English
"Truth sleeps beneath appearance"
J.Keats
In 1834 prof. Lord Boleskine was researching the passage of Halley's comet in small town of Illsmouth, USA, where comet was best to be seen, hoping to prove his theories about secret place that was influenced by close convergence of stars to the Earth. Whatever he found drived him into complete madness, he was proclaimed as a lunatic and died in hospital shortly after that. 76 years later, a young british journalyst named John T. Parker becomes interested in Boleskine's sketches and decides to write a story about Boleskine's work and to take pictures of the comet. He arrives in Illsmouth 3 days before passage of the comet.
That is where you start. As a young Parker you have to prepare yourslef for the comet. But soon you'll find things very strange at Illsmouth, and at the end, you'll fight a battle to save the world. Game is divided in 3 days. With each one of them you'll get closer to the truth, avoiding death and making friendships. Basically you wander around talking to people and pick up the objects that will dissapear from your inventory if they are no longer needed in the game. Game is linear and follows the story. Oddly, that's probably the best part, because storyline is really great and more you explore, more it is deeper and a scaring. Bad part is that you'll have to walk, especially during first day when you meet people and get familiar with town and forest. Although you have map in the town, walking still takes time.
There are some things that you'll never think of trying wich are needed to finish the game, but mostly you follow your investigation. Other people are also important since there will be enemies and friends. You'll also need to save position very often, because if you do not talk to some people properly, they won't help you, and the world is lost. Sometimes it's just about kindness but sometimes you need to negotiate and persuade. Fortunally, that kind of conversations are not too often. Conversations are written in little boxes and mostly you choose what to say. Sometimes they speak in riddles (ah, those Indians) so you'll need to improvize. Still, for most stuff in the game you'll just need to explore.
After breakthrough that Infogrames made with Alone in the Dark, they didn't turn their back to the famous writer H.P Lovecraft. Still game has very little action scenes where only Parker's haste is important. Mostly classic Infogrames adventure with seeing from the side and their unique "spotting objects". Whole screen is used for playing, and you use hot keys for actions like (L)ook, (G)et, (U)se, (M)ap, (I)ndex and (O)pen inventory. Graphics is little raw but still colorful (VGA). Music quality could be better, theme can be boring but after some time it starts to sound weird and fits in atmosphere. Sound effects are very good. Still in some parts there is no music wich is totaly bad. Perhaps that's the price you pay in floppy version. Some actors appear in the game, actually 3 of them: Jack Nicholson, William Defoe and offcourse Vincent Price. They are here just to put up already great atmosphere.
It works in any windows surrounding, but also works pretty fine in Dosbox in case you have problems with sound. You really shouldn't play it without sound since it is quite empty then. Original release had vocalizations and a Lovecraft virtual museum (good way to fill half-empty CD, at that time video-games industry just started to use CDs) that contained pictures and drawings inspired with his stories.
All in all this game is not a maked-up good looking but empty package, it is quite opposite. Maybe this rewiew doesn't sound really great, but my mark is highest. This is really a unique game, mostly because of story and a spooky feeling that you get. Anyone who loves horror or adventures definitly has to try it. Besides, what else someone needs besides saving the world? Only this time it's from the Ancient Gods.
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