Druuna: Morbus Gravis (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 1.0 stars Terrible
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 2.6 (1.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Ron Dulin
• Reviewed on: 02/22/2002
• Updated on: 05/17/2006
• Released on: 11/27/2001
• Originally published on GameSpot: Druuna: Morbus Gravis (PC) Review

There are a number of surefire ways to ruin an otherwise perfectly good game. Unfortunately for Druuna: Morbus Gravis, it features many of these design problems. The game is plagued by poor control, an unintuitive interface, time limits, ugly graphics, grating music, and one of the worst save-game systems ever devised. It not only makes all the wrong moves, but it also finds new and innovative ways to make them.

Druuna: Morbus Gravis is based on Paolo E. Serpieri's graphic novel of the same name, which was in turn based on his comic series from the bastion of nudie science fiction, Heavy Metal magazine. Visually, you get mostly what you'd expect: an abnormally buxom heroine and a menagerie of strange creatures that are more often than not shaped like things usually hidden by bathing suits.

The premise could make for a good game. Druuna is in a sort of coma, and you must access her memories to restore her to consciousness. You do this through the "brain container," a device that lets you enter her mind, move around in her synapses, enter her memories, solve puzzles, and then move on to the next memory. It's an interesting premise; back in 1998, Sanitarium proved that an adventure game based on exploring someone's psyche could be both frightening and entertaining.

Although the concept isn't bad, the execution is. Druuna's psyche is fragile, and certain situations take her closer to the point of no return--situations such as physical exertion, getting too close to monsters, and saving the game. Druuna has three statistics that you must keep an eye on--cognitive effort is a measure of how much time you've spent in her brain, cardiac activity rises in stressful or physical situations, and nervous tension increases when the other two increase. You can reset the first two at the expense of the third, but when nervous tension gets too high, you are cut off permanently. You can save the game or continue at a predetermined location after dying, but either of these actions causes a decrease in her mental well-being. After a certain number of saves or continues or just spending too long trying to figure things out, you'll be unable to go on.

Never has a game been so dead-set on making you fail and then punishing you so severely for doing so. The adventure game sequences are broken into two distinct types. The most common is like something out of a typical 3D adventure game, in which you walk around the world, pick things up, and solve puzzles. Actual puzzles are very rare--mostly you'll just be maneuvering through silly mazes and jumping over holes in the floor. There are other equally uninspired action sequences--for example, having to walk and duck under a pair of spinning metal blocks.

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