Couple thoughts on the game:
(1) Running obviously improves things and it's a cute dynamic, although given that there's never a *gameplay* reason to limit how far you can run (i.e., it's never strategic), it's pretty obvious the limited distance is just put in to increase playtime.

(2) The gameplay aspect of the game seem relegated to even more irrelevance. There's never a challenge (except for the boss), other than that now it's hard to gauge what jumps need a run and what jumps can be done standing. The enemies are weaker than last time. The puzzles are easier, although they involve a juvenile episode of backtracking in one case.

(3) The fact that the final boss is identical to the final boss of the first episode in how it plays out demonstrates pretty conclusively how flawed the gameplay is. If anything, this boss is even less interesting than the last one. But it's still just hang, drop, turn, shoot, jump, pull, turn, shoot, ad nauseam.

(4) The plot seemed less effective in this episode than in the last. Yahtzee is always better at what he hides than at what he shows, and the various reveals are pretty weak here (although the twist in the doc's room is nice).

(5) I can't help feeling like this is more of a tech demo ("See what I can do in AGS!") than a game -- something like this would be so easy to make in the various Click systems and would be much more fun, I imagine, since you could have things like running and shooting at once, or responsive controls, or whatever.

(6) Given that the final boss is relatively "difficult" (I put scare quotes around that because the boss is easy in strategy and twitch, but just hard in patience), I felt like the ending was something of a gyp.

I agree with your comments on all counts. How I'd love to have you on board as a writer. :)

Apologies to everyone if my reviews seems sparse lately as I have been struggling with a lot of things at the moment.

It will probably go downhill from here as I have to make a choice between posting frequency or quality reviews. Sigh...

Probably it's a good thing that Yahtzee's latest effort only lasts three episodes, though the intrigue pretty much got me hooked. I'd like to see how it all ends for 1213. :)

Problem is, I just don't have time to play many games, and without someone else making the first cut, it's hard to do anything. Plus, I don't have the time or patience for trolling (in the fishing sense, not the rudeness sense -- that I *always* have time for) for these games. Where you dig them up, I'll never know.

I'd be happy to write a review of 1213, or a retroview of Oasis, which has been devouring my time lately, or of Weird Worlds, which I totally lost interest in. Other than that, I'm not good for much.

Oh, I did try that DHTML shooter you posted and found it uninspired. So easy, and you maxed out on size within 30 seconds. :)

The point of the game isn't for gameplay, it's all about suspense and storyline in my opinion, although the first episode is definately the most suspenseful of all three.