Gray Matter (Xbox 360)

like the other reviewers said, this game is like monkey island or broken sword and to be honest you would be better off buying them. not to say this isn't a good game it just lacks the fine detail needed to keep you interested. games of this genre are always HUGE games with hours of gameplay, so value for money there! my only gripe, and its a major one, is that i cant read the words. i have perfect vision but the words in the magic book and in the room searches are blurry to me. i have played with the contrast etc but end up with sore eyes after a few minutes. if i had an HD tv i'm pretty sure this would show the words clearly and this could be a really enjoyable game. it is also fairly difficult so gives you a challenge without pulling your hair out

i have to admit i hated this game it wasnt a game for me at all but im not saying everyone will hate it because its up to you to make up your own mind. buy it and give your verdict

Having read the other reviews mine comes from a slightly different angle. I only really using the Xbox once or twice a week so am not a hardcore gamer but do enjoy puzzles or shooting stuff (my typical games include Oblivion, Gears, AvP, Naughty Bear, Dante's Inferno type games so have quite a varied taste) but this is the first game i've had of this type. I'm not awesome at games and it tends to take me a while to get through them no matter how much i enjoy them, but I actually found Grey Matter quite slow and unresponsive. It did not capture my attention or imagination, i found the controls more than irritating trying to select the right bit to examine in the game play, i also found the magic tricks quite difficult at first. I've not yet finished the game and if i'm honest....i dont think i'll waste any more time doing so...if anyone wants to buy a copy i know where one is going cheap!

If you are into classic point and click games, then this game wont dissapoint you. It reminds me a little bit of broken sword games. Pros: good puzzle solving , good graphics, gr8 voice acting and a " mysterious " story. Cons: maybe a little bit shorts. This game is also " Rare " . Not everyone has it on their game shelf/collection. So BUY IT NOW ;-) Cheers

I have not enjoyed a game so much for quite a while. I found Gray Matter to have a deep and unique story, and was actually a bit sad when I finished it! I'm not going to say this game is without faults, it's not as polished as some of the big game productions. Particularly the interface for the xbox 360 took a bit of time to get your head around, which jarred the first couple of "chapters" of the story. However once you got into the swing of it I found it to be fine. The best parts to Gray Matter distinctly is the plot, which has a good number of strands too it, and no early on obvious conclusion. The main characters have depth to them and at times act in nuanced ways. It took me a while to get my head around David Styles personality, and found his constantly talking about his dead wife weird until I realised he was some what of an obsessed and tragic character, but not one we're meant to pity or empathise with. The puzzles are also good, and generally avoid the needless fetch missions which seem to be relied on to bulk games out these days. In the end I got about 20 hours of game play out of Gray Matter, and am now hoping Jane Jensen's new studio will produce a sequel when she's finished off the Gabriel Knight remake.

I can't add much more than what these two gent's have already said. However the main selling point at the time was Action Adventure Game and a new pace breaker yet to be done in other games, do magic tricks. I blame myself for not readin into this illusionism thing a hell of a lot more. Since I saw the word magic I stop reading and went ahead with the pre-order. Aside from the extremely short game play, what really crippled the game for me was the totally boring, uniteresting use of magic tricks. How can you bum up magic 101 see Gray Matter. A very unispired and short list of trick that out right tells you EXACTLY how to preform it, there is no room for interpretation or guess work, it is simply word for word instructions. just adding to - Click NPC - Chat nothings - Do trick - recieve what you need. The other point the game failed to me its marketing criteria is that it's not what I'd consider Action or Adventure. Never once before time of release did it state it was Point and Click. I didn't complete the game, I looked for a walkthrough on abit I was stuck on after magically taking someones letter and unable to put it back in the envelop and drop it back on the pile. It was there I saw the remarkable short game. I couldn't care less about the ending. My question is, how much space is used on the CD? less than 1/10 maybe. PS - Don't know or heard a soul in England ever call it a "Cell Phone"!

This game did not work. The disk was not read.

Point and click adventure games have been a neglected genre on the xbox 360 with only the Sherlock Holmes game to represent the genre in recent memory. I knew very little about this game when I ordered it but being a big fan of Broken Sword 1 and 2 and Monkey Island I thought I would take a chance and give this game a try. The game has a more adult theme, set in Oxford, you play as both Sam Everitt an aspiring magician and Professor David Styles a recluse who is struggling to deal with the death of his wife. I won't spoil the plot but it does start out strongly drawing you in and making you want to discover what is happening at Dread Hill House. This draws me to one my biggest disappointments with the game - I got it on Saturday morning and I finished it on Sunday still managing to fit in watching the 6 nations Rugby and the carling cup final. The game is short lasting me just 6 hours of gameplay - one of the achievements itself is finishing the game in under 5 hours. Should you get stuck on a puzzle it may last you longer but they are not that difficult and there is no real replay value as the plot itself is very linear so you would see nothing new on a second playthrough. The plot itself is also full of holes with some of the things you discover never really being explained and characters turning up where they shouldn't without explanation. My second gripe with this game is the control system - you hold down the left trigger and scroll the left stick to hightlight the item you want then press A to activate. This is all well and good but when you are in a small room with 20+ items of interest it becomes a real effort to select the item you want. This really saps the fun from the game and I spent most of it wishing for a mouse pointer Broken Sword style which would have avoided this issue. All in all such a shame, I really wanted to like this game and was hoping for a fun point and click adventure to keep me amused for hours, sadly this fails to achieve this and just left me disappointed.