Journey vs Linda Brown: Interactive Story
Journey
Journey is literally a quintessential "artsy" adventure game. Why so? Well, the game puts you in the shoes of a mysterious robed figure who you will control throughout your adventure across beautiful, quiet and mostly desert landscapes. Each landscape provides players with a puzzle to solve that will allow them to move on to the next scene, though players can simply roam around the place and drink in the gorgeous visuals.There isn't a lot of buttons in the game and that's fine enough since you really don't need much to solve the puzzles, but personally, I'm incredibly intrigued by the Sing function. Although it is used to solve certain puzzles, most of the time you'll probably be using it idly while your character is travelling. Depending on how long you press the button and how fast you do so, you can actually create amazing little tunes that you'd love to have it recorded down and turned into perhaps a ringtone or something.
That said, Journey is a game that's so much more than composing music and solving puzzles. It is a journey (like its namesake) to help the robed figure discover who he/she is and to help you figure out what's happened in the game world, resulting in the sprawling desert that spans most of the game.
Linda Brown: Interactive Story
Linda Brown: Interactive Story is The Other Guys' forey into the interactive storytelling business after their pretty good sucess with the Sherlock-themed hidden objects game, Sherlock Holmes: Lost Detective. Similar to the latter, this game features an intriguing and immersive, romance-and-mystery-filled story where you'll be playing as Linda Brown herself. Meet a host of interesting characters (and you can even date some of them), travel to various locations as you follow the trail of clues, and make important decisions that will change the path of your narrative.However, unlike games like Episode or Choices, Linda Brown: Interactive Story has a gameplay that is a lot similar to any of the games Telltale Games produced. This means that characters in the game will remember your reactions or responses and act accordingly the next time you meet.
The only major downside in this game is that, like Episodes and Choices, there are special "premium decisions" that you can make to further deepen the storyline, but the diamonds needed to buy these special decisions can be pretty costly - $3 per premium decision. Due to this, it might be great to have the option of earning diamonds by watching video ads.
Overall though, Linda Brown: Interactive Story is still a very well-written interactive story that doesn't only have romantic elements but also an intriguing mystery that rivals most hidden objects games. If you enjoy a good mystery with a dash of romance, this is the game you should play.