Quest for Infamy (PC) Review

Thankfully, for the most part, Quest for Infamy does manage this. Importantly in this genre of games, story and characters are the key features. The actual plot of the game is not going to be an award winning classic with the idea of mysterious events taking place in a valley amongst a collection of mysterious and possibly untrustworthy characters - not exactly an original idea. Indeed, although soon into the game a secretive religious cult is introduced, they never feel extraordinarily sinister to the player, although with humour very much the fore in the game, this may be a deliberate idea.

Additionally, one of the problems with the feeling of the story comes from the various side-quests, having to trek across the land to seek them out. There are a lot of them and they take some searching without any hand-holding from the game. This approach, although admirable for content, does take the pacing completely out of the main plot.

Fortunately, though, the characters met during said quests make up for any potential disappointment. The writing in the game is quite simply top notch and with the exception of some possibly gratuitous swearing for its own sake, the characters encountered, as well as the main character of Roehm, are filled with witty dialogue and memorable personalities.

Their personas come from the voice cast who again manage, most of the time, to convey the dialogue in a way that makes even minor characters instantly memorable and will make players chuckle with laughter. The fact that a lot of the characters have accents from around the world also makes each one stick in the mind.

A particular highlight amongst all the characters is the one that the gamer never sees - the narrator. He is genuinely funny and is with the player throughout the whole game, speaking up with brilliant lines of dialogue anytime an action is taken. Players will no doubt search around the world, clicking on everything just to hear him comment on it.

The cast of voices is not perfect in terms of the actual recording quality, though, and indeed sometimes there is the feeling that the microphone itself or the way it was used was slightly poor, with the quality of a major studio never being reached. However, that is entirely to be expected with a very modestly funded indie game.

Gameplay is classic point-and-click that will be very familiar to many with the player traversing the land, examining everything on the screen to find useful things or combining items to solve puzzles. It will be apparent that this is not a game that holds the hands or readily gives hints. Finding and solving quests is all down to the person in control.

This approach makes for a sometimes maddening search for the solution to quests, but once it is found it is immensely rewarding. Something that can also be a minor irritation is trying to see the exits of each game scene and there are many times when spending a few minutes simply having to click around the screen in case of missing a potential way to advance will occur.

Not that spending so much time is necessarily a bad thing when each hand drawn scene in the game is as beautiful as in Quest for Infamy. The game is colourful and diverse in its large world, with a real variety of locales. The graphics give a real retro charm that harks right back to the 90s.

The design throughout the world also displays a real dedication to making memorable and striking characters for Roehm to come across during his adventure. Complementing the charm of the graphics is the game's brilliant soundtrack, which manages to create some great hummable tunes, as well as capture the mood of whatever setting is traversed.

The game surprisingly includes a turn-based combat system and fighting is a good distraction from the questing. Roehm has a whole set of skills that can be levelled-up through battles, which improve his sword skills and, depending on what mentor the player aligns with, grants him special abilities like magic or a powerful slashing attack. The only problem is that the blocking mechanic seems overpowered and not long into the game most fights can be won simply by blocking and waiting for the special attack to recharge.