Watching Blade Runner last night, my head kept flashing back to various scenes and locations of the Blade Runner PC game. Blade Runner was a point and click game developed by Westwood and released in 1997. It ended up disappointing critics for two reasons; it was made by Westwood, whose work work was always eagerly anticipated and expected to be revolutionary, which was aggravated by the fact Westwood announced the game was going the revolutionize adventure games. While the game didn't revolutione gaming mechanics, it still remains a classic for setting an important (and sadly overlooked) new visual and atmospheric benchmark.
The game follows the movie closely enough to draw on its strenghts and please fans, but not so closely that it feels tired. Westwood recreated all of the major sets from the movie with an impressive atttention to detail. The memorable characters are in the game, with the addition of a few new ones. Blade Runner was a visual masterpiece, ahead of its time. For Westwood's adaptation to faithfully recreate a Los Angeles of 2019 on par with Ridley Scott's oeuvre is an impressive feat.
Why do I like this game so much? Blade Runner the movie took the world of Do Androids Drwam of Electric Sheep? and fleshed it out on the big screen. Blade Runner the game lets you live it out. So what if there aren't many puzzles and the game isn't as challenging as others in the genre? You can administer Voigt Kampf tests, use the awesome photo enhancing computer (I am sure it has a name, but I don't remember it) and solve crimes. Westwood took an amazing fantasy world, spent thousands of hours making it interactive and critics spit on it for flaws that would have surely ruined a lesser game, but not this.
I played the game when I was a pre-teen, before watching the movie and before reading the book. Westwood introduced my generation to one of the greatest creations of modern science fiction.
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