Les Misérables: Jean Valjean is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. And before we go any further, the first thing gamers should know is this garbage software changes your desktop resolution when you run it, damaging any windows you may have for other apps running in the background by forcing them to rescale while they don't have focus. There's not enough crude words in the English language to describe how completely annoying that is. For me, this caused Explorer to crash and a few other applications as well. Trying to run this garbage in a window, to prevent it causing all this damage, causes the app to crash. I guess Microids felt if they can't harm your computer, there's no point in living.
This mobile app is a very badly made, basic hidden object puzzle/adventure where you're presented with a badly written story (and once more, Microids abuses the public domain because they can't come up with ideas of their own, so they steal the works of others) and a few puzzles like basic piece assembly, find hidden objects in a cluttered room, etc. It's shallow and pointless, but what do you expect from a mobile app?
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options to change the resolution for the mobile app or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this mobile app is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this mobile app will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality mobile phone graphics.
The mobile app features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/flash games. While the artwork itself, while mediocre, might be considered passable, the visual presentation here is negligible, it might as well be a slideshow or a Youtube video. Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids had more advanced animation and visuals going on than this mobile app does.
The mobile app only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this mobile app has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.
These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this mobile app is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 6 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.
Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $3 USD, on app stores, it's $2. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay 150% the price for a cheap mobile game just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this is a mobile app, is priced to insult and gouge PC gamers, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend. Just who do they think we are?
