GameSpot editors' review
-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 08/06/2003
- Updated on: 08/07/2003
- Released on: 07/25/2003
- Originally published on GameSpot: Dark Fall - The Journal (PC) Review
A lot of traditional adventure games put you in settings that are oddly, even comically, devoid of characters. Train stations, docks, markets, and museums all seem unrealistically deserted, except for a few conveniently placed characters you're supposed to interact with. It's a bizarre convention that's very much tied to the design of old adventure games--a genre that tends to live in the past, for better or worse. In Dark Fall - The Journal, you won't see any characters at all, but there's a good reason. Dark Fall sends you to a small English town that time seems to have forgotten after the 1940s--a town where the people are missing, but where their ghosts are all too present. Dark Fall breaks no new ground and puts too much emphasis on puzzles, but its meticulously detailed world and paranormal detective story generally keep things entertaining.
Dark Fall takes place in and around a gloomy hotel.
Dark Fall opens with a mysterious phone call from your brother, an architect surveying an old train station and an adjoining hotel in the country town of Dowerton. Thanks to an economic downturn and the "unhealthy" interest of the press in some strange disappearances in town, the world has pretty much passed Dowerton by. The train station is closed, and the locals and tourists who didn't vanish suspiciously ended up leaving peacefully. Still, your brother's firm sees some hope for the place in the form of a major renovation and renewal project. You learn from your brother's message that some university students, Nigel and Polly, also have a keen interest in the area. They're armed with high-tech surveillance equipment, and they're hunting for ghosts there.
When you arrive at the old train station to meet your brother, you're immediately hailed by the disembodied voice of a boy, so it's safe to assume these ghosts are more than just the fevered imaginings of some college kids. What's even more disturbing is the fact that your brother is now missing. It's up to you to unravel the mystery of Dowerton, a mystery involving alchemy, astronomy, English history, and plenty of eerie happenings, such as lights blinking out one after another and everyday objects taking on a life of their own.
You'll need to search through each of the hotel's rooms and a bit of the surrounding area to solve the mystery. Unfortunately, you spend almost all your time in the hotel, rummaging through one room after another. The whole process is repetitious, and run-down hotel rooms, haunted or not, just seem too prosaic for an adventure game, as one of the most exciting aspects of the genre is its ability to whisk players away to exotic locales.
In addition, the game puts too much emphasis on puzzle solving, and some of the puzzles, while quite interesting because of their intricate detail and diversity, can be too obscure and perplexing. It's also a shame that the game so often relies on the old adventure-game cliché of telling its story through clues offered by written materials--materials written by and about absent characters. Poring over note after note, journal entry after journal entry, and computer file after computer file can get tiresome in a hurry. Dark Fall is supposed to be a game, after all, not a book.
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Dark Fall - The Journal (PC):
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