Noctropolis

Noctropolis is an example of what you get when you let the technology push your ideas, and not the other way around. The graphics were great, and the video clips were a great innovation when this game appeared...

However, the game dynamics were quite modest. Noctropolis tried to be a cool graphic adventure, but the puzzles were kind of simple. Besides, the biggest difficulties came from the fact that, at some some points, you had to click on some precise spot on the screen (like, when having to try each and every single bar in a fence to find the loose one... either you click on the right pixel or you are stuck): while this might seem as "realistic", it made a game that was far less addictive than other adventures from the time (Monkey Island, anyone?).

The story of the game was very nice in principle, but the development was almost inexistent. You are supposed to deal with five villains before Flux itself, but you reach the end of Noctropolis while most of the villains are out there: the Diva, the evil doctor, the morpheus... all of them are free and you never encounter them again after they make yourself look like a loser. The plot is at some points more predictable than an A-team episode: one of the villains finds you (only once per villain), they kick your ass and you cannot help it, they leave you in some bad situation, they leave, you escape, and return to your pool to recover health, so that you can go to some place in the map where the next villain from the lot will kick your ass. Everything is very "deus ex machina".

In conclusion, a very nice technology for the time, but a shame the game was not up to the expectations. And let's not talk about the unnecessary nudes...