Hazelnut said:
@The Rambling Sage: Why Outcry/Rhiannon, and where can I find a good review of them. Interested, haven't played a new point & click adventure for rather a long time. (since TLJ possibly?) Was also considering Sherlock-Awakened, never played a Sherlock game since Melbourne House's text adventure on the ZX Spectrum which was far too much for me at that age. Dead space sounds dull though, so I decided that was a no. Possibly wrong?
I played a bit of Outcry, haven't had time yet to put myself fully into it, and it was the first time in a long, long time that i had to stop playing after a while because the creepyness was just killing me (i was so bloody happy!), and i am a dutyfull seeker of all things horror and weird and supernatural so my closet homosexuality is counterweighted by previous experience and being somewhat burned out in the "horror" department. It had a very intense "The Great God Pan" vibe as far as i got, so maybe it was more what i was imagining than what was actually happening that creeped me out, but it certainly sent me home crying like a little bitch. The reviews, though, were not quite "glowing" i believe: Look around Adventure Gamers and Just Adventure, and their forums, for some more "in depth" critics and impressions. It was also called quite pretentious, but then i am also called that every now and then so maybe i felt right at home and didn't notice it. The art style, though, is the most amazing thing i have seen in a long, long while. Deliciously creepy without being gory or morbid or anything like that. Very elegant so far.
Rhiannon has been personally recomended to me by people i very much trust blindly when it comes to adventure games, specially horror ones. Again i played for a while and liked the ambience and atmosphere, even if it is nothing to write home about from a technical standpoint. It also got some interesting reviews in
Just Adventure and
Adventure Gamers praising the Story and Puzzles but criticizing some other things. Understand i prefer Myst-likes to Pure Adventures, so i am biassed towards first person enviroments with a strong, if not very "on your face" story and hard, if unrelated to the enviroment and plot, puzzles while almost devoid of any character interaction, in all but comedy adventures like Monkey Island and that kind of thing. As far as i saw it had a very Barrow Hill feeling going for it, but seemed much more stylish and polished. The flash advertising, meanwhile, was reminding of "The Ring" in a way, and that was a plus for me: I saw it and had to get the damn game, so maybe i am biassed because of the cool, creepy, little advertising of cute stalking evil-looking ghost girl in a dress.
Of Dead Space, again, i saw no more than a part since i only play horror games at night and now my schedule will make that one a little hard for a while since my lady and my friends have all changed their owl-like lives, and mine indirectly, for the time being. It seemed ridiculously pretty, but i am not graphic whore and most games i never put beyond 1024x768 anyway, even if i could. What little i played i played on hard right from the start, so the few but though monsters, scarce ammo, slow aiming, and precise shooting gameplay where be very tense and absorving. It actually managed to surprise and make me jump once or twice, but i was still fresh to the game so i was not familiar with the thingies and their attitudes. The stupid "sizes" on the only female character i saw so far are a definite minus in my book and do not promise much in the vein of maturity, but then i am quite a prude when not roleplaying the morbid degenerate so your mileage may vary. It is the one game i was most unsure to recomend, thus the question mark and all that, but a girl i know, one of those individuals who has very a good taste in horror games i mentioned before, in a particular scene screamed to the point of almost leaving me deaf while we were testing it, so that counts as somewhat of a plus. She has a very screeching voice, though, so make that a very subjective, painful, almost literarily mind-blowing plus.
The Awakened was... ummm... going through the motions, mostly. Many people liked it and was "shocked" by some horror scenes, but the horror element was very downplayed and never managed to shock me or surprise me, and at the same time never came as subtle or ambiguous - You always knew there was something out-of-this-world and crazy going on, and at the same time it never came as urgent or menacing... More like "sedate". While i love both supernatural elements and horror, and also like the character of Sherlock Holmes, it never seemed either part was played to their full extent. I also can't remember any hard puzzle that wasn't a matter of finding some partially hidden hotspot and then fiddling with it and others until the game breaked and cried, and the endgame seemed grotesque for the sake of being grotesque and throwing some gore and blood and bodies around. Not very elegant or mysterious at all, what seems strange when we are talking about Holmes and Victorian England.
Very good.
