Saturday Review #6
Sep. 11th, 2010 02:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaECHOES OF THE PAST: CASTLE OF SHADOWS, from Big Fish Games.
Tag copy: After discovering an ancient painting, the Royal House Museum invites you to explore the recovered artifacts, and the mysteries within. Restore the royal amulet to break an ancient curse and stop an evil witch from regaining her terrible powers! Dive into Echoes of the Past – The Castle of Shadows and save the royal family from their curse and explore a fascinating world full of Hidden Object scenes, and perplexing puzzles.
As I have previously mentioned, I have a shameless weakness for computer puzzle games. Part of it is the same thing that draws me to mysteries, the desire to Sort Things Out Dammit which real life so rarely affords anyone. In this kind of game, there are answers, and you can find them. The tangled web will be untangled. Possibly literally.
Anyway. Regarding this particular game:
STORYLINE: While looking at a painting in the museum, you are sucked back in time, and informed that you must restore the amulet (which got struck by lightning and scattered throughout the town somehow - look, it's a puzzle game, you gotta expect this kind of thing to happen) in order to save everyone from the evil witch. The fact that said evil witch was trying to steal the amulet at the time that it got hit by lightning is glossed over, at least until it comes time for the big plot twist halfway through the game. Then, and only then, does the beauteous princess suddenly turn into the evil witch, and oh noes, it was a trick! So now you have to run around and save the day before the witch can turn the amulet to her own purposes. Which of course you do, and then come back to the modern day, yadda yadda.
I had multiple problems with the plot twist, I admit, and not just the 'ugly = evil' trope in play here. I've almost given up on that one. (To say nothing of the even more depressingly predictable 'evil witch' trope. Oy.) First of all, I figured out that something was seriously off with the 'princess' before the Big Reveal, albeit not by much, and actually looked to find out if there was any way around giving the 'princess' the amulet. (No, there isn't.) I'm not sure whether that's the writers' fault for not finding the fine line between foreshadowing and giving it away, or mine for having read too many mysteries, but it did leave me somewhat grumpy. And second, on the 'fool me once' principle, I spent the rest of the game unsure whether the princess was really the princess or the witch faking it again. A puzzle game isn't an RPG, so it's not like it made much of a difference to the gameplay, but I was left thinking very dark thoughts about the supposedly excellent reasoning skills of the player character.
On the bright side, the storyline was at least tied off at the end. It's become all too common these days to reach the end of the game, and the storyline is left dangling with TO BE CONTINUED. Dammit, if I like the gameplay and the ambiance, you don't need to leave primary plot threads flopping in the wind! Really you don't! (Which holds true for more than just puzzle games, actually. I'm sure I'm not the only one who can name several series where the recurring villain came off less as a worthy opponent and more as a dangling plot thread that the writer(s) refused to properly tie off.)
GAMEPLAY: Overall good. The traditional-style Hidden Object scenes aren't the best I've seen: that honor goes to NEMO'S SECRET: THE NAUTILUS, wherein the objects aren't merely logical to the scene, but actually go to their proper place when you find them, as opposed to merely vanishing, as if you actually were sorting through a mess of things and putting them away as you encountered them. But there's a good balance between those sort of Hidden Object lists and other sorts of puzzle challenges - no worse than 40/60, possibly as high as 30/70, depending on how good you are at Hidden Object. There's also a scattering of reverse Hidden Object, wherein you have the objects and have to put them back where they belong. which makes for a nice change of pace.
For the non-Hidden Object puzzles, there's a nice mix, with no one particular kind of puzzle predominating. For the most part, it's a question of hunting down specific objects and putting them in the right place, interspersed with Hidden Object scenes and the occasional puzzle. Occasionally this can lead to running around the game map, trying to remember where you're supposed to put Item X, or trying to figure out where you're supposed to put Item X, because you're at a dead end. But if you have a better memory I do (or am less stubborn about using a walkthrough), then it's not bad.
In other news, should anyone still want them, I too have loads of DW invite codes. Which I keep forgetting about, but they're there!
Tag copy: After discovering an ancient painting, the Royal House Museum invites you to explore the recovered artifacts, and the mysteries within. Restore the royal amulet to break an ancient curse and stop an evil witch from regaining her terrible powers! Dive into Echoes of the Past – The Castle of Shadows and save the royal family from their curse and explore a fascinating world full of Hidden Object scenes, and perplexing puzzles.
As I have previously mentioned, I have a shameless weakness for computer puzzle games. Part of it is the same thing that draws me to mysteries, the desire to Sort Things Out Dammit which real life so rarely affords anyone. In this kind of game, there are answers, and you can find them. The tangled web will be untangled. Possibly literally.
Anyway. Regarding this particular game:
STORYLINE: While looking at a painting in the museum, you are sucked back in time, and informed that you must restore the amulet (which got struck by lightning and scattered throughout the town somehow - look, it's a puzzle game, you gotta expect this kind of thing to happen) in order to save everyone from the evil witch. The fact that said evil witch was trying to steal the amulet at the time that it got hit by lightning is glossed over, at least until it comes time for the big plot twist halfway through the game. Then, and only then, does the beauteous princess suddenly turn into the evil witch, and oh noes, it was a trick! So now you have to run around and save the day before the witch can turn the amulet to her own purposes. Which of course you do, and then come back to the modern day, yadda yadda.
I had multiple problems with the plot twist, I admit, and not just the 'ugly = evil' trope in play here. I've almost given up on that one. (To say nothing of the even more depressingly predictable 'evil witch' trope. Oy.) First of all, I figured out that something was seriously off with the 'princess' before the Big Reveal, albeit not by much, and actually looked to find out if there was any way around giving the 'princess' the amulet. (No, there isn't.) I'm not sure whether that's the writers' fault for not finding the fine line between foreshadowing and giving it away, or mine for having read too many mysteries, but it did leave me somewhat grumpy. And second, on the 'fool me once' principle, I spent the rest of the game unsure whether the princess was really the princess or the witch faking it again. A puzzle game isn't an RPG, so it's not like it made much of a difference to the gameplay, but I was left thinking very dark thoughts about the supposedly excellent reasoning skills of the player character.
On the bright side, the storyline was at least tied off at the end. It's become all too common these days to reach the end of the game, and the storyline is left dangling with TO BE CONTINUED. Dammit, if I like the gameplay and the ambiance, you don't need to leave primary plot threads flopping in the wind! Really you don't! (Which holds true for more than just puzzle games, actually. I'm sure I'm not the only one who can name several series where the recurring villain came off less as a worthy opponent and more as a dangling plot thread that the writer(s) refused to properly tie off.)
GAMEPLAY: Overall good. The traditional-style Hidden Object scenes aren't the best I've seen: that honor goes to NEMO'S SECRET: THE NAUTILUS, wherein the objects aren't merely logical to the scene, but actually go to their proper place when you find them, as opposed to merely vanishing, as if you actually were sorting through a mess of things and putting them away as you encountered them. But there's a good balance between those sort of Hidden Object lists and other sorts of puzzle challenges - no worse than 40/60, possibly as high as 30/70, depending on how good you are at Hidden Object. There's also a scattering of reverse Hidden Object, wherein you have the objects and have to put them back where they belong. which makes for a nice change of pace.
For the non-Hidden Object puzzles, there's a nice mix, with no one particular kind of puzzle predominating. For the most part, it's a question of hunting down specific objects and putting them in the right place, interspersed with Hidden Object scenes and the occasional puzzle. Occasionally this can lead to running around the game map, trying to remember where you're supposed to put Item X, or trying to figure out where you're supposed to put Item X, because you're at a dead end. But if you have a better memory I do (or am less stubborn about using a walkthrough), then it's not bad.
In other news, should anyone still want them, I too have loads of DW invite codes. Which I keep forgetting about, but they're there!