Chaos on Deponia
Score: 82% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment Developer: Daedalic Entertainment Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Graphics & Sound: Chaos on Deponia continues where the last game, Deponia, left off and provides an even wider variety of zany and amusing puzzles, plus a much smoother gameplay experience that keeps the pacing fairly steady throughout the whole game, a nice change over the first title. Chaos on Deponia takes place in the same junk-filled, steampunk-esque setting as the first game, except this time, you see even more of Deponia's endless trash heaps and the civilization that has grown up around them. While most of the game takes place on Deponia with its primarily brown color-scheme, there are the occasional parts that show us glimpses of the floating city in the sky, a much cleaner and shinier location as different from Deponia as night and day. Chaos on Deponia introduces the player to a slew of new characters that are as colorful as Rufus, Goal and Cletus, but also with their own personalities. Like the first game, the voicework in this new adventure is pretty spot-on, which is good given the number of conversations the game throws at you.
Gameplay: Deponia ended with Rufus sending the beautiful Goal back to her city in the sky, but instead of Rufus being able to join her, he falls back to the trash planet. While he feels that she will inform the council that there are people on the planet below their floating city, he still wants off of the trash heap. Chaos on Deponia kicks off with one of Rufus' oddball schemes to get on Goal's capsule. Too bad Goal's fiance, Cletus, who looks just like Rufus, is also on the capsule and the ensuing confrontation sends both Goal and Rufus back to Deponia. Unfortunately, Goal's memory cartridge is damaged in the fall and one of Rufus' standard mishaps leads to her being split into three personalities. One is prim and proper, one is innocent and naive, and the third is daring and spunky. Most of the game has you trying to regain the trust of the three Goals and you will have to swap which personality is in control often throughout the game with the use of a remote control. Chaos on Deponia feels a bit more grown up over the previous release. Rufus is a more likable character who doesn't just want off Deponia for the sake of leaving Deponia, and while he is just as much of a klutz as before, he is at least a bit more self-aware of the fact.
Difficulty: Chaos on Deponia feels like a much smoother game than the previous one. There were many puzzles in Deponia where I was either left not knowing what I needed to do next, or truly having no idea how to solve the problems the game presented to me. I found myself simply going through my inventory in the hopes of finding something that worked as I didn't expect. Chaos on Deponia never has that problem. I found myself easily going through the game's many inventory puzzles with little or no hangups. While that means the game's story flowed smoothly and never really halted while I worked out a puzzle, it does mean that I never really felt challenged by the game. That isn't to say that I could solve every problem as it came to me, I just never got to a point where I felt like I had visited every location or talked to every person and still didn't know how to solve the puzzles. Typically, the first time a problem presented itself, I didn't have the solution on-hand, but it never took too much more that a few conversations or locations before I knew what needed to be done.
Game Mechanics: Chaos on Deponia does have one flaw that I've seen in quite a few adventure games, and it always pulls the player out of the game. There are a lot of times when character dialogues would respond as if you had done something or performed some action that you hadn't yet. This would be like the Oracle in The Matrix telling you not to worry about breaking the vase before you actually do it, especially if it helps you solve a problem that you didn't even know you had yet. The question is, would you have broken that vase if she didn't tell you? I've always felt like this kind of problem was the result of poor quality assurance testing. While both the developers and the QAs should find issues like this, the QA should be trying to go back and talk to characters before doing the action that causes their next dialogue line, just to see what happens. If you get an item from a character and then immediately talk to that character again and the conversation plays out like you've already tried to use it with something, there is a definite problem there. Unfortunately, this happens on several occasions in Chaos on Deponia. Despite this issue, I think Chaos on Deponia is a fun game that any fan of classic adventure titles should check out. If you haven't played the first one before jumping into this adventure, it isn't completely necessary given the recap and tutorial that happens in the game's opening few minutes.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP, 2.5 GHz (Single Core) or 2 GHz (Dual Core) Processor, 2 GB RAM, OpenGL 2.0 Compatible with 512 MB RAM Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c, 5 GB Hard Drive Space, DirectX Compatible Sound Card   Test System: Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c
Related Links: Chaos on Deponia on Steam Deponia Official Homepage Game Vortex’s Review of Deponia
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