Actually I can honestly say that I enjoyed Blackwood series more than most Lucas Arts / Sierra adventure games just because they were dialogue-heavy and didn't need too much backtracking to finish, not to mention getting completely stuck on a forgotten item.

Lucasarts games never screwed you like that. Sierra games did though, and seemed to get some perverse enjoyment out of it.

Yeah, that was part of my lost post; basically it comes down to your preferences, as in most cases. If you prefer adventures with epic length and complexity or humourous stories or tricky (inventory) puzzles and lots of funny commentaries on your failed attempts at solving them, there are better alternatives. But if you prefer short dialogue-oriented interactive stories and don't want obscure puzzles to get in their way, the Blackwell series is highly recommended. The gameplay mostly consists of questioning people, combining the dots and talking to them again, which might not be the most original and attractive, but IMO it works quite well in the context of these games, I didn't mind at all.

And as a sidenote, when I think about it, to me playing "Ben There, Dan That" and "Time Gentlemen Please!" this year came quite close to the LucasArts experience from back in the days, in terms of humour, originality and gameplay.


The first ones did, too (e.g. MM, Zak McKracken), but we recently had this discussion in another thread already.

(Then again, they were still called Lucasgames back then, not LucasArts, so literally I think you are correct. :) )

I've had my eye on the Blackwell series for a while, so I jumped at the chance to get them, especially when I found out that they worked well in WINE/CrossOver. I'm currently at the NYU Brittany Hall dorm building and I'm enjoying Blackwell Legacy a lot more than I thought I would. The plot is engaging and interesting and the dialogue is decent, even with the sub-par voice acting. Overall, though, the game's general look, feel, and flow remind me a lot of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, one of my all-time favourite point-and-click games.

I also think the soundtrack deserves mention. It's really good, with a nice electronic beat which actually at times feels like it should be in a game like Frozen Synapse or Deus Ex.

I'm probably in the minority with this, but I learned to appreciate the voice acting, too, once I got used to the semi-professional quality. I think I've played lots of games with a higher budget and worse voice acting, or at least a less charming one. I won't claim the voice acting is excellent, but it's very personal and sympathetic, IMO. It's like enjoying a play performed by some friends of yours, you know they're just doing it for fun and you don't expect them to win an Oscar or something, but you still think they're doing fine and you like their performance nevertheless. (Well, I do, in this case.)