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Fixation

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This is a dialogue-heavy puzzle game about people and their habits. It might not be for everyone. Explore strange locales, meet strange people, solve strange puzzles.

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"A problem once solved is of a terrifying simplicity"

The puzzle after I encountered THOMAS with the buttons gave me that vibe and then she comes and said.

Funny how the men are in charge of pressing the "button"

I played this after "the company of myself" best short prequel I've ever played (granted I haven't played many) heck though, that last level just, glad I played them in the order that I did. (though, I would have suggested an easier to recognise reflective block, and also the talk at the end of the level to be a BIT earlier.

Excellent puzzle game and a great sequel to The Company of Myself. Both of these are top tier puzzle games, although they have different mechanics each, they both provide a lot of depth and puzzles are challenging and unorthodox, sometimes impossible at first glance, which makes solving them a great satisfaction.

This game is quite long, longer then the first part. I enjoyed the length of gameplay and the 5 different visual themes, great work!

I also appreciate the story going in parallel to puzzles, it gives something additional to think about if you are stuck on a puzzle so it doesn't get boring. The story has a lot of philosophical angles which entertain the brain even more even trough I disagree with some of the views characters expressed it is still good material for thought.

A particular moment that amused me was when I reached psychologists house and he seemed like this calm and levelheaded old man, and then suddenly he jumped on a table. This was an unintentional funny moment that made me laugh.

Three things trough stand between my score for this game of 8 and total perfection of 10:
- No fullscreen.
- The mouse cursor was standard not customized.
- That moment when Katheryn cockblocks Thomas and ruins their relationship. That never works that way. Yeah he was kind of an overconfident asshole, possibly hiding an insecurity behind that bravado, but that's how women actually like men. Penelope would get back with him after a while anyway and would blame Katheryn for trying to break them up. Or she would find a new guy just like that. And he did nothing that bad - just expressed a truth that death is part of life. I am too always bewildered by people being shocked with death of an old man. It is to be expected, get ready for that when he is still alive and hold yourselves together. It almost looks like author seems to be in some delusion he can get back to men like Thomas, that probably stole his girlfriend trough this element of storyline. Maybe it's not the case - but this element of storyline was weak and psychologically (considering this game delves into some psychology) implausible. Well actually the game shows that a nicer person can be more dangerous sometimes - the ending shows that. If that's how the author intended that, then I must take my criticism back.

A very good game, but the effects in the swamp levels slow my computer so much that it no longer registers the smoke rings, making the levels impossible to continue.

"Hey, speaking of jobs, what do you do for a living?"
"I don't have a job right now."
"...Not right now? What did you used to do?"
"I was a magician."

Yeah. The best goddamn magician of all goddamn time. Can you imagine if he was on Penn and Teller's "Fool Me"? Their heads would explode. "And now, my trick, I will split into a hundred separate copies of myself right here on the stage, each of them jumping around and doing something different and random. And then Penn would say... "you... you fooled me I guess... is that real magic?"

Largely redundant and unnecessary considering the existence of "The Company of Myself". And here's the kicker. If you HAVEN'T already played The Company of Myself, then you will have no reason to believe the ending is anything sinister. Sure, the music gets a little darker after all, but there is no implication that he's killing her. He's just saying, "Alright, see you later..." and she's just like "Goodbye for now." Especially since all the TIME in the game you simply get to the next screen by dropping through a hole in the floor. There's no implication he's doing anything lethal to her, and she certainly doesn't seem alarmed by it. Which just leaves what little there is to follow, just a bunch of nonsense, like a story that ends in the middle of a sentence. If you haven't already played The Company of Myself, then that ending is a non-sequitur unfinished ending, and if you have, it provides nothing additional, it doesn't even provide as much of an explanation as The Company of Myself itself does. At least in that, it's told in the words of a psychologist who is interviewing Jack who has been institutionalized for years and doesn't understand anything that has happened. This is just nothing. I don't see the point. Unless he DIDN'T kill her there. In which case there should be a sequel to Fixation, not a sequel to The Company of Myself, which would make Fixation not merely an alternate perspective retelling, but the events in a completely alternate universe where actually different things happened. The only lesson I can imagine this teaches is, if you're a girl, go after the insensitive jock guy, instead of the mentally unstable sensitive emo guy. You might not treasure your time with him as much, but he's probably less likely to murder you with a smile on his face. That or become a more well-rounded individual. Sure, she has amazing smoking and double-jumping powers, able to violate the laws of physics. But she can't even flip a stupid switch, one that can be easily flipped by an old man who's about to die, or other women.

But it was an ok game just to play through.

But goddamn they have huge bug-eyes. Both Kathryn and Jack have HUGE damn eyes filling up their entire faces. At least in the sprites, not in the cutscene art.

There's an error in the coding for this I think - in the Meadow, the last part of the game, the lasers don't kill you. I think they forgot to code it that way.

The most annoying level was the one where you're in the rain and trying to get the 4 separate lasers to focus on the thing, in order to keep the bridge at the bottom of the screen materialized. Repeatedly it vanished on me ANYWAY because the rain interrupted all 4 lasers at the same time, and also the lasers kept overshooting and not stopping on the trigger and zapping me instead. I probably killed 20 minutes on that stupid level.

Credits & Info

Views
172,159
Faves:
981
Votes
386
Score
4.40 / 5.00

Uploaded
Apr 8, 2012
12:14 PM EDT