Review: Gray Matter Was Worth the Wait

For gamers who have been antic­i­pat­ing the release of this game for over seven years (prac­ti­cally an eter­nity in game devel­op­ment), Gray Mat­ter will inevitably polar­ize us into two groups:

1. Those who will crit­i­cize it for not being per­fect despite “all that extra time” the devel­op­ers have had to work on it
2. Those, like myself, who are sim­ply so grate­ful to finally be able to play this gem that we are will­ing to look past its shortcomings.

The most glar­ing crit­i­cisms are the game’s graph­ics and ani­ma­tions.  (Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way, shall we?)  If you are expect­ing an adven­ture game with cut­ting edge graph­ics and ani­ma­tion, you will not find it here.  What you can expect, how­ever, is a game that is rich in story, mys­tery, and the super­nat­ural.  In other words, it’s all the things that fans of Jane Jensen’s games have come to expect.   Gray Mat­ter tells a beau­ti­fully crafted story with inter­wo­ven themes of sci­ence vs. magic, love and obses­sion, death and for­give­ness. Set in Oxford, the game is steeped in his­tory and atmos­phere, and fea­tures real loca­tions from around Eng­land ren­dered into beau­ti­ful, softly lit backdrops.

There are two main char­ac­ters that the player con­trols alter­na­tively in dif­fer­ent chap­ters:  Saman­tha (“Sam”) Everett, a young, spunky ex-goth street magi­cian who has spent most of her well-traveled life in and out of fos­ter care, and Dr. David Styles, a bril­liant but reclu­sive neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist with a tragic past.  Both of their lives begin to change when Sam shows up at the doorstep of Dread Hill House one rainy night, des­per­ate for a job and a place to stay.  Still mourn­ing his dead wife and con­sumed by his exper­i­ments, Dr. Styles soon becomes entan­gled in pow­er­ful forces he does not under­stand, and it’s up to Sam–who has an agenda of her own–to help him.

The story unfolds in a care­ful, sus­pense­ful man­ner that gives us insight into both char­ac­ters’ minds and emo­tions.  Nei­ther of them hold all the clues or know all the answers, and both of them are deeply flawed in one way or another.  That’s all I will say with­out giv­ing too much away.

The voice act­ing ranges from just okay to great, with Sam’s voice lean­ing toward the low end of the spec­trum; a bit dis­ap­point­ing given her huge role.  There are cer­tainly moments when her voice shines, but over­all I felt it didn’t quite fit her char­ac­ter and wasn’t always gen­uine.  On the oppo­site end, David’s voice was excel­lent.  The game’s score and sound­track is another high­light.  The few sub­tle musi­cal tracks are won­der­fully com­posed, if a bit repet­i­tive. (I’m now a Scar­let Furies fan, by the way.)

The game also fea­tures graphic novel-style cutscenes that have a hand-painted look and feel.  I very much enjoyed the game’s art style, but crit­ics will most likely ding the cutscenes for being a byprod­uct of low bud­get.  I at least applaud the devel­op­ers for doing some­thing unique and cre­ative given their limitations.

Most of the puz­zles are log­i­cal inventory-based puz­zles that fit the sit­u­a­tion the pro­tag­o­nists find them­selves in.  You will not encounter any ran­dom, out of place puz­zle mech­a­nisms that seem to exist just to slow your progress, or be required to go on any tedious pixel-hunting tan­gents.  The game’s magic trick sys­tem is inno­v­a­tive and pro­vides some unique game­play, but it’s also not much of a challenge.

Over­all, the puz­zles aren’t that dif­fi­cult, but they are some­times pre­sented in a non-linear fash­ion that I often found con­fus­ing.  For exam­ple, gold loca­tions on your map indi­cate that there’s “some­thing left to do” at that loca­tion.  How­ever, the game will not let you progress until you go to another loca­tion, work on a sep­a­rate puz­zle for a while, then come back later.  You will find your­self check­ing the Chap­ter Progress screen frequently.

One issue I have with many adven­ture games is the copi­ous amounts of read­ing.  Though Gray Mat­ter does have its fair share of in-game doc­u­ments and other printed mis­cel­lany, it’s usu­ally pre­sented in such a way that’s easy to digest and actu­ally some­what infor­ma­tive and inter­est­ing.  (You may even find your­self learn­ing a thing or two about magic–who else tried some of Sam’s tricks out on their friends?)  And of course, in clas­sic Jane Jensen style, there’s plenty of humor, in-jokes, and pop cul­ture references.

Gray Mat­ter proves, as most great adven­ture games do, that graph­ics are not the only thing that makes a game good.  If you can look past it’s rough edges, Gray Mat­ter will reward you with sat­is­fy­ing game­play, lov­able char­ac­ters, and a truly riv­et­ing story that comes to an excit­ing and sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion.  But per­haps the more amaz­ing story is how Gray Mat­ter sur­vived through years of devel­op­ment hell and lived to tell its tale.

Yes,  Gray Mat­ter was absolutely worth the wait.

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