there been a more feverishly anticipated adventure game than Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter? The only one I can think of is Riven in 1997. Myst fans had to endure four long years for their sequel. Jane Jensen fans have had to wait about a dozen years between the releases of Gabriel Knight 3 (aka Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned) and GM. Worse, it has seemed for years now that GM was tantalizingly almost a reality on many occasions, only to encounter another setback, another new publisher. Even this version was released in Europe months before the game finally came out, via Viva Media, in the U.S. Anticipation for a game can be both a blessing and a curse (the sacred and the damned again). On the one hand it builds excitement, on the other it raises expectations. Riven delivered on both counts. Gray Matter . . . well, let’s see.

Gray Matter is not, of course, an entry in the Gabriel Knight series. Jensen made her rep in the Nineties with those three classic adventures (Sins of the Fathers, Beast Within and BOTSBOTD). The first Gabe Knight game in particular was a breakthrough for sophisticated material, depth of characterization and novelistic storytelling in an adventure — as well as being a heck of a good game. The two sequels were not far off the mark. But then Sierra ran off a cliff and Jensen was, like a lot of adventure gamers, set adrift. She has shown great resolve simply in getting Gray Matter released at all. Of course, much has changed in the gaming world, even the adventure gaming world, since GK3 came out — virtually the dying breath of Sierra Online — in 1999.

JJ’s new heroes are an interesting role reversal of that great GK couple of Gabriel Knight (novelist and gentleman bookdealer) and Grace Nakimura (his long-suffering assistant). The lady takes the lead this time around, one Samantha Everett. She is a 23-year-old itinerant magician and fugitive of the American foster child system gadding about Europe hoping to make it big in the wand-and-tophat world. The man is Dr. David Styles, a neuroscientist and sort of updated Mr. Rochester to Sam’s goth-girl Jane Eyre. David is filthy rich, an owner of a mysterious old windswept mansion near Oxford, England, and tragically, or pathologically, hung up on his recently deceased wife. Everything a goth girl could want, including the bearish but debonair personal manner. As with GKs 2 and 3, you alternately play as Sam and David during the course of Gray Matter.

Down to her last farthing traveling around England, Sam chances upon David’s home, Dread Hill House, one stormy night, sizes the place up and lies her way into a job as Dr. Styles’ assistant. (Grace would not have approved.) Strange things, however, are transpiring both at Dread Hill and at the nearby University. David, you see, is so far gone over his wife Laura, who died horribly in a car conflagration, that he has abandoned his day job to research the psi world fulltime in the hope of bringing Laura back, at least in spirit. The good doc enlists his new assistant to help him round up a group of Oxford students with whom to conduct his experiments on telekinesis and the like. However, his otherwise innocent thought experiments seem to go immediately awry when the effects are realized, with some violence, on campus.

David at first doesn’t know what to believe, but Sam, the wily prestidigitator, is convinced someone in Oxford is pulling a fast one. Specifically, staging what’s known in the magic trade as a Great Game. An elaborate magic trick executed in the real world. For most of Gray Matter, this is the dynamic. Sam believing the culprit is a prankster magician, and David wondering if it’s the paranormal world, and his dead wife, trying to break through. Only at the very end of the game will anyone, especially you, find out what’s really going on.

The plots of most adventure games do not require much explanation. Somebody’s got to find the magic amulet in time to save the kingdom. Etcetera. Story and plot, however, are Jane Jensen’s greatest claims to adventure stardom. Once again in Gray Matter, they are the heart of the matter. Jensen is renowned for her deep research into some fascinating, and usually little known, areas. Gabriel Knight 3, for instance, covered much of the same religiously controversial ground that the bestseller The Da Vinci Code would address several years later. In GM, Jensen again digs deep, into the neurobiology world of Oliver Sacks and others, as well as into the private life of stage magicians, and the daily life of a great university, Oxford. The material is fascinating and expertly presented.

In the Nineties, of course, the three Gabriel Knight entries also exhibited an almost equal emphasis on gameplay and puzzle design. All three games, in fact, are rather radically different in look and play. The first is a long, complex and challenging version of the standard Sierra point-and-clicker, while the second is one of the few successful FMV (full motion video) games of that brief fad, and the third game, back to hand-drawn characters, has a very adventurous control and viewing system — too much so for some. Nowadays, of course, story and ease of play are king and puzzles are falling out of favor. Still, Jensen has once again tried to throw in a few innovations. The best ones have to do with Sam’s magic. GM has not one but two elaborate Easter egg hunts, where Sam has to hunt down a series of clues placed around Oxford. But even David is given a couple of newish activities to pursue, as he hunts for clues to his late wife’s spectral presence.

The problem comes when the puzzles and the innovations run smack into the current vogue for help, more help and a walkthrough in the game folder. (Yes, there is a text walkthrough in the game folder here too.) Like so many recent AG titles, GM tries to both challenge you and prevent you from being challenged at the exact same time. It’s schizophrenic — something that perhaps Dr. Styles should be investigating. The worst offender is Sam’s book of magic tricks. Sam carries a basic Magic 101 handbook with her, listing a dozen or so simple tricks which she uses throughout the game to finagle things from the other characters. First, she assembles all the elements she’ll need to perform the trick, then she must perform the various steps in the correct order. Presto! Voilà! Except, since this is no longer the Nineties, it’s an open-book exam. You can have her magic book open on screen so you can cheat directly from the page. In short, an otherwise promising new puzzle type has been turned into a tedious exercise in paint-by-numbers. Nothing magical about that, Sam.

I was a beta tester for GM and, in addition to bug-and-typo hunting, I (and others) pled for greater puzzle complexity and challenge. We did win a few small skirmishes, but ease of play remained the higher concern for most. I am all for clarity of gameplay, but easy puzzles are simply boring. Adventure games are about the intersection of story and puzzles. If either one or the other strays too far out of kilter, you end up with a graphic novel at one extreme, and a Rubik’s Cube at the other.

However, the vast majority of Gray Matter is of high quality. The backgrounds are richly beautiful and often moodily dramatic. The character sprites moved a little sluggishly on my laptop, but I think that’s the fault of my processor. For what is essentially a 2D game, the game world is detailed and convincing. The voiceover work is also expert. Sam and David and pretty much everyone else in the game is given a rich, vibrant characterization. There were a couple of slackers, most notably for me, the Woody Allen-esque student Harvey. There is, of course, a smorgasbord of English accents, from barely discernible Scottish Highlands to headbanger Midlands. The music is also noticeably better than average. I particularly liked the melancholy piano music underscoring David’s scenes and the dramatic orchestral strains accompanying the game’s slam-bang finale. The game ran, as I say, at times a bit slowly on my equipment, but without crashes. The screen load times are bearable. There’s a map that will get you at least near where you want to go. You can double click Sam and David to make them jog (not run) to the next screen, and you can hit the spacebar to call up the hotspot IDs.

So is Gray Matter the great game we’ve all been awaiting for so long? For the most part, yes. The irony, I think, is that the game would have been much better had it been made ten years ago. The developers wouldn’t have worried as much about “ease-of-play” and the puzzles would have been able to reach their full potential. If story is so all-important nowadays, why does no one mind the constant interruptions of “help”? Puzzling in itself. GM begins with a short tutorial, Sam and David each have a diary (hint! hint!), the map IDs are color-coded to tell you which locations have things left to do, and a progress bar list in the drop down inventory menu keeps track of what percentage of the various goals of each chapter remains. And, if all that fails, there’s the walkthrough. Egad. Gray Matter is not particularly challenging to begin with. The only tricky part is, like GK3, locating the time triggers which end each of the chapters, and the map will help you find those.

As I say, pretty much everything about Gray Matter deserves an A. My only gripes are with the watered-down puzzling, the all-too-modern overzealous “help” and the story ending. Don’t ask me about the subtitles, which are accompanied by a partially animated head in a panel at the bottom of the screen. The only thing you need to know about the subtitles is that mercifully you can turn them off in the Options. The game’s non-full-motion animated cut scenes are also a bit low rent. Not bad, just not good. I’m getting a little tired of these budget-saving “storyboard” animations. Cut out figures being shifted around a background. Eek. A great animated cut scene used to be your reward for finally solving the puzzles. Well, I guess if you’re going to do away with the puzzles, what do you need the reward for?

As for the ending, I can’t really discuss it without giving away too much. But I felt during the beta testing and still feel unsatisfied with the climax of this story. The penultimate scene, which I also shouldn’t give away, is far and away the best thing in the game. It has the best puzzles, the best drama, the best graphics, even the best music. It’s terrific, it’s what the whole game should have been like. All comes to a head and then — comes the actual ending. As anticlimactic an event as I’ve ever encountered in a major adventure game. The ending is logical, I suppose. If you’ve been following along closely, the clues were there to see. But it’s not emotionally fulfilling. The big romantic and dramatic showdown you’ve been waiting for since Jane came to stay with Rochester — excuse me, Sam with David — occurs in that great penultimate section. The game and the story end there. Except for the actual ending, which follows. Imagine Romeo and Juliet closing with Juliet awaking and running off with Friar Laurence. Surprising? You bet. Satisfying? Not so much.

One shouldn’t complain, I know. We’re lucky to have gotten this game at all. At the very end there’s a teaser about a possible sequel. (In fact, I think the need to set up the sequel is one thing which compromises the end of this installment.) One can easily see Sam and David turning into as dynamic a gaming duo as Gabe and Grace. I suppose GM would have to be a blockbuster for that to happen. Perhaps if we all concentrate our psi powers really hard . . .

I’m giving Gray Matter a final grade of A minus. For me, the best part was the magician’s Great Game taking place in Oxford. Jane Jensen has tried to pull off another Great Game of her own. She comes darn close, but the illusion is not quite complete.

System Requirements (Minimum):

• Windows XP/Vista/7 with .Net Framework 2.0
• CPU: 1.4 GHz Pentium 4 Processor or similar
• Memory: 512 MB RAM (XP) / 1 GB RAM (Vista/7)
• Video Card: 128 MB DirectX 9 Compatible Video Card (Shader 2.0) – ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, Nvidia Geforce 6200TC, and Intel GMA X3200 are minimum recommended graphic cards.
• Sound: 16 bit DirectX 9 Compatible
• Disk Space: 6.5 GB
• DVD-ROM drive
• Mouse, Keyboard

System Requirements (Recommended):

• Windows XP/Vista/7 with .Net Framework 2.0
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or similar
• Memory: 1 GB RAM (XP) / 2GB RAM (Vista/7)
• Video Card: : 256 MB DirectX 9 Compatible Video Card (Shader 3.0) – ATI Radeon series 2xxx and Nvidia Geforce series 8xxx are the minimum recommended graphic cards.
• Sound: 16 bit DirectX 9 Compatible
• Disk Space: 6.5 GB
• DVD-ROM drive
• Mouse, Keyboard