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I have bought an Intel small form factor PC to catch up on the last 15 years of PC games. I picked up Psychonauts for a dollar on GOG and want to know what other games of his will give me a good overview of Tim Shafers work. I played the old LucasArts games to my satisfaction, but is Brutal Legend worth picking up today? Broken Age looks great, but is it worth a play for more than the style? Any Tim Shafer buffs out there?

Costume Quest, Stacking, and Iron Brigade. Do it.

I've played through a few Shafer games (including Psychonauts). The only one I really liked was Full Throttle. It's on GOG now, so I suggest playing it.

WARvault wrote:Broken Age looks great, but is it worth a play for more than the style? Any Tim Shafer buffs out there?

I like Broken Age quite a lot, though I've never finished it (yet). I think that with a lot (most?) of the more recent Double-Fine productions, Shafer has taken more of a 'Creative Director' role (think in terms of Miyamoto's later day involvement with Mario) rather than a direct hands-on approach. That's not to say they don't have that trademark style though(!), just that I think the best representations of his work are his earlier games. In some ways I liken Tim Shafer to Tim Burton; at least half the reason you engage with his work is for his unique stylistic flare.

Personally, I don't think any of his modenr-era games are worth playing. The issue is that, ultimately, his games are very poor from a gameplay perspective and fun characters and quirkiness can't overcome that. Psychonauts, for example, resembles those licensed Disney 3D platformers, it's just better written.

Erik_Twice wrote:Personally, I don't think any of his modenr-era games are worth playing. The issue is that, ultimately, his games are very poor from a gameplay perspective and fun characters and quirkiness can't overcome that. Psychonauts, for example, resembles those licensed Disney 3D platformers, it's just better written.

To play off of this though, I'd ask how we look at "his" games. For instance, I recommended playing several Double-Fine games...but those are games from his company, not necessarily ones that were directly from the mind of Shafer. When I recommend the likes of Stacking, Costume Quest, and Iron Brigade, I'm recommending things from his studio that he likely was involved with but not the generating force. Yes, some of these titles are going to be derivative, and some play with genre concepts (Costume Quest is a western take on JRPGs, while Iron Brigade combines tower defense, mech combat, and a faux-WWI aesthetic). I think we have to look at Shafer's work as an employee at LucasArts and then later at the work of the company he heads where it comes from "Shafer"...but it doesn't come from Shafer, if you get my drift.

WARvault wrote:is Brutal Legend worth picking up today?

It's available for free for the next 20 hours or so, and at that price why not?

(unrelated, but, MDK is free as well).