This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Gemini Rue is a 90s PnC you’ll be shocked to learn came out in 2011. It was headed up by sole developer Joshua Nuernberger in tribute to a genre he grew up loving, and while there is much to enjoy here, I ultimately feel he may have gone too far in the throwback department given the number of outdated elements; elements at the forefront of an otherwise amazing experience.
The first of these is of course the graphics, which unfortunately just don’t look good. Even by the standards of old-school adventure games, character pixelation extraneously muzzy, with NPCs, male and female, seemingly wrought out of the same jaggedy template. Clothing is relatively fine, however everything else, from hair to facial features, somehow looks worse than Paulina and Mario’s from the original Donkey Kong. Environments fare better thanks to a diversity of areas and sharp atmospheric effects ala heavy rain and bleak fluorescents, though even they suffer from being too backgroundy regardless of their placement in the scenery. I don’t know if it was because of poor stereoscoping or insufficient detailing, but it often felt like I was Steve in Blue’s Clues, walking past a series of 2D vistas pretending to be three-dimensional in depth if that makes sense.
I don’t want to seem like a complete pr!ck as I know Gemini came from a small team that simply did not have the funds to spruce things up. However, the sad reality is, for better and for worse, graphics are the initial thing people will see and consequently make judgments from, and so by shortchanging this aspect of the production, Nuernberger may have cost himself potential purchasers. Even those willing to look past this may be put off by the second antiquated comportment, that being the replication of the four action wheel from Full Throttle. To recap for the uninitiated, rather than do the smart thing and consolidate all potential responses into a single prompt, Full Throttle gave the right click button four reactions (examine, touch, talk, kick), and the reason it was stupid then is the reason it is stupid now- the vast majority of objects will only have one logical interaction, making it needlessly cumbersome to go through two menus each time you want to do said interaction. Why in the world would I ever want to kick an elevator button or talk to a piece of machinery? While it does lead to the occasional humorous comment, in a post-Daedalic era, it’s a fundamentally archaic interface that bogs the game down.
If you can pardon these flaws, though, Gemini Rue is a thoroughly entertaining affair, and the lion’s share of that comes from the story. Taking place in the 23rd century, you control two different protagonists with their own goals: a police officer named Azriel trying to find his brother, and a prisoner named Charlie attempting to escape his mysterious penitentiary. The two tales connect in interesting ways I won’t delve into, but on their own merits I found them intriguing due to the uninterrupted flow of events. I’ve played enough PnCs to know this is a genre ripe for the dumbest kind of filler imaginable wherein characters are often impeded by obstacles as lame as they are unrealistic, and the result of superimposing these on the player tends to be the death of the game’s pacing. Gemini Rue, au contraire, is the first title I’ve completed where levels actually felt organic: it never seems like the writers are wasting your time, and as such, it’s easier to get invested in their world: you notice details about this society, you pay closer attention to the discourses on the street; and when major storybeats occur they simultaneously feel natural and earned. Yeah, a missing persons/prison break plot may not sound the most unique, yet it’s through these smaller minutiae that you end up getting engrossed in everything.
Significantly helping all of this are the conversations, which are some of the BEST I’ve ever heard in a video game, and I’m not referring to their thematic content. It’s hard to describe, but when characters speak with each other, it comes across like an actual discussion between individuals and not a pre-scripted chat constructed beforehand if that makes sense. Like, the word selection and vocal cadence match the real-life bouncing you naturally get between normal human beings engaged in a sidebar or water cooler convo. Nuernberger really went all out in terms of hammering a succinct screenplay, and it definitely shows throughout your journey.
Heedless of my praise, there were three negatives that held Gemini back from being as great as it could have been. For starters, and this is admittedly subjective, but it’s not really cyberpunk despite what other reviewers will tell you. It certainly takes influences, however you’ll notice a severe lack of traits typically associated with the genre- there’s no high tech being abused by low lives, no malevolent corporations, no neon, nothing. It’s instead more akin to a crime drama with social sci-fi elements, so keep that in mind lest you walk in expecting something more concerned with societal collapse and cybernetic culture.
Secondly, Gemini Rue fails to paint a sufficient picture of the dystopia Azriel and Charlie reside in. Through those aforementioned dialogues you get a sense of the basic history, yet it’s very little in the grand scheme of things, which is a shame because, taking place 200 years into the future, you’d think there’d be a lot more lore worth telling via optional material. The game has a news terminal, but its few bulletins primarily pertain to local events involving your character and not larger world affairs (compared to Deus Ex and VA-11 HALL-A).
Finally, Gemini clearly has greater aspirations as far as major themes it wants to tackle, yet largely forgets about them until the third act wherein it tries to make up for this absence by shoving all its philosophy down your throat en totus. It’s as though the writers had an entire dissertation, only to forget about it until they came close to the end of development, subsequently leading to a dissatisfying conclusion.+
When it comes to the sound trifecta, all three facets are mixed in terms of quality. Voice acting is hit-or-miss, with both leading men sadly falling on the latter side of the spectrum. They’re voiced by Brian Silliman, who never should’ve gotten past the audition stage for either. He plays Azriel overly-raspy, as though he was trying to do an impression of Cal Dodd’s Wolverine (who was never that good to begin with, sorry X-Men: TAS fans). However, his performance as Charlie is downright atrocious, giving the guy an extremely grating tone deaf voice (pitch not offensiveness) solely alleviated by the guy not talking much. A lot of the unnamed goons you run into also falter, boasting stereotypical New Yorker accents.
On the flipside, The Director of the detention center (Joe Rodriguez) is terrific, holding a modulation that successfully balances evil mastermind, caring teacher, and condescending overseer. Other good VAs include Azriel’s partner (Abe Goldfarb), his old buddy Matthius (Clay McLeod Chapman), as well as every single female actress (seriously, superb casting here, with Shelly Shenoy and Dara Seitzman giving standout performances in particular).
The SFX does its job. Due to the aforestated quick pacing of the story, you never really spend enough time in one place to notice routine noises that would’ve been more distracting in a larger video game, and what’s there is good enough.
Then there’s the score by Nathan Allen Pinard, whose perception is going to vary depending on each gamer. For me, my issue was it lacked consistency- you have tracks that dip into heavy synths, others darkly orchestral, a couple with Jazz beats, and a fair amount that intermix some combination of the above, and while I would never want to limit artistic creativity, I do think there should’ve been a greater thematic overlay between each song that unfortunately isn’t there. It’s a score more befitting for a level-based platformer, not a singular narrative.
Finally, we come to the gameplay. I know I’ve been describing Gemini as a PnC, but the reality is it’s so different from its brethren that I don’t even know if that’s an accurate description. See, you’re not really going around collecting items to be combined/utilized at a later date- circumventing barriers is more about helping others/getting them to help you quid pro quo style, whether that’s by doing them favors, tricking ’em, or engaging in a standard PnC action of object application, and the result is a game that feels very diverse. Few solutions repeat, and given that each is backed by a story impetus, you’re provided an extra layer of motivation to continue onward. Now, Gemini does mix things up via throwing in random puzzles, as well as a gun minigame involving timed shootouts with goons, and these are luckily never overdone so as to be tiring/relied-on. When they come up, it’s at the right time-and-place: a pleasant refresher if you will.
So yeah, in the end I definitely recommend Gemini Rue. True, it stumbles in several departments, but it ultimately succeeds where it matters most: the story and gameplay.
Notes:
-For all my complaints about the graphics, the aesthetics do successfully convey a seedy grungeness to the world. Plus you get some pleasant pixel portraits of characters whenever the majority of them speak (it’s only one drawing per an individual, but still cool nonetheless).
-Love the way Boryokudan is pronounced accurately by everyone!
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+So Gemini wants to grapple with the human condition, specifically whether we’re defined by our actions, memories, or innate psyche. In a longer game, I suppose this could’ve made for an interesting thesis, but on the outset it seems like a redundant question given that the obvious answer is some combo of all three. Perhaps to compensate for this, the devs throw in a unique take on the classic free will vs. determinism debate (do you truly have autonomy if your activities were influenced beforehand?), as well as an existential topic regarding whether our sense of self is dictated by our connections/existence among peers (and whether this, too, can be legitimate if said peers are preconceived).
Again, all of these are fascinating on their own, but the problem is the writers compress them into 2.5 speeches in the endgame, not giving them any breathing room whatsoever. The climax is also a gigantic disappointment as, rather than present these threads as subject to debate, the writers instead give their own definitive take through Sayuri convincing Azriel not to upload his past memories as they don’t define him. First-off, it is inherently stupid for her to have this radical change of heart when, just a couple minutes earlier, she was willing to risk her life to acquire this data. Secondly, why not leave it up to the player to decide? If you’re really going to harp about freedom, then it would’ve been far more logical to give Azriel a choice over forcing him to go one way.
In addition, as great as the plot twist was, it does leave a burning inquiry which barely avoids falling into plot hole territory- if Matthius’s whole purpose was to manipulate Azriel into returning to Center 7, why not give him its location from the get-go? Couldn’t he and the Director have made up some nonsense about him acquiring the coordinates during his years with the Boryokudan? It seems strange to have them passively step aside and let Azriel risk his life to acquire them considering they wanted him back alive.
Gemini Rue is a 90s PnC you’ll be shocked to learn came out in 2011. It was headed up by sole developer Joshua Nuernberger in tribute to a genre he grew up loving, and while there is much to enjoy here, I ultimately feel he may have gone too far in the throwback department given the number of outdated elements; elements at the forefront of an otherwise amazing experience.
The first of these is of course the graphics, which unfortunately just don’t look good. Even by the standards of old-school adventure games, character pixelation extraneously muzzy, with NPCs, male and female, seemingly wrought out of the same jaggedy template. Clothing is relatively fine, however everything else, from hair to facial features, somehow looks worse than Paulina and Mario’s from the original Donkey Kong. Environments fare better thanks to a diversity of areas and sharp atmospheric effects ala heavy rain and bleak fluorescents, though even they suffer from being too backgroundy regardless of their placement in the scenery. I don’t know if it was because of poor stereoscoping or insufficient detailing, but it often felt like I was Steve in Blue’s Clues, walking past a series of 2D vistas pretending to be three-dimensional in depth if that makes sense.
I don’t want to seem like a complete pr!ck as I know Gemini came from a small team that simply did not have the funds to spruce things up. However, the sad reality is, for better and for worse, graphics are the initial thing people will see and consequently make judgments from, and so by shortchanging this aspect of the production, Nuernberger may have cost himself potential purchasers. Even those willing to look past this may be put off by the second antiquated comportment, that being the replication of the four action wheel from Full Throttle. To recap for the uninitiated, rather than do the smart thing and consolidate all potential responses into a single prompt, Full Throttle gave the right click button four reactions (examine, touch, talk, kick), and the reason it was stupid then is the reason it is stupid now- the vast majority of objects will only have one logical interaction, making it needlessly cumbersome to go through two menus each time you want to do said interaction. Why in the world would I ever want to kick an elevator button or talk to a piece of machinery? While it does lead to the occasional humorous comment, in a post-Daedalic era, it’s a fundamentally archaic interface that bogs the game down.
If you can pardon these flaws, though, Gemini Rue is a thoroughly entertaining affair, and the lion’s share of that comes from the story. Taking place in the 23rd century, you control two different protagonists with their own goals: a police officer named Azriel trying to find his brother, and a prisoner named Charlie attempting to escape his mysterious penitentiary. The two tales connect in interesting ways I won’t delve into, but on their own merits I found them intriguing due to the uninterrupted flow of events. I’ve played enough PnCs to know this is a genre ripe for the dumbest kind of filler imaginable wherein characters are often impeded by obstacles as lame as they are unrealistic, and the result of superimposing these on the player tends to be the death of the game’s pacing. Gemini Rue, au contraire, is the first title I’ve completed where levels actually felt organic: it never seems like the writers are wasting your time, and as such, it’s easier to get invested in their world: you notice details about this society, you pay closer attention to the discourses on the street; and when major storybeats occur they simultaneously feel natural and earned. Yeah, a missing persons/prison break plot may not sound the most unique, yet it’s through these smaller minutiae that you end up getting engrossed in everything.
Significantly helping all of this are the conversations, which are some of the BEST I’ve ever heard in a video game, and I’m not referring to their thematic content. It’s hard to describe, but when characters speak with each other, it comes across like an actual discussion between individuals and not a pre-scripted chat constructed beforehand if that makes sense. Like, the word selection and vocal cadence match the real-life bouncing you naturally get between normal human beings engaged in a sidebar or water cooler convo. Nuernberger really went all out in terms of hammering a succinct screenplay, and it definitely shows throughout your journey.
Heedless of my praise, there were three negatives that held Gemini back from being as great as it could have been. For starters, and this is admittedly subjective, but it’s not really cyberpunk despite what other reviewers will tell you. It certainly takes influences, however you’ll notice a severe lack of traits typically associated with the genre- there’s no high tech being abused by low lives, no malevolent corporations, no neon, nothing. It’s instead more akin to a crime drama with social sci-fi elements, so keep that in mind lest you walk in expecting something more concerned with societal collapse and cybernetic culture.
Secondly, Gemini Rue fails to paint a sufficient picture of the dystopia Azriel and Charlie reside in. Through those aforementioned dialogues you get a sense of the basic history, yet it’s very little in the grand scheme of things, which is a shame because, taking place 200 years into the future, you’d think there’d be a lot more lore worth telling via optional material. The game has a news terminal, but its few bulletins primarily pertain to local events involving your character and not larger world affairs (compared to Deus Ex and VA-11 HALL-A).
Finally, Gemini clearly has greater aspirations as far as major themes it wants to tackle, yet largely forgets about them until the third act wherein it tries to make up for this absence by shoving all its philosophy down your throat en totus. It’s as though the writers had an entire dissertation, only to forget about it until they came close to the end of development, subsequently leading to a dissatisfying conclusion.+
When it comes to the sound trifecta, all three facets are mixed in terms of quality. Voice acting is hit-or-miss, with both leading men sadly falling on the latter side of the spectrum. They’re voiced by Brian Silliman, who never should’ve gotten past the audition stage for either. He plays Azriel overly-raspy, as though he was trying to do an impression of Cal Dodd’s Wolverine (who was never that good to begin with, sorry X-Men: TAS fans). However, his performance as Charlie is downright atrocious, giving the guy an extremely grating tone deaf voice (pitch not offensiveness) solely alleviated by the guy not talking much. A lot of the unnamed goons you run into also falter, boasting stereotypical New Yorker accents.
On the flipside, The Director of the detention center (Joe Rodriguez) is terrific, holding a modulation that successfully balances evil mastermind, caring teacher, and condescending overseer. Other good VAs include Azriel’s partner (Abe Goldfarb), his old buddy Matthius (Clay McLeod Chapman), as well as every single female actress (seriously, superb casting here, with Shelly Shenoy and Dara Seitzman giving standout performances in particular).
The SFX does its job. Due to the aforestated quick pacing of the story, you never really spend enough time in one place to notice routine noises that would’ve been more distracting in a larger video game, and what’s there is good enough.
Then there’s the score by Nathan Allen Pinard, whose perception is going to vary depending on each gamer. For me, my issue was it lacked consistency- you have tracks that dip into heavy synths, others darkly orchestral, a couple with Jazz beats, and a fair amount that intermix some combination of the above, and while I would never want to limit artistic creativity, I do think there should’ve been a greater thematic overlay between each song that unfortunately isn’t there. It’s a score more befitting for a level-based platformer, not a singular narrative.
Finally, we come to the gameplay. I know I’ve been describing Gemini as a PnC, but the reality is it’s so different from its brethren that I don’t even know if that’s an accurate description. See, you’re not really going around collecting items to be combined/utilized at a later date- circumventing barriers is more about helping others/getting them to help you quid pro quo style, whether that’s by doing them favors, tricking ’em, or engaging in a standard PnC action of object application, and the result is a game that feels very diverse. Few solutions repeat, and given that each is backed by a story impetus, you’re provided an extra layer of motivation to continue onward. Now, Gemini does mix things up via throwing in random puzzles, as well as a gun minigame involving timed shootouts with goons, and these are luckily never overdone so as to be tiring/relied-on. When they come up, it’s at the right time-and-place: a pleasant refresher if you will.
So yeah, in the end I definitely recommend Gemini Rue. True, it stumbles in several departments, but it ultimately succeeds where it matters most: the story and gameplay.
Notes:
-For all my complaints about the graphics, the aesthetics do successfully convey a seedy grungeness to the world. Plus you get some pleasant pixel portraits of characters whenever the majority of them speak (it’s only one drawing per an individual, but still cool nonetheless).
-Love the way Boryokudan is pronounced accurately by everyone!
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+So Gemini wants to grapple with the human condition, specifically whether we’re defined by our actions, memories, or innate psyche. In a longer game, I suppose this could’ve made for an interesting thesis, but on the outset it seems like a redundant question given that the obvious answer is some combo of all three. Perhaps to compensate for this, the devs throw in a unique take on the classic free will vs. determinism debate (do you truly have autonomy if your activities were influenced beforehand?), as well as an existential topic regarding whether our sense of self is dictated by our connections/existence among peers (and whether this, too, can be legitimate if said peers are preconceived).
Again, all of these are fascinating on their own, but the problem is the writers compress them into 2.5 speeches in the endgame, not giving them any breathing room whatsoever. The climax is also a gigantic disappointment as, rather than present these threads as subject to debate, the writers instead give their own definitive take through Sayuri convincing Azriel not to upload his past memories as they don’t define him. First-off, it is inherently stupid for her to have this radical change of heart when, just a couple minutes earlier, she was willing to risk her life to acquire this data. Secondly, why not leave it up to the player to decide? If you’re really going to harp about freedom, then it would’ve been far more logical to give Azriel a choice over forcing him to go one way.
In addition, as great as the plot twist was, it does leave a burning inquiry which barely avoids falling into plot hole territory- if Matthius’s whole purpose was to manipulate Azriel into returning to Center 7, why not give him its location from the get-go? Couldn’t he and the Director have made up some nonsense about him acquiring the coordinates during his years with the Boryokudan? It seems strange to have them passively step aside and let Azriel risk his life to acquire them considering they wanted him back alive.