With a plotline that feels like a prime time crime show that should’ve been cancelled and bland boring gameplay, “Cognition,†an episodic thriller by Phoenix Online Studios is one adventure game that you’re going to want to point and click your way out of.
You take on the role as Erica Reed, a charmless Boston FBI agent who possesses the power to see in the past — basically the games only hook. As interesting as it sounds, it’s executed poorly and comes off more as a gimmick than a major plot point.
Using the psychic abilities usually works as follows; you click on an object like you would ordinarily and then after you toggle on your psychic powers the object starts to glow. After it glows, click on it again and you get treated to a mini-cutscene of what has happened prior. That’s it — there’s nothing more to her psychic abilities.
Special powers aside, this is an uninspired adventure game.
The characters are all cliched crime show stereotypes — there’s the wise-cracking partner, the no-nonsense boss, nerdy tech guy and the strong female detective who doesn’t need anyone but herself. The voice acting is as inspired as the development that went into the characters.
If you can look past the blandness of the story which is hard because that’s what drives this type of genre, you’ll run into more problems as the story progresses.
A major unavoidable problem in this game is the long load times. Not the load times in between locations or cut-scenes but rather the time it takes to click something and have your character interact with it. It’s painful to watch your character slowly meander to something you want to inspect and then be met with your cursor turning into a loading circle.
With the seconds it takes to load simple tasks such as digging a hole with a shovel, you’ll have time to reflect on how easy it was to figure out what to do. The difficulty in this game is probably in between very easy and incredibly easy. If you don’t know what to do, just click everything — it’ll figure itself out.
An incredibly important item missing from this game is an auto-save feature which seemed to have been non-existent in the first episode. A problem encountered during this review was a location change that was met with a perpetual loading screen. The only solution was to exit the program and upon rebooting found that there was no save file.
The art in this game is a pretty enough distraction from the problems and is actually the best part of the experience. The comic book style artwork and cutscenes are all skillfully done and look great. It’s the only redeemable thing out of the entire game.
With “The Walking Dead†by Telltale Games setting the new standard for adventure games, “Cognition†falls flat in delivering an overall decent gaming experience. Fans of the genre should use their powers of intuition and avoid this game entirely.
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