If you point your mouse cursor to the next “scene” (ore room). You get a red arrow, then just click the right mouse button.

Then you skip Mona walking sloooooooowly across the screen. :)

Regards
Mokk

I do want to say that I liked your review overall, and I’ll be adding this site’s feed to my Google Reader. :)

Of course, I actually referred to AVS as “A Three Act Adventure Game” with Bill(Thanks for catching the typo in the review at the top. No one else did) in my interview with him on 11/21 and he never corrected me on that which I also find strange in retrospect.

In the end it is bad communication by Autumn Moon where they never bothered to correct that statement and at times kept promoting and mentioning the third act up until release.

I still really loved the story of the game, but when 33% of the game is missing, it leaves me cold ala Soul Reaver.

As for Adventuring gaming community, I mean those of us that are professional reviewers. Contrary to popular belief, people from different gaming sites do talk to each other, especially about niche genre games. In this case it was mainly emails going around saying “Did you get an unfinished copy of AVS? Did your game cut out the third act or is it just mine? The game says 15 hours of play – where is the rest of it?” and so on.

I think the average gamer was unaware of the missing content but after the Rhapsody DS incident from Nippon Ichi earlier this year, we’re all a little paranoid about publishers/developers telling us one thing and then it not being in the game.

It would seem though that all the references to the “three chapters” all originate at that AME blog post, which seems to be a very unfortunate mistake on the part of Dave Harris. In his enthusiasm he shared a little too much, it seems. What I do know is that AME was working hard on the game right until the end, and they just barely got it out after it being delayed several times, so I really don’t think they cut the third chapter on purpose – they were just out of time (and money perhaps).

And when you say “adventure gaming community”, which one do you mean? :) Adventure game fans are pretty much scattered around everywhere, and they’re part of different online communities. As for the ones I know (mostly LucasArts adventure fans), I’ve seen disappointments with the abrupt ending, but no complaints about the third act being cut.

http://amegames.com/blog.asp

“The game is going to be divided into three chapters, with a succinct set of goals for each area. Chapter One takes place in the Castle Warg, Chapter Two in the fictional town of Vlad’s Landing, and Chapter Three takes place in and around the castle of Dr. Riga Mortis. Chapter Three will also give you the opportunity to play the game as Froderick the Bat, Mona’s smart-ass sidekick (you actually have to play as Froderick during Chapter 3 because Mona is….shall we say…indisposed).”

Note that the game ends right when chapter 3 of game one is supposed to begin.

There’s also press releases, news clips, wikipedia and more.

Everything about the game has come out and say “One game – three chapters.” Then less than a year ago it changed to “Two games with the second taking place after the three chapter game.” Now it’s a trilogy which is a pretty new development aka backpeddling.

Everyone of us in the Adventure gaming community was a bit gobsmacked by this as the third act of the game had been mentioned even up until release date. Then in the actual game, it was gone.