RPGDX > Action RPGs > Blues Brothers RPG

Contributors:

Bjørn Lindeijer (engine, scripts, graphics)
Georg Muntingh (maps, scripts, graphics, story)
Frode Lindeijer (graphics)
Hedde Bosman (music, soundfx, scripts, build system)
Ramon van Tol (music)
Jasper Hafkenscheid (the green couch)
Laurens van der Starre (story)
Jasper Muntingh (music)

Description:

Guide the Blues Brothers in their quest to safe their third brother and to prevent another world war. This was supposed to be our Compo Nostos entry but wasn't finished in time. It then became our Chione Challenge entry with the added snow effects.

Last Update
The main download now is an updated version with a lot of bugs fixed, but most of all, we added some blues music to set the mood! We also added a Dutch translation and speeded the game up by disableing writing to the log. Reviewing is now enabled.

Release!
Finally, at 9:45 in the morning, our Blues Brothers RPG is available. Enjoy!

Review by janus on 12-01-2004

Graphics - All original, pretty smooth and detailed. Animation is good, but jerky. Some of the location text was a bit hard to read, but I could tell what it said. Message font could've used a little more contrast from the message box.

Sounds/Music - Sound effects were simple, but sounded fine (if not a little quiet.) There weren't sound effects for many things that I think could've used sound effects. Music was good, but a bit repetitive, and simple.

Gameplay - Gameplay is, overall, uninspired and very tedious. Lots of running around mazes randomly trying to find switches and secret passageways, and beating up pretty much anything that moves. If any of your characters die, you lose and have to start over. (Yaaaay! ... not.)

Story - I'm not sure if the story would seem better if I was very acquainted with the Blues Brothers movie(s), but as it is I've only vaguely heard of them and maybe seen one of the movies. I don't remember. Nonetheless, the story was average. There were a few typos and generally dumb points in the plot (you get out of prison, then go home and go through the sewers to get into a prison and beat two guards to death with your fists so you can let your brother out of prison even though he didn't commit a crime... right.) but it was pretty easy to follow. There were a few humorous points in the story, but it wasn't exactly hilarious. The story (and game) was extremely short and not at all satisfying.

Map/Level/Game Design - Maps were designed well overall, but had a number of issues. For one, the roofs in the sewers and suburbs and prison all could conceal the player and anything that was hiding beneath them. This means you would often be walking through a thin tunnel, and you would be unable to see anything, and a monster would be in the middle of the tunnel, blocking your path. Of course, you couldn't see the monster or yourself, so your only clue was to see your health bar creep slowly down. The maps were just plain confusing and seemed to lack any focus or coherent flow to them, and to complete pretty much all of the game you basically had to wander around and examine every single object on the map until you found your way to the next area. The suburbs map has a number of areas where you just can't walk anymore, which is confusing - you're walking to the left, and suddenly you can't walk anymore. No 'I don't want to leave the suburbs' message or something like that, no noise, nothing - your character just hits an invisible wall.

I would give this game a 5, but it's obvious to me that a lot of work was put into it, and it shows - the engine itself is solid, and there's nothing really bad about it - it's just not any fun, and considering how tedious some of the gameplay is, it's not worth playing for more than a few minutes in my opinion.

The addition of the patch makes it a lot easier to tolerate (for example, being able to skip the intro), but still not any fun.

Review by Spearor on 14-01-2004

I think this game has got some charms. The gfx are not great but do the job, the setting and the story does appeal to me more then the most other rpg's =) and the engine looks and feels powerfull. The only thing that raises mine eyebrow, was the speed. I didn't find it running very smooth on my AMD 2000+ I demand more fps! =) /dutch zit wel grappig in elkaar /undutch =)