Senaste recensioner av DocCovington

I'm not a fan of games

• that don't let you name your save games for better orientation (especially when you take longer breaks from the game),
  
• that don't sport a quick pause option,
  
• that have no real targeting system (so far, there has been only one exception for me: Dark Messiah of Might & Magic),
  
• that have a slow, unintuitive menu navigation that feels like you were playing a game from the early 2000s,
  
• where the AI feels like you were playing a game from the early 2000s,
  
• where combat feels clumsy,
  
• where characters have "blocky" faces,
  
• where character animation feels unbelievably outdated,
  
• where ragdoll animation looks plain horrific (or hysterical, you decide),
  
• where you get nausea from your attempts to target objects,
  
• that release a "remastered" version in which textures look just as bad as in the original (without mods) and where sound quality has been actually downgraded from the original,
  
• where you need to install dozens of mods to make the game enjoyable (due to bugs and the aforementioned issues).

I spent 40 bucks on this "special edition", hoping there would be significant improvements to the original, but that hope was completely crushed.

I had more fun playing Oblivion at its time (when it was quite outstanding) than this game. Skyrim SE has some remarkably poor gameplay mechanics for a 2011/2016 release, so I really cannot recommend it. I'd rather play Dragon Age: Inquisition, which has some horrible gameplay mechanics in similar regards (UI, menu navigation, controls, movement, mapping/radar, combat), than this game.

A real shame (and waste of money).

Edit: P.S. Unfortunately, after spending too many hours in a futile attempt to fix the ugly graphics, character animations, and what not, I was no longer eligible for a refund.

It's an okay HO game. Nice story, nothing special though. The puzzles are the same old, same old, but at least they come in an entertaining package. However, the HO puzzles always requiring the same items at each playthrough isn't very challenging. The difficulty level of the game overall is super low, and there isn't even an achievement for finishing it in Expert Mode, which makes it boring to a certain degree, especially for veteran players.

The lack of authenticity regarding Slavic mythology and culture is quite shocking, by the way. Among other things, one has to wonder what Celtic runes are doing in a Slavic setting.

On the technical side of things, it's annoying how, once you grab an item to use it with another item on the screen during an HO scene, you can no longer tell where the actual mouse pointer is, thus "misclicks" happen.

The achievements aren't too exciting and you have to play through the game a second time only for a single one ("Choose Well") - which then turned out to be bugged (which was reported nine months ago, yet still not fixed). So I just wasted two hours of my time playing through the game again, which felt rather tedious - this resulted in me changing my rating from "Positive" to "Negative" and will influence my future decision on buying another of your products.

Speaking of "the route you choose" in this game, the statement that your choices affect the story is a shameless lie. I finished my second playthrough and the different choices were of zero consequence - there is no real alternative route or ending, it is always the same storyline.

Ergo, I only recommend getting this game when it's on sale and if you haven't played too many of Artifex Mundi's HO games already to easily tire of the repetitiveness.

(Hint @ The House of Fables: It is time to fix the bugs and also to come up with new puzzle ideas for future releases. You can't expect your customers to be still happy after playing through the exact same puzzle for the dozenth time.)

This engine has obvious limitations. All the puzzles in this game I have already played in other publications by Artifex Mundi, so they felt highly repetitive - even more so since they were also repetitive in itself, which could potentially make it just as boring for people who have not played other AM games. There isn't even a reward (achievement) for playing this title at highest difficulty or for doing the mini game instead of the HO puzzles.

Also, The HO scenes didn't vary on my second playthrough, the objects needed are always the same, which only increased my boredom. The achievements were mediocre, too, the game overall posed no challenge whatsoever.

The story seemed somewhat fresh at first, which got me prematurely excited, only to quickly realize that the mystery's solution was 100% stereotypical, hence obvious and predictable and void of fun. The bonus chapter was a bad joke; you don't even get to fuel the Elemental Forge with runes here, it was just a quick "clicking-through" experience with a non-existent story.

Some of the voice acting (except for the main character) was quite bad and partially annoying.

While the game is technically flawless and sports beautiful, athmospheric art, I overall cannot recommend it.

This sequel is so much more fun than it predecessor. The puzzles are more challenging and it also has an engulfing atmosphere. I highly recommend it, even though the mouse controls are still sluggish and cause errorous actions (see my review on part 1 for a more in-depth observation).

Edit: The camera control is truly awful as it always flips to predetermined positions which makes navigating through the large rooms a majorly annoying endeavor. The further I play, the more annoying the camera handling gets. Forcing people into certain perspectives and making rotating such a pain is not desireable in a game that is based on those two mechanisms.

"The Room" is categorized as an "adventure" and a "mystery", but don't let that fool you -- it is neither. This game is merely one big puzzle -- a good one, but definitely not everything I had hoped for when I bought it. You can't truly feel the Cthulhu-esqueness of the story as it leads nowhere. There is no horror element and the mystery part remains unsolved. As a puzzle game, it is simple to solve for those who like solving puzzles, therefore that part remained void of excitement for me as well.

On the technical side of things, even though the engine is flawlessly programmed, there are downsides, too:

• In order to zoom in, you double-click the left mouse button, but in order to zoom out, you press the right one; this occasionally leads to you accidentally misclicking, thereby cancelling an action or (worse) irreversably closing a view or letter that you have not finished reading yet. Furthermore, each time you move you have an acceleration and slowdown time. All this combined makes the mouse controls feel sluggish and unintuitive, and for those who like fast controls it often ends up being a highly irritating experience.
  
  
• This game has one of the most annoying background sound and soundtracks. Unfortunately neither can be turned off/adjusted in the menu. I ended up muting the game completely and listening to other music instead.
  
  
• The game's atmosphere feels highly despressing. I agree that the Cthulhu universe is not a happy place, but when I buy a Cthulhu-themed game I expect to be entertained with mystery and horror, not depressed by the graphics and sound/music.

Overall, go ahead and buy the game if you want to be mildly entertained by a puzzle game of medium difficulty. If you expect more from this game, then don't bother or you will end up being as disappointed by it as I am.

What a disappointment. Although technically flawless (UI, engine, graphics), this third part of the series failed to captivate. You wouldn't build an emotional connection to care enough about any of the characters (at least they were eye candy ;) ).

Also, it lacked the humor of its predecessor (hint: bonus chapter), which is a shame.

Still a nice buy on discount, the mini games and HO scenes were a lot of fun and the achievements are quite challenging. Grab during Steam sale, if you can.

Played this a while ago, but apparently forgot to write a review - oops!

Well, one of Artifex Mundi's pearls for sure. Captivating story and atmosphere, nice puzzles and mini games, good graphics, flawless engine.

Great starter for a series, its sequel was even better!

You are expecting suspense. - Nope.
You are expecting a good story. - Well, it did have potential (if the execution had been better).
You are expecting exciting detective work and challenging puzzles. - Nope.
You are expecting a good engine. - Please...

"Captivating"? "Deeply creepy"? - Apart from a handful of jump scares there was nothing of the kind. You didn't even have to do much thinking, and the whole Asian theme that harbored potential for a great ghost story was completely wasted. Actually, pretty much every potential outcome one would anticipate in excitement at the start of the game was thrown to the wolves for a lame ending (all of them, actually).

So, just replace "captivating" with "a lesson in patience" and "deeply creepy" with "creepingly slow". Et voilà! Uninstalling, moving on.

I played the sequel first and was thrilled by it, so I thought, "Let's give this puppet thing a try, even though I find puppets to be scary." ;)

Turns out it was the right decision. A solid release by a very talented studio. Loved the puzzles, the difficulty level ranged from simple to challenging, but mostly it was above average, thus made the game still feel challenging to a comforting extent.

The story was okay, and I didn't feel bored a single second. Played through the whole game in two sessions, that's how much fun I had. Yes, there might be better ones (I highly recommend the sequel!), but this one is still worth buying -- it won't fail you, I promise.

Apart from having this stretched to 16:9 (probably because it's not a new release), the engine is well programmed and the graphics quality good (although pixelated on higher resolutions). What's always important is that the UI and reaction time don't frustrate the player, and they certainly don't in this case. Everything works smoothly.

Thumbs up for this one!

I loved the first two 9 Clues games, but this one?

Such a ridiculous, illogical story (just like the previous Crime Secrets game... actually, worse), and the engine seems to have decreased in quality rather than improved, even though there has been a new engine version out for quite some time: the animated body parts (mainly heads) now have visible black borders and you can see the various animation layers overlapping - it looks awful and cheap, and that's how the whole game feels.

It is sheer laughable and boring (although you can catch glimpses of what it was supposed to be, which exacerbates the whole experience even further). I am a sucker for good detective stories and winter themed scenarios, but this game I cannot recommend to anyone.