Perils of Man: Chapter 1 Review

The name LucasArts easily conjures up excitement for adventure gaming fans. That's understandable given that some of the finest titles within the genre stem from that very studio. For that reason alone, Perils of Man should be noticed. Designed by veterans from such classics as The Curse of Monkey Island and Full Throttle, Perils of Man is certainly worth checking out.

It's a title that's dark both figuratively and literally. Players control Ana, a young teenager who's effectively been hidden away by her mother since her father's mysterious disappearance ten years ago. Highlighting the fear that one grieving can't help but feel, Perils of Man is a relatively powerful setup for a storyline. Ana and her mother are somewhat understandably fearful of many things, which isn't overly convenient when the power has just gone out in their fairly large mansion. It's down to the player to figure out exactly what's going on, except this is only chapter one so don't expect resolution any time soon.

Riffing on familiar motifs, puzzles are a fairly entertaining and thought provoking bunch. They're logical much of the time, but not necessarily easy, with number sequences also playing a role and a particular challenge stemming from strange symbols and a grandfather clock with a specific number pattern. Each forwards the story rather than feeling like filler to make up time.

Simple controls help things along also, with interacting with objects fairly intuitive and a clearly laid out inventory system making it easy to combine items.

Perils of Man only really suffers from two particularly noticeable flaws, and one of those won't be an issue to many. Perils of Man is currently pretty unstable for the iPad 2 as well as the iPad Mini. I certainly found it crashing a little too frequently for comfort, although at least the app does a good job of returning one back to where they left off.

More importantly, the voice acting within Perils of Man is fairly iffy, turning downright annoying at times. I found myself switching my iPad to mute merely to avoid the irritations. It's unfortunate given that the dialogue itself deserves much better than this.

Such issues aside, and Perils of Man is still a quality adventure game. Available entirely free without any in-app purchases in sight, as well as offering an interesting storyline and some entertaining puzzles, it's a fine start to what I hope will turn out to be a fantastic episodic series.