A New Beginning
Description official descriptions
In the year 2500 the surface of Earth is uninhabitable due to climatic changes. Mankind has retreated to subterranean refuges to survive. But the situation keeps deteriorating. The protective magnetic field of the planet on the verge of breakdown and upcoming solar flare of tremendous dimensions threaten total extermination of life. A group of time pilots sends back several teams to the past to fight climatic change early enough to avert the imminent catastrophe. The first attempt fails and decimates the teams. Only idealistic young radio operator Fay and ruthless team leader Salvador manage to venture further into the past of the 20th century. While Fay tries to convince retreated bio engineer Bent Svensson to resume his research on his blue algae as alternate energy source, Salvador believes only in desperate measures and is determined to do whatever it takes to fulfill his mission.
A New Beginning adheres to the classic adventures in the style of The Whispered World or the Runaway Series. The player controls Fay or Bent Svensson depending on the section of the game. The game includes typical item combination riddles, machine puzzles and a few dialogue riddles. Most machine puzzles are designed as mini-games that can be skipped if it takes more than three minutes to find the solution. A New Beginning features an inventory, a hot-spot system and a context sensitive interaction menu comparable to A Vampyre Story.
The graphics consist of hand-painted backgrounds and animated cel-shaded characters. The visuals follow a comic or graphic-novel style. In particular, intermediate movie sequences are presented in animated elements that result in comic panel structures.
The UK retail release includes additional content next to the main game:
- Soundtrack disc
- Double-sided poster
A New Beginning: Final Cut is a revised digital-only release. There is no free update from the retail version of the game to upgrade to the Final Cut version. It contains these differences:
- New language support (7 new languages)
- Steam achievements
- Mac OS X support
- Bugfixes (game crashes)
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Credits (Windows version)
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 78% (based on 29 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 32 ratings with 1 reviews)
The Good
As my review gonna be harsh I should mention the only redeeming aspect of this game and that is the graphics, I loved the whole cartoon style that the game used (without looking childish) and I think that the idea to have the cutscenes in the form of motion comic book panels was brilliant and well executed.
The Bad
That being said the rest of the game had much to be desired, the plot was good at the beginning and had potential but it didn't really went anywhere beside green propaganda and preaching.
The acting (I played the English localization, can't say about the original German version) is pretty terrible, most of the characters sounds robotic and say their lines without any emotions - this especially true for Fay, the game main protagonist.
Also the game is full of terrible bugs, there is part where you need to watch again a cutscene of your team mate die because the game "forgot" it already showed it to you, parts that the inventory didn't work properly (thought there is a way around it) and from chapter 6 you simply can't save your games (only with the quick save). All those are pretty major bugs which shouldn't happened , certainly as this is a supposedly patched addition (hence the term "Final Cut" at the title) which were suppose to be bugs free.
The Bottom Line
Despite the initial good plot and good graphics the game is pretty bad and those good points doesn't manage to rescue it from bad writing and numerous bugs.
Windows · by Ingsoc (1366) · 2013
Trivia
Extras
The original German release by Deep Silver includes a soundtrack CD-ROM. It features the same disc artwork as the game DVD of the publisher's Lost Horizon release.
Final Cut release
The final cut edition is an updated version of the Windows game. It includes full localization for English, German, French and Russian, and subtitles for Italian, Spanish and Polish. It is also the first Macintosh version of the game. Next to the localization options some bugs and errors were fixed. For the Steam release achievements are included.
References
In chapter three, Harvey from Edna & Harvey: The Breakout is sitting on a bench.
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Related Sites +
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A New Beginning
Official game site featuring information and additional media of A New Beginning in German, English and French language.
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Zerobrain.
Macintosh, Blacknut added by Sciere.
Additional contributors: MAT, Sciere, Patrick Bregger, Piotr Aureliusz.
Game added November 4, 2010. Last modified August 2, 2024.