Cannelé & Nomnom; Defective Agency
Snazzy tempo, upbeat pacing! One line at a time, clicking to the rhythm. Time hilariously ineffeciently wasted by the two chaoticly bickering detectives that lend their names to the game. Funny back&forth dialogue, with the player as the openmouthed bystander who barely gets a word in.
So yeah, great adrenalin-pumped first reaction.
45 minutes later, I’m still clicking away one line of text at a time, barely even reading the dialogue anymore. The detective’s antics have become stale, my indecisive and inactive PC keeps getting pushed around and I, the player, am hardly doing any brainwork.
Slow down. At least give me a full paragraph to read without having to move my index finger…
I liked the investigation board mechanic, pulling together and rearranging clues I stumbled upon while clicking. This gave me a bit of a rest when I (like my PC) was out of breath.
I can see the appeal in the Scrabble-Poker hybrid minigame. This would be a good casual lunchtime game on its own.
There are a lot of really funny bits in the conversation, the characters would probably lend themselves well to a fast-paced five-minute TV sketch.
But the relentless avalanche of once-funny bickering and interrupting got to my nerves after about twenty minutes.
The snazzy-fazzy cool-chaotic vibe has overstayed its welcome, becoming an annoyance. I can’t see myself playing this any longer for fun.
Two things made it so for me:
-The game never lets up: No change of pace or tone or atmosphere, no rising dramatic tension and release thereof, just obsessive over-the-top dialogue and action all the time.
-The method of delivery: Clicking every five seconds for another line of compulsively cramped funniness, like I’m providing the beat for someone else’s one-liner stand-up routine. What started as a fantastic way to hit the ground running at breakneck speed lost its attractive momentum after a short while.
I’m sure most of my criticisms can be turned upside down, that these things make Defective Agency a great lightning blast of a rollercoaster ride for some, but I could not continue enjoying it past the introduction.
I do really appreciate the considerable skill in making this game. The perfectly timed sound effects underlined the humour. The dialogue, when sampled in smaller bites, is really funny and the scene where we’re all running around trying to find the market had a great slapstick feel to it, which made me chuckle and chortle out loud as I was imagining it (causing my cat to jump from my lap with an accusing stare). Benny Hill meets Scooby Doo racing through the streets.
I played until I had solved the Market-mystery (a bit more than an hour), and then I quit. Just too much too fast of the same for me.
Edit: Please see below for my mea culpa for being so harsh, wherein I retract or revise some of my criticisms.