Riddle of the Sphinx 2: The Omega Stone Review

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(More customer reviews)Like most sequels, this one fails to match the first-in a big way. But it has another big problem. First:The eery atmosphere and storylike feel that made the first a rarity are missing here. The believability (given some poetic licence) of the egyptian culture and the loving, beautiful details of the first game turn into a ho-hum -package deal world tour of cliches in this sequel. I saw this sequel described as a "low budget" version-and it shows. It also has a very distracting interface, especially a large cutsey curser, and there is a tendancy for the game to black out when changing views or examining objects. Minor irritants include an obnoxius charactor and constant disc changing. The first game dragged you into it, as much with your own imagination as with the brilliant execution. This one is tedious and unbelievable.
The second problem, impacting the game quality is that it is really an excuse to promote an extreme version of christianity that is incredably insulting to anyone who does not share this view-a bad move when dealing with aincent "pagen" cultures. It was written by an evangelist and would have been much better if it had been written by an archiologist. This shows in the cliche and ignorant views of other culters.
Unlike the first game, where most of the action exposses a great and differnet culture, where the ending can be interpereted as simply finding a legendary but misunderstood artifact, this game allows no such view. Dedications to the god/gods of ones choice in the credits is one thing. insulting other beliefs, especially by commision rather than ommision, is different. (It does not simply fail to mention say, Shinto. It insults other beliefs outright.) The game should be labled "Extreme christain theme" so that people can decide whether to buy it or not. After checking that this attitude continued, I threw my copy away unfinished. -Laur

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The Omega Stone: Riddle Of The Sphinx II - Takes a trip around the world as you unravel the hidden truth of the ancient world!

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Midnight Nowhere Review

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(More customer reviews)A very strange little game indeed. It plays out like a survival horror game, except there's no way to die and the only use your character has for a gun is to shoot a locked door. The plot is odd in the extreme and only holds together by the barest thread of coincidence. You play to the end assuming All Will Be Revealed, only to find that the central mystery is not only not answered but not even mentioned. Excuse me?
That aside, game play is fairly smooth and logical, though there's an awful lot of looking for keys. It's a brain game, not a reflex game, so expect to do a lot of problem solving and no shooting. (And hours of pixel-hunting, sigh.) The walls you pass are often decorated with very funny subversive posters that seem to have been designed by a satirical comic screwing around with Photoshop (you know the type -- photos of ordinary people bulged out on one side and so on).
Incidently, you should take the Mature rating fairly seriously. There's a lot of cursing, many many many photos of nude women, and variously horribly slaughtered bodies around every corner. I mean, I've seen worse, but I'm not sure I'd be happy about seeing a 13-year-old playing this game.

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Midnight Nowhere - Horror and death reign over a small town. Police can't catch the killer, who's taking a life each day. Cordons have been placed around the town - no one gets in, no one gets out. You're thrown into the middle of this nightmare scenario, and to survive you'll have to solve a terrible mystery.

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Syberia Review

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(More customer reviews)The first thing you need to know is that "Syberia" is only the first part of Kate Walker's European adventure, so if you are expecting to end up on the fabled lost island of Syberia by the end of this PC adventure, you are going to be disappointed. Actually it was some reviews about "Syberia II" that got me interested in playing that particular game so of course I picked up "Syberia" first. I do not take the time to play a lot of these games, but when I do I like these sort of adventures where you go around and collect items, endure endless conversations, solve some tricky puzzles, and eventually uncover some sort of mystery.
The heroine here is Kate Walker, a sophisticated New York Attorney who is sent by her firm to Valadilene, a smal alpine village in France, to buy-out an old factory, the Voralberg Toy Company, which was once world famous for making automatons. Of course once she is there Kate is confronted with an unexpected twist the turns her business trip into a journey heading east in order to get a signature needed to complete the deal. Kate's journey consists of three additional locations after Valadilene: the university city of Barrockstadt, the forgotten city of Komkolzgrad, and the once lavish seaside resort of Aralbad. Her only companion, once she gets him up on his feet, is Oscar, one of the Voralberg automatons, who will be the engineer for the mechanical train that takes Kate on most of her journey.
Oscar is the most interesting of the supporting cast of characters, although he is a stickler for the rules, especially about having a ticket before you can proceed from one station to the next. Most of the other characters get a bit annoying, especially as you go through the unavoidable pointless conversations you have to endure in this sort of game. It is the nature of the game that they are always impediments to either Kate's overall mission or her specific task at hand (or both). There are also several dead end characters, where you keep thinking at some point talking to them will be of some importance, but that never proves to be the case.
Then there are the phone calls that Kate gets from back home, where her boss, mother, boyfriend, and supposed best friend harangue her about not getting her mission done and back home as quickly as she can. Apparently we are supposed to be watching Kate turn from a boring lawyer into an exciting adventurer as she meets her various challenges. Of course she is the heroine of "Syberia" so we tend to think of her as that from the very beginning and keep looking for a way to get her to dump boyfriend Dan as soon as possible. Of course, you cannot get so annoyed with these phone calls, especially those from Kate's mom, that you do not pay attention to what is being said, because there are some clues there as well. But overall the phone calls tend to detract from both the adventure and Kate as a character.
The best part of "Syberia" are the graphics, which are pretty stunning. There are nice details to each of the settings, all of which are run down to various degrees. I like the way the water ripples and the fact that at one point we can see a soccer game being played on a television set in the background. The music by Nick Varley and Dimitri Bodiansky is also pretty good, with a fairly memorably title theme and some nice Russian/Gypsy influence bits as well. Most of the tasks are rather mundane but fairly logical, which worked out well for me because I only got super stuck three times in the game (until the very end, where suddenly how to use simple objects like a screwdriver were suddenly an almost insurmountable task). Those tasks involving automatons are more interesting and that motif, along with that of mammoths, are also enjoyable aspects of the game. The hardest task, for me, was mixing a drink, but at least once you get through that things move pretty quickly in the end game.
In fact, I was rather surprised when the game ended. "Syberia" comes on two discs and you play with Disc 1 in your DVD-drive and I kept waiting for the point where I had to switch discs, like in "Phantasmagoria" and the Gabriel Knight adventures. My biggest complaint, such as it is, would be that you cannot quickly skip across screens when you have to travel from one end of a train station to another or across town. You can make her run a bit, but some things just take time. I was not especially enamored of games where you get to do 360 degree turns (they make me dizzy at times) so I have no problems with this more traditional way of moving the character around.
The bonus disc includes a short "movie" on the making of Syberia where B. Sokal and others at Microids in Montreal (they speak French so be prepared to read subtitles), both a trailer and a teaser for the game, some examples of the transition "From 2D to 3D," and a nice collection of desktop wallpaper. For each of the four locations of "Syberia" you have a choice of wallpaper that you could put on your desktop to record your journey through the adventure and remind you that there is some reason Kate is carrying around those metal shears.
The bottom line would be that hardcore adventure game fans are going to find "Syberia" too tame for their tastes. But for the occasional PC game player or even the novice, this inventory/adventure game should be quite enjoyable. Plus, "Syberia II" is even better and the story really does end at that point, so that you do not have to worry about picking up "Syberia III: Oscar's Revenge."

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A journey of discovery and intrigueProduct InformationAnna Voralberg owner of the factory just died. Her only heir Hans Voralberg agenius inventor has disappeared for decades somewhere between the Alps andSyberia...Kate Walker a young and brilliant New York lawyer has been charged toconclude the acquisition; she must find this puzzling man and on her way willsoon find her destiny perturbed...For Kate Walker young and ambitious lawyer this job seemed very simple. Thetime it would take to re-buy this old automaton factory in the bottom of analpine valley would be dealt with quickly for her to return to New York. Byaccepting this mission the idea that her life would be changed for ever nevercrossed her mind. From west to east on the heels of a genius inventor she willcross all of Europe and meet many fascinating characters. Her journey in timeand space will change her convictions and the contract she needs to close willaffect her destiny.Product FeaturesA captivating scenario credible and rich. Syberia is a modern fable inwhich reality and fiction confront each otherMany passionate hours of gameplay: incredible amount of puzzles to solveand machines to activate more than thirty characters to meet hundreds ofmagnificent realistic and mysterious locations to explore.Discover the most beautiful game ever created. It's graphic quality isextraordinary it's ambiance it's orchestrated music and the emotion that emanateswill make you live an unforgettable experience!Minimum RequirementsWindows 98 Me 2000 XPPentium II 350 MHz processor16 MB 3D video card DirectX 8.1 compatible64 MB RAM400 MB of free Hard Disk space16X CD-ROM driveDirectX 8.1 compatible sound cardRecommended RequirmentsPentium III 800 MHz processor32 MB vide card DirectX 8.1 compatible128 MB of RAM24X CD-ROM drive

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Dead Reefs Review

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(More customer reviews)WARNING: You cannot use your mouse (or a joystick) in this game at all. The game's navigation is strictly keyboard-driven, and it can be really awkward. If you play adventure games because you dislike action/arcade games where the emphasis is on finger dexterity, then you may want to avoid this one.
My biggest disappointment with this game was that I spent more time correcting my own navigational errors than I did solving puzzles or figuring out next steps. It was especially irritating when the scene contained many objects, like barrels or crates or lampposts, because they would stop me dead in my tracks if I was too close to them. I can't tell you how annoying it was to have to turn 90 degrees, move forward past the object, then turn again just so I could start moving in the direction I really wanted to go.
The game defaults to pressing "W" to move forward, "A" to move left, etc., but at least you can change these settings if you're not comfortable navigating with your left hand. I ended up setting mine to use the number pad, since I couldn't use the up/down/left/right cursor arrows. The cursor arrows are reserved for manipulating objects, accessing the inventory, and talking to other characters. (Not allowing your keyboard's designated movement keys actually to be used for the purpose of movement -- yet another frustrating and senseless bit of game design.)
Another aggravation was that the game had default perspectives that it would jump to after I stopped moving. It would swing around dizzyingly, in order to reset my view of the scene. What was annoying about this was that, all too often, the view was reset to a perspective that had me looking down at the back of my own character's head, blocking out everything else so I couldn't immediately see where I wanted to move next. Eventually, I sort of got the hang of it and was able to move more quickly, but it was always awkward and inefficient.
Unfortunately, the problems with the keyboard interface weren't only related to navigation. Whenever I had to interact with objects, I couldn't do it unless my body was in exactly the right spot and turned in exactly the right direction. Some of the hot spots were so sensitive that if I even twitched in the wrong direction, I was unable to interact with the object in question. For this reason, I had to use the game's search function almost continually. The search function allowed me to see all of the objects I could interact with in an area. Without it, I would have missed many objects because, even though I stopped right next to them, I still didn't manage to trigger the hot spots. The problem with using a search function, though, is that it takes away some of the challenge of the game. Much of the fun of adventure games comes from observing the scene and trying to figure out what's useful and meaningful. Using the search function pretty much hand-feeds you the clues.
As far as game play was concerned, there were only a few puzzles and they were pretty simple. More emphasis was placed on figuring out where to go, whom to talk to, and how to use the inventory. The conversations with other characters were usually short and relevant, and when I did have to speak to someone again, it wasn't too bad, because there was an interactive map that allowed me to jump between locations quickly. The graphics weren't impressive -- not even close to games like Syberia, Aura, Longest Journey, Still Life, etc. -- and the music would swell into a clashing, horror-movie score at the oddest, most inappropriate times. The story itself was engaging enough...an 18th-century murder mystery with supernatural elements (ghosts, witches, demons) and a bit of alchemy thrown in. Near the end, the game was affected by the choices I made (e.g., the game continued for a much longer time depending on whom I declared to be the murderer). It was very easy to die in this game, and there was no recovery, so it was necessary to save often. Also, the ending was heavily affected by how the final puzzle pieces were placed.
A final comment regarding the game's difficulty: One thing that surprised me was how much hand-holding there was. For example, I would go into a new area, look around, find some clues or useful objects, and then decide to go elsewhere. But when I tried to leave by the same door/path, my character would say to himself, "I should stay here and investigate more...perhaps I missed something." The door wouldn't open again until I had seen all possible clues in that area. Frankly, I thought this made the game too easy. However, you might appreciate it if you generally find adventure games too difficult or if you rely heavily on walkthroughs.

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The island of Dead Reefs was infamous for the wicked pirate inhabitants that would lure passing ships into the reefs slaughtering their crews and looting their cargo as the ships would sink. One stormy evening while on a fateful mission to a neighboring island an ancient order of monks decided to set anchor on Dead Reefs to take refuge only to fall victim to the vile pirates led by the corrupt island ruler Baron DeSantra. After murdering the ship s captain and searching his body the Baron would discover an old relic far more evil than any of them could ever imagine!Since that fateful night a horrifying madness has been infecting the minds of the island residents resulting in a murder every nine years. Believing that the massacre of the monks had cursed their island the residents ended their pirating ways but the deaths continued! Days before the anticipated 11th death was to occur a descendant of the wicked Baron DeSantra mysteriously died. You are the ingenious investigator Amadeo Finvinero and you have been sent by the King to discover the source of all the evil plaguing the island of Dead Reefs!FEATURES:Dynamically evolving events will keep the player entertained for hours Player choices will affect the advancement and outcome of the game Unique devices and contraptions used for traveling within the game Atmospheric sound music and visuals will immerse gamers into the story Characters have real-life personalities and unique mannerisms System Requirements:Platform: Windows 98 / Me / XP / 2000Media: CD-ROMFormat: WIN 98ME2000XP Genre:ENTERTAINMENT Rating:T UPC:625904522504 Manufacturer No:PCO52250MB

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