Correct_Carlo
Arcane
I just finished “Realms of the Haunting,” and given that it has no thread of its own, I thought I should start one to wax poetic on what a bizarre, wonderful, awful, historical oddity of a game this is.
Is there any more 1990s game than this?
It seems to have been conceived as the hottest game of 1995, combining all the best trends of the time: adventure games, full motion video, and Doom style, 2D, first person shooters. But as a testament to just how quickly technology and gaming trends were moving in the 1990s, by the time it was released just under 2 years later, time had already passed it by. By late 1996, Quake and Tomb Raider had already been released, with “Dark Forces 2” just a few months away, and Half Life just over a year away; which must have made RotH look positively dated when it was released in December 1996.
Which is a shame, as this very well could have been one of the best games of 1995 had it been release just a year earlier, and I think, it’s arguably a bit of a missing link between Doom and Thief (at least in terms of level design and puzzles, if not all aspects of gameplay). The game world is highly interactable, with lots of objects to click and use. Levels are also sprawling, labyrinthine, and nearly open world. They rarely close off once you finish them, so if you really wanted to you could walk from one end of the game world to the other. Plus, barring a few tedious, late game, mazes and switch throwing, the puzzles are mostly pretty fun and reminded me a bit of a low-tech “Thief.”
The best part, however, is the plot, which is a completely silly hodge-podge of b-horror films, 90s comic book clichés (there are undertones of 90s Vertigo), and even, in the game’s dimension hoping with a female sidekick, shades of “Dr Who.” Of course, comparing RotH to any of these sources is giving it way too much credit. Its FMV sequences are often leaden and stretch on way too long, suffering from the bad, soap opera, editing technique where the video cuts to super long reaction shots of characters looking pensive after every single thing anyone says. Plus, things get nonsensical fast, and about half way through the game, the FMV sequences mostly just focus on people appearing to tell you what absurd, magical artifact you have to track down next, before disappearing. But, honestly, bad acting, z-grade special effects, and nonsensical plots are the main reason for playing 90s FMV games….so I mean none of this as a criticism.
Unfortunately, the game does show its age in some less enjoyable ways. Combat sucks, enemies tend to have way too many hit points, and strafe is locked to the “.” and “,” keys, which makes it unnecessarily difficult at times. You can outrun most monsters, though, which mitigates this somewhat (I don’t think I could have had the patience to finish the game had I fought every single monster). Likewise, many puzzles come down to pixel hunts, a fact which is made all the more frustrating by the fact that you have to search pixels both above and below you, rather than just on a flat 2D plane (given that it's a 2D engine, I often completely forget that you could look up and down, which got me stuck at a few points as I was missing important items). It also stretches on a bit too long and some of the later mazes and switch throwing puzzles can get tedious (I seriously just gave up and used a map half-way through the brain maze, and even with a map, it still took me like 2 hours to complete).
It’s such a unique, bizarre, product of its times, though, that I had to post about it. Despite its flaws, this is exactly the game I dreamed of making as a kid back in 1995, when my main obsessions were Doom and Sierra/Lucasarts adventure games.
Is there any more 1990s game than this?
It seems to have been conceived as the hottest game of 1995, combining all the best trends of the time: adventure games, full motion video, and Doom style, 2D, first person shooters. But as a testament to just how quickly technology and gaming trends were moving in the 1990s, by the time it was released just under 2 years later, time had already passed it by. By late 1996, Quake and Tomb Raider had already been released, with “Dark Forces 2” just a few months away, and Half Life just over a year away; which must have made RotH look positively dated when it was released in December 1996.
Which is a shame, as this very well could have been one of the best games of 1995 had it been release just a year earlier, and I think, it’s arguably a bit of a missing link between Doom and Thief (at least in terms of level design and puzzles, if not all aspects of gameplay). The game world is highly interactable, with lots of objects to click and use. Levels are also sprawling, labyrinthine, and nearly open world. They rarely close off once you finish them, so if you really wanted to you could walk from one end of the game world to the other. Plus, barring a few tedious, late game, mazes and switch throwing, the puzzles are mostly pretty fun and reminded me a bit of a low-tech “Thief.”
The best part, however, is the plot, which is a completely silly hodge-podge of b-horror films, 90s comic book clichés (there are undertones of 90s Vertigo), and even, in the game’s dimension hoping with a female sidekick, shades of “Dr Who.” Of course, comparing RotH to any of these sources is giving it way too much credit. Its FMV sequences are often leaden and stretch on way too long, suffering from the bad, soap opera, editing technique where the video cuts to super long reaction shots of characters looking pensive after every single thing anyone says. Plus, things get nonsensical fast, and about half way through the game, the FMV sequences mostly just focus on people appearing to tell you what absurd, magical artifact you have to track down next, before disappearing. But, honestly, bad acting, z-grade special effects, and nonsensical plots are the main reason for playing 90s FMV games….so I mean none of this as a criticism.
Unfortunately, the game does show its age in some less enjoyable ways. Combat sucks, enemies tend to have way too many hit points, and strafe is locked to the “.” and “,” keys, which makes it unnecessarily difficult at times. You can outrun most monsters, though, which mitigates this somewhat (I don’t think I could have had the patience to finish the game had I fought every single monster). Likewise, many puzzles come down to pixel hunts, a fact which is made all the more frustrating by the fact that you have to search pixels both above and below you, rather than just on a flat 2D plane (given that it's a 2D engine, I often completely forget that you could look up and down, which got me stuck at a few points as I was missing important items). It also stretches on a bit too long and some of the later mazes and switch throwing puzzles can get tedious (I seriously just gave up and used a map half-way through the brain maze, and even with a map, it still took me like 2 hours to complete).
It’s such a unique, bizarre, product of its times, though, that I had to post about it. Despite its flaws, this is exactly the game I dreamed of making as a kid back in 1995, when my main obsessions were Doom and Sierra/Lucasarts adventure games.
It was 100% 90s shovelware.
