If - like me - you played a heck of a lot of point and click adventure games in the 90s, you might remember Jane Jenson. Famous for her Gabriel Knight series that followed the title character - a New Orleans bookstore owner and author, accompanied by his assistant and sometimes love-interest, Grace Nakimura - as they went about his business as a Shadow Hunter, tracking down werewolves, vampires and other assorted creatures of the night, while solving voodoo-related murders, she quickly became one of the biggest names in point and click gaming, and the sign of a seal of quality.
Fast forward seven years, and after a long time out of the public eye, Ms. Jensen is back with new game Gray Matter, which follows in the footsteps of Gabriel Knight games - only this time, rather than a vampire hunter, you're playing as the magician Samantha Everett, as she tries to unravel the mystery behind the acclaimed neurobiologist, Professor David Styles.
The game begins on a dark night, as Sam's motorbike breaks down while she's on route to London in search of the Daedalus club, an organisation of magicians. As you may have guessed, she just happens to have broken down within walking distance of the mysterious Professor's house, where she goes to seek refuge from the rain until the morning. On hearing that the Professor's after a research assistant for his studies into cognitive abnormalities, however, Sam has a minor change of heart, and decides to pose as a student from Oxford University, and take up the post - after all, with a broken down bike, she's kind of stuck there...
This is what Americans must imagine Oxford to be like, complete with traditional English rain, and little tinkly bells above every shop door.
Waking up the following morning, you're given a brief tutorial of the basics of Gray Matter, in which you'll need to locate your pet rabbit, Houdini, and get him back in his cage with some food and water. It's here you're introduced to the game's awkward controls, which are also actually its biggest problem. Instead of moving your character around and pressing A to interact with things a la the Monkey Island games, Gray Matter opts for a wheel of 'hotspots' you can bring up with RT - pushing the analogue stick towards the one you want and pressing A will make Sam stroll over. It's tricky to begin with, but what makes it even more confusing is that sometimes there's more things to interact with than there are slots, meaning if you're not standing next to the thing you want to interact with, it may well not appear in the list - which begs the question why you don't just walk up to things and interact with them properly in the first place. While it's initially confusing, you do get used to it - but it just serves to make the game feel far more awkward than it needs to be. In terms of presentation, the only other niggle I had is that the text seems rather small, in a kind of curly cursive font, meaning people with less-than-optimal set-ups may struggle - I had to sit right in front of my 23" TV to read it, and I have quite good eyesight...
As the game progresses, Sam begins to discover a bit more about the Professor's past, and how he mourns for his late wife. In fact, his grief's driven the Professor close to the edge of insanity, and his yearning for his wife drives him to the edge. As Sam discovers the truth about the professor's past, his research into the paranormal, and the members-only Daedalus Club, she also comes across a strange series of events that took place at Oxford University, which also seems to connect all three things, making a intriguing story even more interesting.
Being a magician, Sam Everett has a few tricks up her sleeve (literally) to help you on your way through the adventure, and owns her very own book of magic tricks, which can be used to perform the odd switcheroo, rig a game of cards or pinch something from someone to solve the various puzzles you're presented with in the game. The magic trick book Sam carries around with her has handy descriptions for each trick and instructions on how to perform them.
Right near the beginning of the game, you're tasked with finding some volunteers for Styles' neruo-experiment. Travelling to the University, you come across Harvey and Lisa who are arguing - Harvey's recorded an embarrassing film of Lisa, and, presumably to protect her dignity, she's taken it and is refusing to give it him back. Get the film back from Lisa, and Harvey will agree to take part in the experiment - in order to get it back, you'll need to use the 'Up In Smoke' trick from your handbook, with the only difference being you're using a pair of cartridges, rather than a deck of cards. According to your magic book you need to do the following sequence of seven events:
Left shows the steps needed to complete the trick; Right shows a random list of your basic moves that doesn't really serve much of a purpose, other than to confuse you...
These magic tricks are quite straight-forward, assuming you're reading the right page. Whatever you do, make sure you're looking at the left hand page of the book - seeing as I learnt from experience that trying to assemble a trick from the opposite page, that just so happens to be a list of the 'basic moves' you can perform makes it rather hard to work out how to do the selected trick... What can I say - I'm a natural blonde.
For a point and click game, the puzzles are relatively logical - especially considering the point and click genre's tendency to make you do weird things, like putting custard and an octopus tied up with string into a toilet, before putting some prunes in a Fishmonger's caviare so when he takes a trip to the toilet, you can steal his golden belt (yes, that is an actual solution from an actual game). It's generally obvious which items need to be used together, and where, making it more accessible than some games in the genre, as it plays more like an interactive story with some light puzzle solving thrown in - not really a game to tax your grey matter, as the title might suggest...
Puzzles are mostly in the form of simple use X with Y to open something, although there are a few riddles to work out, too - the most notable early one being 'The Betrayer's Price' in Chapter 1, which is a rather long, elaborate puzzle that may be something to do with the mysterious Daedalus club:
Five pieces of goldIn the scholars' heart
Where: High above High and reigning over Queen,
Find the room with the view, the Quadrifurcus
Then: Fire, water, earth, wind
And the fifth is at the end,
Where souls choose their fate
All together: They point to a place
There, enter the name
Of the person who sold his soul for thirty
OK, so it doesn't rhyme (and you can probably skip this paragraph if you're looking to avoid all spoilers), but for the rest of you, here's the solution. The 'scholars' heart' is Oxford, where you'll find Carfax tower, next to Queen street in the Oxford City centre - the word 'carfax' is an intersection where four roads meet, and 'Quadrifurcus' is latin for 'four-forked'. It's on top of this tower that you'll find a mysterious red box with a hole in the bottom, placed on a wall behind a door. According to the riddle, you next need fire, and using the matches in your inventory on the hole on the bottom of the box will reveal a piece of 'gold' - one of five fragments of a piece of paper, which once assembled jigsaw-style will 'point to a place' - and a drawing of one of the Oxford house crests, a clue to the next piece of the trail.All in all, Gray Matter is a weird one. The plot itself is well-paced and interesting, with a fair few twists and turns along the way, and the puzzles are hard enough to make you think, but not tricky enough to stump you, with that near perfect difficulty level that so many other games like this are missing. The only downer, really, is the controls, which let down what could otherwise have been a highly recommended point and click game.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
