Inherent Evil The Haunted Hotel

Rating:
Summary: Glitchy but worth it
Review: I really had a great time playing this game; however there are problems. You can't save a game and if you die you have to start the chapter all over again. Often tedous. All in all, however, it was great fun despite the problems. But then I'm a freak for this kind of mystery game. I like a story line and this at least has one.

Rating:
Summary: Glitchy but worth it
Review: I really had a great time playing this game; however there are problems. You can't save a game and if you die you have to start the chapter all over again. Often tedous. All in all, however, it was great fun despite the problems. But then I'm a freak for this kind of mystery game. I like a story line and this at least has one.

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes innovation is bad
Review: If you've ever played 7th Guest or 11th hour then this format of game should be quite familiar with you. Haunted house, puzzles, the perspective... the idea isn't terribly unique, but who says every game needs to be just for the sake of entertaining?

The thing that I found attractive about this game was the low price, and it looked as though it had been made by an independant studio which impressed me somewhat.

What made the game so dissapointing was the 'unique' menu interface. You cannot save your game in Inherent Evil at all, period. The game is divided up into eight 'chapters' that you must work through, and at the end of each chapter the game completely exits out to Windows, then and only then can you access the next chapter (which I should note that I was unable to do at first because of a bug in the game, and I had to go to the company website to get a code to fix this problem). If you make a mistake and die before you finish a chapter then you must restart the entire thing from the beginning.

I love this genre of adventure game, exploring, the ambiance (and for the game's credit it does have plenty of it depite the simple graphics), but I also like being able to save my game when I'm about to do something risky.

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes innovation is bad
Review: If you've ever played 7th Guest or 11th hour then this format of game should be quite familiar with you. Haunted house, puzzles, the perspective... the idea isn't terribly unique, but who says every game needs to be just for the sake of entertaining?

The thing that I found attractive about this game was the low price, and it looked as though it had been made by an independant studio which impressed me somewhat.

What made the game so dissapointing was the 'unique' menu interface. You cannot save your game in Inherent Evil at all, period. The game is divided up into eight 'chapters' that you must work through, and at the end of each chapter the game completely exits out to Windows, then and only then can you access the next chapter (which I should note that I was unable to do at first because of a bug in the game, and I had to go to the company website to get a code to fix this problem). If you make a mistake and die before you finish a chapter then you must restart the entire thing from the beginning.

I love this genre of adventure game, exploring, the ambiance (and for the game's credit it does have plenty of it depite the simple graphics), but I also like being able to save my game when I'm about to do something risky.

Rating:
Summary: Save Me!
Review: Inherent Evil The Haunted Hotel consists of chapters. At the end of each chapter, you get punted out to windows and have to restart the game to load the next chapter.

Unlike some adventure games, your character can be killed in this one. But, unlike most adventure games, you can't save your game.

If you make the wrong choice and get killed, you get to select one of twelve tombstones and hope that you get one of the two that are randomly selected to send you back to the game. What happens if you don't get one of the two that will save you? You have to restart the entire chapter.

I was actually enjoying the game through the first chapters, but the lack of a save feature made it so that I dreaded doing anything for fear of having to play the same chapter over and over again.

The game is somewhat scary. The horror is more of the 'made you jump' kind than anything that will actually give you nightmares. There are some exceptions to that, and I'd give it a higher rating if mood was all that mattered.

A lot of adventure games throw in maze segments, this game has one that, unless you love mazes, will seem like a new form of torture.

All in all, it feels like you are playing a web based adventure game that was put onto a cd without bothering to have anyone write enough code to make it save or be continuous. I'm not sure why it was made to play this way, but it's a pity to see an otherwise good game virtually ruined by such an amateurish interface.

Rating:
Summary: Save Me!
Review: Inherent Evil The Haunted Hotel consists of chapters. At the end of each chapter, you get punted out to windows and have to restart the game to load the next chapter.

Unlike some adventure games, your character can be killed in this one. But, unlike most adventure games, you can't save your game.

If you make the wrong choice and get killed, you get to select one of twelve tombstones and hope that you get one of the two that are randomly selected to send you back to the game. What happens if you don't get one of the two that will save you? You have to restart the entire chapter.

I was actually enjoying the game through the first chapters, but the lack of a save feature made it so that I dreaded doing anything for fear of having to play the same chapter over and over again.

The game is somewhat scary. The horror is more of the 'made you jump' kind than anything that will actually give you nightmares. There are some exceptions to that, and I'd give it a higher rating if mood was all that mattered.

A lot of adventure games throw in maze segments, this game has one that, unless you love mazes, will seem like a new form of torture.

All in all, it feels like you are playing a web based adventure game that was put onto a cd without bothering to have anyone write enough code to make it save or be continuous. I'm not sure why it was made to play this way, but it's a pity to see an otherwise good game virtually ruined by such an amateurish interface.

Rating:
Summary: An Electronic Eye Chart
Review: Is there a point to this game? No, not really. It seems that Activision wants to test our vision and ruin our hearing at a stroke. Inherent Evil contains no puzzles that involve logic, you simply must be able to spot the tiny, little clue in a tiny, little corner of the screen at a place in the game you thought you had thoroughly searched before. Also, while optically straining, the game manages to be auditorily cruel. The music and dialogue are at incompatable levels; the former engulfing the latter and rendering it indecipherable. In order to hear the dialogue, so that you may follow the story, you must allow yourself to be punished with music that is vaugely tolerable when it is not insanely off key.

So do yourself a favor, if you buy this game and for the holy love of Mary, shut off your volume whenever you enter the elevator; this is the true Evil inherent in the game: The Elevator Music.