The Last Express 12+

There is nothing else like this game, a neglected classic brought back to life, flawed in places because it tried to tell a complex story in a new way. There aren't many places to go but everything around you changes as time passes. It can be frustrating to miss an event by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or neglecting to recheck a location that was empty the first time you looked. But there are clues in the overheard conversations, and if you fail the rewind mechanism takes you back to a point where you can still win. It's a great story, memorable characters and more true emotion than many games.

(Thankfully the developer has finally updated the iOS version so it runs on the latest iOS. So this lost classic comes back from the dead yet again.)

I am not sure how to do this game justice in a review. How do you adequately praise a work of art? This is the closest thing to time travel I’ve probably ever encountered. If you’ve never wanted to take a train across Europe in the days before WWI, you may not enjoy this game, and that’s fine. But if you ever have thought, “Gee, that would be neat,” this game is the closest you’ll get. Some of the gameplay is challenging, even frustrating. But this is a big, Art Nouveau astronomical clock of a game, with so many moving parts—really as immersive as anything I’ve played. The passengers on the train each have their own stories, and speak their own languages (Russian, French, German, Serbian!). At one point you must have a character translate a golden manuscript of The Firebird into English from Russian. The conversations between the socialist student and the Count’s granddaughter, or between the English girl and her Central European companion, are just exactly right. If you love travel or history, if you love art or character, try this game. If these things do not excite you, enjoy the thousands of other games that are made for people with no appetite for the extraordinary. If only there were more games with this much imagination.

This is really great. If you're a fan of point and click adventure games, this one's for you. The story is a little confusing at first, and you'll probably have to restart a few times to get to the end, but when you do you'll find the story really picks up. The touch sensitivity is a little off, but nothing horrible. And the fact that the whole game is in real time is great and really makes you think about your decisions. All in all this is pretty fantastic. Bravo.