Resonance is a PC point-and-click adventure game from Wadjet Eye Games, developer of several critically-acclaimed adventure games, such as The Shivah and the Blackwell series. You take on the role of four key-players in a semi-apocalyptic story: Ed, Anna, Detective Bennett, and Ray. A strange blackout has occurred and it is up to these four people to work together and figure out what happened. A simple enough story, on the surface, but the gameplay is where things get a little complicated making for some frustrating moments where the solution was never particularly clear, let alone the task at hand. At start, you take on the role of Ed, who is characterized heavily by his apartment. There’s no food in the fridge, stuff is littered on the floor, and he has trouble remembering what his phone sounds like when it beeps (who the hell doesn’t recognize their own phone?). Later, you take on the role of Anna, the romantic love-interest of Ed, though in a dream sequence, where you play a very young Anna. From there you play as Detective Bennett, as well as Ray, just to get a small introduction to each character and to the overarching plot. The greatest part about these characters is that they are, for the post part, completely voiced over. However, it bears noting that some of the voice-overs aren’t exactly spot-on in terms of performance, sometimes causing a slip in believability, taking the player out of the story. At certain times, there are those videogame moments that are almost inescapable where characters will flat out disregard things in a room just to clue the player in that whatever it is, it isn’t important to the objective. All in all, the voice overs are a great addition that provide an added layer of immersion, albeit sometimes unbelievable or poorly acted. The gameplay of Resonance is as most point-and-click adventure games go. You click on things to move to a location or to interact with an object. However, Resonance takes it one step further by adding the concept of Long-Term Memory (LTM) and Short-Term Memory (STM) to the classic Inventory (INV). Long-Term Memories serve as reminders of key moments in a characters life or just key things for the player to remember for their current objective, while Short-Term Memories are things that the player can remember from any given scene by dragging said thing into the player’s STM and using it as a conversational piece later that may help the player advance the conversation and get the information they are seeking (the same thing can be done in conversation with Inventory pieces and Long-Term Memories). The thing that makes this all fall apart is the lack of direction that is given at times, where the player is simply expected to understand how certain objects are supposed to interact with the environment or how a memory could be used to trigger advancement in conversation. For example, early in the game, while playing as Ed you must work…
