Necronomicon

Rating:
Summary: Good enough that I wish it was better.
Review: Necronomicon is set in 1920s Rhode Island. The hero, William Stanton, is charged with sleuthing around to find the connection between Providence, Rhode Island and the World of the Dead. Stanton is an archaeologist by trade, and he is very young, fairly naive, very polite, and very determined. I liked playing from this character's perspective. And the idea that there is a dark underside to such a quaint and seemingly peaceful town is provocative, and appeals to my everpresent suspicion that all is not as it seems.

The first half of the game is preoccupied with unraveling the mystery around Stanton's friend, Edgar Wicherly. Wicherly brings Stanton a pyramid-shaped stone and tells him to give it to no one, "not even me!" This portion of the game is quite riveting---the graphics in the town are quite nice with fairly involved detailing. Stanton's task is to explore what has happened to Wicherly, and what kind of research he has been doing to provoke such odd behavior. The eerieness is well-developed by the odd behavior and taciturnity of the towns folk.

There is a stretch of game where I was literally terrified---I confess to being so absorbed by the storyline and graphics that at times I could not bring myself to press the cursor on the hotspot for fear of what might happen next (at one point I got up from my chair and stood behind it to press the cursor---something about doing this made me break the hold the narrative had over me). Really great work here---the designers have a good sense of what is really terrifying, in a Blair Witch tradition.

There are some moments of broken story logic (it seems to me) having to do with the central scene in the middle of the game. There is an implausible moment in the storyline, which affects my relationship to the main character (I refrain from revealing the details). Nonetheless, the story picks up from that moment and shifts into an entirely different world apart from the dreamy Rhode Island setting. I think I would have remained more engaged had the story stuck to the Rhode Island space a little more, giving a more palpable sense that the other side is much more integrally connected to the world in which all the characters live and breathe. As it is, the game is separated into "The Rhode Island Segment" and "The Other World Segment." It loses some of its efficacy because of this for me.

The game is puzzle-heavy, to an astonishing degree, particularly in the second half. Rather than bog myself down in frustrating solutions, I opted to find a good walkthrough for the puzzles. There are also several mazes, which are slightly less frustrating, and on which I usually did not cop out by going to the walkthrough. There is some interesting alchemical work, as well as some fairly engaging library work (Stanton follows the path of many a researcher in just such a library). It seems to me that the facts and details of the storyline are fairly historically plausible, if not accurate.

I give this game 3 stars because the first half is so engaging--for its narrative development, voice acting (the newspaper man at the Gazette is a memorable delivery), measured eerieness, and logical sleuthing. It gets no more than 3 stars because the second half fails to sustain the enjoyment of the first half--the story loses plausibility and connection to the first half, it is almost all puzzles and mazes with no non-player character interaction, and even though it takes place "on the underside," it is slightly less eery than the disturbed world of Rhode Island.

Rating:
Summary: Nice graphics
Review: The world of the game offers you the 360 rotation of most modern "shooters." It has a very loosely related H.P. Lovecraft theme but no connection to any story I know. There are some tough "hunt and peck" pixel quests which can become tedious (especially the one in total darkness.) I did enjoy it, but the box says that this is the "first adventure game to be directly indpired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft." This was annoying because there have been much better Lovecraft ports such as the excellent adventure games Shadow of the Comet by Chaosium/Infogames in 1994, and my favorite text based Hound of Shadow 1990 from Eldritch Games, and the Alone in the Dark series from the early 90's.

I didn't personally encounter any serious (lockup) bugs but it did drop out to windows sometimes. The cut scenes and movements played without any choppiness at all but sometimes the voices would stutter. The graphic detail of the towns and building was excellent, especially the fishing village. Riding the little antique motorcycle was fun. As one reviewer noted, the main character sounded unnecessarily like a 12 year old-- good description. However, the people were mispronouncing the guy's name differently for a reason: they were indicating or pretending they didn't know him, of course. This was not a flaw by the game designers.

In sum, the graphics were pretty, but gameplay could have been better. Worth a look in the bargain bin.

Rating:
Summary: Linear Irritation
Review: This is, quite possibly, the worst game I've ever played. Admittedly, that's not saying a lot, since I don't play PC games that often; however, I am a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, and while the atmosphere of Necronomicon is suitably creepy, there is little of Lovecraftian lore to hold a fan's attention and less good gameplay for those unfamiliar with H.P.L. The game's three main problems are:

1) linearity--it is impossible to explore freely, to talk with people more than once, or to do things not strictly adhering to the (convoluted) storyline, you can't even explore the second story of your own home!;

2) voice acting--half of it is passable, the other half is atrocious, on the level of dubbed Hong Kong action flicks, the character you play sounds 12 years old (he isn't), and there are at least three different pronunciations uttered for Wytcherly's name, as if the actors hadn't been told how to say it--someone call for a director;

3)the puzzles--as another reviewer has noted, many of these are illogical, rendering them nearly impossible to complete without a walk-through (there are several available on-line), they generally add nothing to the atmosphere of the game, and they result in disappointing payoffs--the end of the game is a massive anti-climax.

Although the graphics are nice and some of the characters sufficiently creepy to evoke Lovecraft, the game isn't worth your time or your money.

Rating:
Summary: starts off good
Review: Well, I liked this game at the beginning, until you get half way through and then you spend more time "dying" then anything else. It got to the point where I no longer wanted to finish the game because of how and why you "died". It was just, quite frankly, too annoying to continue to play.

Rating:
Summary: A great storyline!
Review: When I first started playing Necronomicon, I wasn't very impressed by the opening enviornment. However, as the game progressed, I was so intriqued by it. I thought the storyline was brilliant and the some of the locations were downright spooky. I found the puzzles to be difficult but not so much that your about to pull your hair out. I really recommend this game to anybody who likes scary situations, and a challenge. The only downside I could find was that it was a little short and the ending wasn't what I had expected, but I still give it two thumbs up!!

Rating:
Summary: Nice story but too dark!!!
Review: When I mean 'dark' I mean 'dark'! What made this game frustrating was that some scenes were too dark to find anything! Getting around the lab was really tough cuz you got find these switches to light up the room.(yes, I put my brightness all the way up!)

As for the puzzles, some are easy (just keep clicking the symbols if you don't understand the clues) some are hard (just read those books you find) and some are just time consuming (you can get through those mazes eventually!!!).

I think the most "illogical" part comes after you leave the lab. You have to find the right urn and have the charcoal with you.

As for the lip sync, I don't really care about it. It is afterall just a video game with limitations. I don't think the average player is going to notice that.

I think this game could have been better if it had more puzzles and less of picking up stuff. Nice story though.

Rating:
Summary: truly full of lovecraftian horror -- but not as intended
Review: You will experience true horror -- at the quality of the acting, programming, and writing. You will encounter many singular and strange -- software bugs. And you will be confronted with the ultimate conundrum of all: how did this game get past QA?

I generally like anything gloomy and dark, no matter how bad it is. Yet even I like to have one candle dimly flickering -- so as not to be the thing that goes "bump" in the night against every corner and chair. (I'm not a bat -- I have eyes) Yet many places in this game the screen is pure black -- you have to literally click on a black screen by trial and error! As much as I like the color black, i'd rather not sit there clicking on it...

The voice-acting is so bad that all you hear are mumbles and whispers -- there is NO way to turn the voice up reletive to the background sound, and there are NO subtitles! And there is no way to escape from a cut-scene or conversation once you started it -- no matter how long and annoying it is.

Puzzles come in two varieties: those that require a knowledge of the occult and obsesive re-readings of the given books and materials as well as some guess work (which happens to be my idea of fun) -- and hard-core pixel hunting (which doesn't!)! I don't mind a few pixel-hunting quests -- but looking through screen-fulls of identical jars just to find the right one is a bit ridiculous! Even Tetris is a better computer game than "look though 100 identical things to find the right one"!

In conclusion, you must be a masochist to enjoy this game! Go re-read a Lovecraft book. If you don't like reading, get Black Mirror -- which, with all it's flaws, is still a much better dark-occult game than Necronomicon.

Rating:
Summary: Evil
Review: _Necronomicon_ is a stunningly average game. Like most games, it has its good points and its bad points. Unlike many, however, it has nothing that really sets it apart in either direction. The good parts are simply pretty good, not thrilling. The bad parts aren't unforgiveably bad; they're merely annoying. As it is based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and I feel the same way about those, in this respect it turned out about as I expected.

You play William Stanton, a scholarly fellow who lives in the Rhode Island town of Providence. The time is the late 1920s (although the character costumes make it look more like the late 1800s). As the game opens, you answer the door to your old school friend, Edgar. He tells you he's in danger and entrusts you with a mysterious artifact. Soon after, a man appears who introduces himself as Edgar's doctor. Edgar, he informs you, is suffering paranoid delusions. His family is worried about him. Can you find Edgar and figure out what's going on? Trying to accomplish this superficially simple task leads you into an unexpected realm of necromancy and black magic.

The graphics are great, as is the voice acting. I felt that in both look and character _Necronomicon_ really taped into the New England feel, where things are both endearingly quirky and a little eerie, especially to outsiders. The game relies heavily on the sense that there's something mysterious going on here that everyone knows about but no one is talking about. Every non-player character is at least mildly eccentric and some are downright creepy. This gives you a sense that you don't know whom to trust. Unfortunately this doesn't really go anywhere, aside from creating atmosphere. I kept expecting to find hidden agendae, or to uncover things that weren't as they seemed on the surface, but this was not the case. As a result, the whole game lacked depth that could have made it more interesting.

The puzzles are mainly inventory-based mechanical. They are neither particularly challenging nor particularly easy. Any challenge comes from some external situation rather than the puzzle itself. For example, a room might be so dark that it's hard to see what's going on, or a solution might depend on combining one or two of a large number of items, where no indication is given which are correct or even what the result should be. This gives the game an annoying degree of randomness and makes it seem that every solution is a matter of chance, rather than brainpower. You're just a likely to stumble on the answer by chance or luck as you are to "figure it out." Often failure to get it right means death, so there were long periods of dying over and over again while trying different things out. I found this trying.

_Neconomicon_ suffers from extraneous detail: things you can look at that have no purpose or things you can interact with that don't really have a function. I constantly found myself wondering, "Is this a puzzle or isn't it?" A lot of this stuff seemed to have been put in there just to extend gameplay, but it left me feeling gypped. In general, it seemed that there was too high a proportion of irrelavant material and the material that was relevant just didn't thrill enough or make up for the make-work. There was too little of the satisfaction that comes from solving a really complex, logical puzzle from carefully collected clues.

_Necronomicon_ is also one of the most linear games I have ever played. There's almost no sense of interacting with the game or doing things in an order that makes personal sense. Once you start, you're locked into a pre-determined path. It may be a fairly interesting path, but it just doesn't involve the player like a more non-linear game.

There are two different endings to the game -- a "Successful" ending and a "failure" ending. Which you get is contingent upon your success in figuring out the last puzzle. Unfortunately, once you start the last puzzle you can no longer escape and start over even if you figure out you're on the wrong track. This resulted in having to view the "bad" ending sequence about 20 times, and you can't escape from that either. That was the singularly most annoying thing about the game, in my opinion. By the time I had seen the "bad" ending 5 times I was ready to give up and go look for the answer just so I didn't have to see it again. After all that, the "good" ending was distinctly anti-climactic.

On the whole, I neither liked this game nor hated it. It was just something to do on several summer afternoons when it was too hot to do anything else. In that respect, it was worth it. If you decide to play _Necronomicon_, don't expect too much and you should get along fine.

Rating:
Summary: Average
Review: _Necronomicon_ is a stunningly average game. Like most games, it has its good points and its bad points. Unlike many, however, it has nothing that really sets it apart in either direction. The good parts are simply pretty good, not thrilling. The bad parts aren't unforgiveably bad; they're merely annoying. As it is based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and I feel the same way about those, in this respect it turned out about as I expected.

You play William Stanton, a scholarly fellow who lives in the Rhode Island town of Providence. The time is the late 1920s (although the character costumes make it look more like the late 1800s). As the game opens, you answer the door to your old school friend, Edgar. He tells you he's in danger and entrusts you with a mysterious artifact. Soon after, a man appears who introduces himself as Edgar's doctor. Edgar, he informs you, is suffering paranoid delusions. His family is worried about him. Can you find Edgar and figure out what's going on? Trying to accomplish this superficially simple task leads you into an unexpected realm of necromancy and black magic.

The graphics are great, as is the voice acting. I felt that in both look and character _Necronomicon_ really taped into the New England feel, where things are both endearingly quirky and a little eerie, especially to outsiders. The game relies heavily on the sense that there's something mysterious going on here that everyone knows about but no one is talking about. Every non-player character is at least mildly eccentric and some are downright creepy. This gives you a sense that you don't know whom to trust. Unfortunately this doesn't really go anywhere, aside from creating atmosphere. I kept expecting to find hidden agendae, or to uncover things that weren't as they seemed on the surface, but this was not the case. As a result, the whole game lacked depth that could have made it more interesting.

The puzzles are mainly inventory-based mechanical. They are neither particularly challenging nor particularly easy. Any challenge comes from some external situation rather than the puzzle itself. For example, a room might be so dark that it's hard to see what's going on, or a solution might depend on combining one or two of a large number of items, where no indication is given which are correct or even what the result should be. This gives the game an annoying degree of randomness and makes it seem that every solution is a matter of chance, rather than brainpower. You're just a likely to stumble on the answer by chance or luck as you are to "figure it out." Often failure to get it right means death, so there were long periods of dying over and over again while trying different things out. I found this trying.

_Neconomicon_ suffers from extraneous detail: things you can look at that have no purpose or things you can interact with that don't really have a function. I constantly found myself wondering, "Is this a puzzle or isn't it?" A lot of this stuff seemed to have been put in there just to extend gameplay, but it left me feeling gypped. In general, it seemed that there was too high a proportion of irrelavant material and the material that was relevant just didn't thrill enough or make up for the make-work. There was too little of the satisfaction that comes from solving a really complex, logical puzzle from carefully collected clues.

_Necronomicon_ is also one of the most linear games I have ever played. There's almost no sense of interacting with the game or doing things in an order that makes personal sense. Once you start, you're locked into a pre-determined path. It may be a fairly interesting path, but it just doesn't involve the player like a more non-linear game.

There are two different endings to the game -- a "Successful" ending and a "failure" ending. Which you get is contingent upon your success in figuring out the last puzzle. Unfortunately, once you start the last puzzle you can no longer escape and start over even if you figure out you're on the wrong track. This resulted in having to view the "bad" ending sequence about 20 times, and you can't escape from that either. That was the singularly most annoying thing about the game, in my opinion. By the time I had seen the "bad" ending 5 times I was ready to give up and go look for the answer just so I didn't have to see it again. After all that, the "good" ending was distinctly anti-climactic.

On the whole, I neither liked this game nor hated it. It was just something to do on several summer afternoons when it was too hot to do anything else. In that respect, it was worth it. If you decide to play _Necronomicon_, don't expect too much and you should get along fine.