I may have been born in the late ’80s and missed the real, real experience of living it, but I’ve certainly devoured the pop culture that was born in that glorious decade of movies, music, video games, and other arts. While Cindy Lauper and Madonna were waging their popularity wars on the radio, some kids were finding pirate treasures beneath their Oregon town, and some rather weird New York scientists were inventing backpacks with laser beams to hunt ghosts… Not to mention a huge, muscular dude with an Austrian accent became very popular thanks to countless action, fantasy and science fiction films. These are just a few of the things that come to mind when you think of the 80’s of the last century, and they’re a tiny bit of the nostalgia exuded by Unusual Findings, Epic’s graphic adventure LLama.
The truth is that the game couldn’t come out at a better time. At a time when ’80s sequels and reboots are more popular than ever, Unusual Findings also wants to pay homage to the graphic adventures that flourished during those years, based on a “pixel art” style where baseball jackets, the Movies, amusement arcades or comic shops were “the ultimate” for young people. At least that’s what they told me on TV.
The story revolves around three teenage friends: Nick, Vinny (who will be our avatar) and Tony who love video games, pizza, mischief and high school girls. They are the perfect tandem to build an adventure with enough references to keep us smiling throughout the game, and each of them has their part to contribute to the narration of a mysterious story that includes aliens, robots, video game cartridges and fun puzzles to advance. While I’m not going to delve into the story, I don’t think that over the course of the game’s roughly 10 hours, not more than two minutes would go by without a scene, description, or comment from these guys failing to pop culture or make a sarcastic comment. about today. The references to the adventures of Lucasarts or Sierra.
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And like any good graphic adventure that claims to be one, in this one we’ll have to advance by solving some puzzles and putting the pieces together with a great sense of humor and even a certain malice, because although these are unusual discoveries are not very difficultHowever, it does require you to pay attention and exhaust all possible dialogue and environmental exploration options. Any object or line of action that stands out against the background can be examined by a simple interface with three functions: look, catch or speak. We have an inventory where we can keep all sorts of useful items for the adventure, although in this case it keeps a certain more realistic tone in terms of what the character can and cannot take with them. We will also not be able to carry heavy or large items in our pockets, and we will not be able to carry more than eight or ten items. Also when if you use them in the appropriate place, they disappear from the inventorysomething very useful to not worry when you have to advance in different puzzles at the same time.
As for the puzzles, they are usually solved by using a specific object in the right place or giving it to the right person, but here the developers seem to have misjudged the players’ skills, or I found that the adventure much easier than I expected (with a few exceptions). Perhaps it’s the biggest drawback that the title can have, apart from an excessive sobriety in the graphic part. I can’t ask the same of Ron Gilbert and his team, but I missed the clarity in certain scenes.
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And if I’ve already talked about the excellent setting and the perfect combination of the protagonists, I can’t help but praise the grandiose work in the sound and location area. What’s more, the game even has licenses for some of the most well-known music classics of the 80’s, especially since some of its tunes can also be heard in the Stranger Things series. And the synth-based soundtrack fits perfectly with the aesthetic and the situations Vinny and the others find themselves in. In terms of location and voices, the English dubbing is fantastic and the dialogue is written with lots of jokes (Gilbert’s school shows again).
If you’re looking for a graphical adventure that brings back the best of the genre and has a visual style that’s up to date. Unusual findings is the answer. A journey into the past that you will enjoy from the first to the last pixel.