Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Pendulo Studios
System requirements: Windows XP (SP2)/Vista (SP1)/Win 7, 2.0 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM Win XP (2 GB Vista/Win 7), 256 MB GeForce 6800/Radeon X800 or better graphics card with DirectX 9 support, DirectX 9-compatible sound device, 4 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

My aunt lives on a farm in the middle of the Wisconsin countryside. Like Keepers of the Citadel, innumerable cats run around, performing secret but essential tasks. As needed as they are, no one’s taken care of them in years. Once you could wonder into a barn and be greeted by a furry tribe of cuteness, but now you find a swarm of hideously inbred monsters. Adventure games are like those cats. Leave them alone in a vacuum for a decade and what comes out is a sickening mixture of all the recessive genes of 1990s point-and-clicks. Yet, where there’s a will, there’s a market. Some studios actually manage to craft fun games out of inventory puzzles. Adventure vets Pendulo think they can straddle the line with Yesterday and still deliver an approachable yet hardcore classic adventure game. Wrapped up with the styling of a horror thriller, is Yesterday a cute and cuddly kitten, or a mangled, inbred beast?

Yesterday starts out with a bang. Homeless people are being burned to death all over the city. Creepy satanic cults are on the rise. We start out following two charity-minded teens as they explore a collapsed tunnel looking for people in need. What follows is a great mix of suspense, horror and humor. You switch between multiple characters, motivation is established, and everything generally works well. After a huge twist, you’re tossed into the future to fill the shoes of John Yesterday, who used to be an occult expert hot on the case of the satanic activity around town. But after an apparent failed suicide attempt, he wakes up with a “y” burned into his palm and a case of amnesia.

Atmosphere drips out of Yesterday. Pendulo continues their tradition of using cell-shaded models atop beautiful, hand-drawn backgrounds. Wisely, they’ve decided not to voice every line of text, as that quickly becomes an annoyance. But what voice acting is there is surprisingly competent. All the little sound effects are wonderful; the snick of cutting a rope, the click-clack of removing batteries from a toy. The beauty in Yesterday is in the details. If only the puzzles and story were as good as everything else.

After the smashup beginning, nothing else seems to measure up. The story is propped up by too many conveniences to suspend disbelief. Pendulo’s previous Runaway series took a cheesy story and played it tongue-in-cheek, while Yesterday stays straight-faced. An amnesiac is the sole investigator of ritualistic murders, but then he suddenly remembers he has kung-fu powers. After an initial twist, there’s very little suspense. The bad guy is revealed in the first 20 minutes, but the protagonist hasn’t the slightest idea. Drinking mercury might have something to do with it, but when a guy interrupts your phone conversation to ask an assistant if the two fresh hobos in the basement are “mostly in one piece,” that should set off some red flags. At times, you feel like Data playing Sherlock Holmes on the holodeck.

After a few clever puzzles at the beginning, it quickly becomes clear that Yesterday got all the bad habits of its inventory-based predecessors: bizarre item combinations, counter-intuitive item placement, and critical items that suddenly appear in a room long after you’ve already searched it. Too many times you’re left to wander around with barely a hint of what you should be doing. The hot-spot locator really helps remove pixel hunts, but the hint system leaves a lot to be desired. Far too often the hints are either too vague or completely unhelpful, and unlike other hint systems, the clues don’t progressively become more obvious the longer you remain stuck. If that first one doesn’t help you, then you might as well hit up an online walkthrough.

While it might sound like Yesterday has a lot of problems, it’s actually quite good for an adventure game. If you’re a hardcore adventure fan, then you’ll enjoy it. Heck, you might even find it too easy. However, if you’ve been raised on a Telltale diet, your system will probably end up choking on the high-fiber puzzles. It’s quite a shame, too, because after that intro sequence, I found myself more excited about Yesterday than any adventure game since The Longest Journey. I have to give Pendulo high marks for atmosphere and an intriguing premise, but everything else burns up in the sun once it leaves the Adventure Enclave.

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Our Recommendation: