The game isn’t survival horror , (which is probably the most popular sub genre.) It’s in first person and it’s more like a point and click adventure game with horror elements. The plot is that you’re a detective that came to the small rural town of Karabalta to investigate the disappearance of some kids that went camping a while ago. While investigating you get mixed up in this story about a supposed murderer in town that got acquitted and a legend about some occult guy who made some ritualistic killings. Anyway, you play as this guy…
Burak Guney, who bares a striking resemblance to Harry Mason from Silent Hill. In fact lets gestate on waking up from nightmares in strange places for a minute.
Huh, that’s weird… Did I mention that Burak’s “nightmare” took place in an alternate reality, much like Harry’s?
To help facilitate my anger better I thought it would be fun to include quotes from another review, antithetical of mine.
“The game is very story-driven. It uses a kind of a 'point and click' system, and has a similar feel to Silent Hill.”
No it doesn’t, unless you’re talking about the first person parts in Silent Hill 4 where you’re lighting candles in your apartment to exorcize demons from the wall. Silent Hill being story-driven is kind of an overstatement. The “story” usually goes along the lines of, some bad shit happens and then you ultimately have to get the one thing you want (your wife, your kid) and escape. Again, Silent Hill 4 is the only example of something with story. If anything, Lost in the Nightmare has *more* story.
“The graphics are just lovely.”
Yeah, they‘re perfect for the visually impaired. In fact they're so terrible that it’s extremely difficult to not see the above quote as pure sarcasm. Was “lovely graphics” the first thing that crossed your mind after viewing my couple of screenshots? Be honest now. The thing about this game is that not only does everything look like this but virtually nothing is animated and when it is it’s animated at an astonishingly choppy one frame per second, usually with only two frames that it cycles between in a loop. It’s important to know when a game was made before you go bashing it’s graphics. Now when does this look like it came out? 90? 91? Try 2005. Actually now that I think about it, it reminds me of the old Windows 3D Maze screensaver.
Man that thing kicked ass. I always wanted it to be a video game. It was always thrilling when the rat appeared on screen too. And when you got all surfaces in the maze to be the psychedelic pattern it was like a crazy acid trip. Hmm, maybe I should just review the screensaver.
“The author has done an excellent job. The music is excellent.”
This is actually true. The music *is* excellent. Though it becomes slightly less impressive once you realize that they just fucking ripped music straight from the Silent Hill and Resident Evil OSTs and stuck them in the game. I half expect “You’re Not Here” to start playing at the end credits.
“The replayability in this game is excellent.”
I never actually finished the game but I’m going to go ahead and say no it isn’t. The very nature of adventure games is that they have the lowest replay value of any genre. They’re as linear is it gets and once you solve all the puzzles, that’s it. You already know all the solutions and thus there are no more challenges. As for me not finishing the game, it wasn’t because I couldn’t take it anymore. The game actually had a glitch where it wouldn’t let me select anything from my inventory. Needless to say there was some critical shit that I needed to use to progress but couldn’t. Theoretically it might have been fixed if I had installed a patch before hand. But I was like “Patch? Pfffffff… Who needs that?” Speaking of interface problems, there seemed to be some screens that once you got to them there was no way to backtrack to where you just were. I kept walking down to the lake and then having to ride in the boat to leave the area because it was the only thing the stupid game would let me do.
“This is one SCARY game.”
Well I guess it has it’s moments. I think the fact that it’s in first person is a large part of it. I also played it at night with headphones too, and that always adds to any horror game. I have to say though that the crowning achievement of scary in the game was something that was probably never meant to be scary.
Imagine you come out of your room at the small two story hotel in some archaic backwards town in the middle of nowhere. You want to go get some ice from the lobby ice machine so you hop in the elevator and press L. You go down, the doors open, and you see this…
Imagine you come out of your room at the small two story hotel in some archaic backwards town in the middle of nowhere. You want to go get some ice from the lobby ice machine so you hop in the elevator and press L. You go down, the doors open, and you see this…
This is going to sound stupid but I think I jolted back in my chair the first time it happened. But seriously, this guy is standing motionless, alone in a dark room, apparently just *waiting* for you. When he was behind the desk and I first came to the hotel I was creeped out by him. Then he feels the need to pull this on me. There’s no amount of light that can make this guy look anything less than a murderous psychopath/child molester. But all the fucking lights are off in the lobby. What reasonable explanation is there that doesn’t involve him being dressed like his dead mother and perforating my chest with a butcher knife the second the elevator doors open?
