Adventure Gamers - Forums

In my opinion one of the most exiting things that have happened in adventure games in recent years, is that instead of just keep using the same old MacGyver style inventory puzzles, where you have to build a fully functional airplane out of three paperclips and a lawnmower, then the developers have been scratching their heads to come up with new puzzle mechanics. And one of those exiting new mechanics is the addition of magic or other supernatural powers.

Cognition might not be the first game to include these, but it is one of the games that have pushed it furthest, and as far as I know, the first game to use it as its main puzzle type.

Post-cognition abilities that allows you to see past events simply by touching an object.
Pre-cognition where you can see events before they actually happen, and at least to some degree manipulate things to get a more desirable outcome.
Regression that allows you to enter someone’s mind and manipulate their memory, only to help them remember what happened of course, not to plant false memories .. that would just be evil, and we only use our abilities to do good!
And a couple of other similar abilities that allows you to gather information and reconstruct events in .. erh .. uncommon ways.

All of those abilities allows for some unusual puzzles and interesting gameplay, and I could just have settled for that, and shown a screenshot from pretty much any puzzle in the game.

But what happens if you combine two of those abilities?
More specifically what happens when you combine pre- and post-cognition?
What if you have one person with post-cognition abilities seeing a vision of events that happened 6 years ago, and that vision includes another person with pre-cognition abilities, and that person is having a vision of the future, that includes the post-cognitive person’s vision of the past that includes the pre-cognitives vision of the future that ...

Kind of mindbogglingly isn’t it?
A bit like standing between two mirrors, seeing you own infinite reflections in both directions.

Well, what you get from a puzzle perspective is a kind of cooperation puzzle, where they have to cooperate and help each other even though there are 6 years between them.

What you get from a story perspective, well, you will have to play the game yourself if you want to know that. But I don’t think that I reveal to much, by saying that the result is interesting - and it doesn’t gets less interesting when you add a sadistic serial murder to the mix.

Cognition has been on my “must play” list for some time. Maybe it’s time to move it up a few notches.

And lets not forget the beautiful soundtrack, especially the main theme

Like Chrissie I bought the complete series of Cognition in a GOG sale. I did, however, start it but got so annoyed with the game right at the beginning (entering the mausoleum) that I quit. I could think of a much easier and practical way of getting in unlike the way the game forced me to take.

chrissie - 19 August 2015 01:17 PM

rtrooney - 19 August 2015 12:53 PM

Cognition has been on my “must play” list for some time. Maybe it’s time to move it up a few notches.

Same here! I bought all the episodes in a GOG sale last year & still haven’t got around to them.

You really should, it is in many ways an excellent game, with a general good puzzle design, much much better than for example Moebius.

Jabod - 19 August 2015 02:28 PM

I did, however, start it but got so annoyed with the game right at the beginning (entering the mausoleum) that I quit. I could think of a much easier and practical way of getting in unlike the way the game forced me to take.

Isn’t that really a common problem with adventure games?
They force us to go through all kind of hoops to get a key to the front door, when we could just as well have picked up a stone and broken a window instead, or something similar.
I don’t think Cognition is any better or any worse than other games, in this aspect, though I must admit that there was something similar later in the game that also annoyed me a great deal, but still just minor flaws imo.

Abnaxus - 19 August 2015 02:09 PM

And lets not forget the beautiful soundtrack, especially the main theme

It also got an Aggie for best music in 2012, both staff and readers choice, and once again in 2013 as readers choice.

Iznogood - 20 August 2015 08:33 AM

Jabod - 19 August 2015 02:28 PM

I did, however, start it but got so annoyed with the game right at the beginning (entering the mausoleum) that I quit. I could think of a much easier and practical way of getting in unlike the way the game forced me to take.

Isn’t that really a common problem with adventure games?
They force us to go through all kind of hoops to get a key to the front door, when we could just as well have picked up a stone and broken a window instead, or something similar.
I don’t think Cognition is any better or any worse than other games, in this aspect, though I must admit that there was something similar later in the game that also annoyed me a great deal, but still just minor flaws imo.

Your overall point is certainly valid Izno but it’s what she had to suffer to get in there really bugged me. No-one in their right (or even wrong) mind would do what Erica did when a completely non painful solution would take her about 5 minutes to facilitate.

Jabod - 20 August 2015 08:49 AM

Your overall point is certainly valid Izno but it’s what she had to suffer to get in there really bugged me. No-one in their right (or even wrong) mind would do what Erica did when a completely non painful solution would take her about 5 minutes to facilitate.

I think I get your point.
In fact I experienced something similar with Black Mirror II. The protagonist was constantly just digging himself into a bigger and bigger hole, trusting the wrong people and doing all the wrong things. I knew this and wanted to to do the exact opposite of everything that the game forced me to do, and not being able to do the right things instead annoyed me greatly.