Don't do it. Don't do it. You're an adult now. You don't have the kind of time you did when you were active on Kongregate. And there's more game now. More grind. Don't do it. You can't. You already blew all your PTO on that big Runescape kick when you realized that was still a thing. Nostalgia doesn't pay your rent. Please, for the love of god, don't do it.

A pretty good game, once you get past all the bugs.

I bought this when I owned my previous computer. The textures were broken and the game locked up before I could get out of the first area. Not a great first impression.

When I got my new computer, I reinstalled the game and tried it out again. Now it's asking me for a CD. I went to the Steam message boards to see if there was a quick fix, but the solution involved grabbing an altered executable from GOG. And because the game folder's read-only and Windows has decided I don't have the privileges to change read-only status, all I had to do was log in as administrator, uncheck the "read-only," download software from another company's website, and then, and then...

Nah. NAHHHHH. For Gabriel Knight THREE? The worst game in the series? Nah. This is already too much effort. I'd expect these kinds of work-arounds if I were trying to run the game off of my old CDs from 1999, but for a digital version still being sold in 2020? This game should be ready to play on install.

You realize that for $6 I could've bought 20 McNuggets and had my choice of dipping sauces? You don't even get barbecue sauce with Gabriel Knight 3. Not even sweet and sour. And I wouldn't need to run tech support on my nuggies - they'd be ready for the end user right out of the takeout bag. Wouldn't have to steal honey mustard from Wendy's and double-fry them to make them edible. I'd just open up the box and enjoy.

But if you're, like, really big on the whole IKEA "some assembly required" thing and either really loved this game as a kid or have a hard-on for vampires and ugly, blocky, late-90s 3D models, then I *guess* this might be up your alley?

But seriously, don't buy this broken-ass version of a bad game. Consider either getting it on GOG or forgetting about GK3 entirely and going to McDonald's.

Look, I've tried to enjoy this on three separate occasions now.

The last two times were years ago, so I thought, sure, let's give it another go. I blew through the first few levels, quickly making it past a stage I remembered getting stuck and frustrated in, briefly wondering whether I simply got gud since my last attempt. The third stage had a fiddly bit with moving platforms over spikes with an enemy firing bullets straight at you with little time to react and little room to dodge. So I died.

I hadn't died an unreasonable number of times yet, though, so I thought, "Let's try this a second time." The enemy was on a completely different cycle and was no threat to me whatsoever. So... I didn't need to practice and develop skills; I just had to blindly hit the first platform at the right time so that I wouldn't be pushed into an instant death while riding the fourth platform? "Well, that's bad design," I thought, but I'd only died once to the room, so I shrugged and continued through the next door.

I managed to bop the mini-boss in the next room on the first try. He hit like a truck and moved too fast to dodge, but his movement was predictable enough to know where not to stand and chip away at his health for what felt like forever before he finally died. I was strongly motivated to succeed by not wanting to deal with the dumb moving platforms again. The next room had to have a checkpoint. I was safe. Wouldn't have to put up with that crap again.

I jumped up to a door sitting high on the wall, passed through several pixels below the door, and phased into the floor in the next room. I was right: there was a checkpoint here. But I couldn't move. I could shoot. I could swap weapons and fire the special weapons I'd picked up from the previous two bosses. I could double tap and initiate the slide animation. I just... still couldn't move. I looked through the menus for anything that might allow me to just take a death and then continue, but only saw the option to quit.

So I tell myself, "All right, self. Steam says you've spent 8 hours of your life on this game, and you're not much of a fan. It's only been half an hour tonight, but I can feel it: you're on the brink of uninstalling again, but you also kinda want to knock this off the ol' backlog for good. So what do you say? Hitting quit lets you restart from the checkpoint, you struggle through, at least get to tell yourself you it through. You get bopped out to the stage select, we uninstall this and throw it in your Steam hidden folder so we're never tempted to give it the benefit of the doubt again."

You know how this story ends already.

The actual Mega Man games are readily available on Steam for cheap at this point, and there are better fan-made love letters to the series. If you're looking to play something nostalgic, fun, cleverly designed, and just a little bit challenging... this ain't it.

I bought this game against the advise of critics I normally agree with, and now I have to join the chorus and call this game out for its moon logic puzzles and flat dialog. I appreciate that they got Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes to not-quite-reprise their not-quite-Clerks roles, but good/familiar voice actors couldn't save a dull script.

Clerks: The Animated Series was able to get away with having this many references per square inch of script because it didn't slow down the pacing of the story. In Randal's Story, the constant reminders that the writers are aware of Monkey Island (which might sound good on paper, but not one of these references is in any way clever) just add to the monotonous sludge of pointing and clicking through minutes-long conversations reminding us that everybody drinks a lot, Matt pukes, Randal is irresponsible, and that there are years of allegedly hilarious adventures preceding this one.

And on top of the script issues, go ahead and add a bunch of puzzles where even the in-game hint system at one point essentially says, "Nobody provided this information, which is absolutely vital to solving the puzzle, but..." and you have a recipe for a pretty miserable game. After Day 1, I thought maybe all the reviewers were bad at adventure games, but the rest of the game proved everybody's criticism of the puzzles to be valid.

I really wish the game design had been better, because I think the art style and ambient music are actually top-notch, and I've seen our buddies from the View Askewverse involved in much better projects in the past. The presentation is charming. And the story's overall premise is an interesting one. But point-and-clicks live or die by their puzzles, and the ones that model their dialog choices off of the old LucasArts games lean heavily on those branching conversations being entertaining. They're not.

tl;dr: Wasted potential.

What can be said about this game that can't be said about Progress Quest? There are 29 times as many progress bars to watch, plus events? There's some kind of end game in sight? There's music?

I guess, if anything, the big difference is that this game is mildly interactive, and I kept checking in to make more purchases, claim investors, and earn achievements. I don't know that this is a good thing. I remember Progress Quest as this wondeful novelty game that I uninstalled after 24 hours. I'm now sitting on a month of checking in on my progress bars to see if there's anything I can do to make them move faster. I still have the same 9-10 assets per planet I had on the day I unlocked each of them, the fun of seeing ever larger numbers is kind of obscured by seeing them spelled out rather than being allowed to marvel a how many zeroes they contain, and there's no additional depth to the gameplay I've had to look forward to after having claimed my first set of angels something like 240 hours of gameplay ago.

Is this some kind of sly criticism of the emptiness that comes with the relentless capitalist pursuit of larger and larger sums of money?

Or am I just looking for anything to justify the 10+ days of in-game time I've had the program open, at no point approaching anything resembling fun?

In any case, take note of that last point. It's not fun. It feels like work, and unfortunately, I feel like I'm invested and have to see it through until I have all of my pretty little achievements. What is it about achievements that does this to some people?