Dylan Dog, a horror comic hero, is a famous British private investigator of the supernatural. He came to life in Italy, by the hand of Tiziano Scalvi. As the comic was very popular in Europe, it was expected that the video game will gather a lot of attention.
Like the comic, the game was created in Italy. It is obvious that programmers put a lot of effort to create the same atmosphere as in the comics. Well, they made it. Since Dylan comics had lots of maniacs and blood scenes, this game will also show you many ways and tools to create a not-so-nice image of a corpse. All of Dylan's fans were pleased with this, but unfortunately the game itself is not that good.
All this doesn't mean that you will be butchering people all around you. Dylan is a good guy. But everywhere he goes, he finds deeds of demented people. The game takes place in a big and mysterious mansion where a party was set. The host invited Dylan and prevented him from drinking the wine. Suddenly, the people's eyes became bloody and so does the party.
Dylan has to deal with this "little" problem. The mansion is filled with people and a few of them are still normal and will help you. Killing bad ones, helping good ones and finding secrets, you will have to fight your way to the end. This is some sort of action-puzzle-jumping game. You should also know that this is a hard game. There are a lot of enemies, the house may be hard to memorize and the secrets are easy to solve but may be difficult to find.
As already mentioned, this game is not so good. You will spend most of the time fighting and killing and having just a few real puzzles. You have to fight with your hands and with some cold weapons that you can find.
There are some "special" opponents that can be killed only with the gun, so you have to save your ammo for them. Usually, those "specials" will leave the key or were lurking at some normal people who were desperately hiding from them. Those people will tell you some of the house’s secrets.
Strangely, those keys and secrets allow you to finish the game. This means that you don't have to use the items at all. In the inventory screen you will see the number 666 which is the game meter. It will be reduced by killing enemies, unlocking the doors, solving secrets, using items and picking up some strange white spheres that have no real use. Only if you do EVERYTHING the meter will reach zero, but you don't have to in order to finish the game.
The inventory also shows you Dylan's energy as the grave that is rising from the ground. When the grave is completely up, Dylan will die. The moon shows the time you have left. You don't have to worry about holes and water as falling won't kill Dylan but it will cost you some time. Going through inventory is easy. Just exit inventory leaving the select box on item or weapon in order to use it. If you stand above object, just press FIRE on empty box to pick it up.
The first thing you'll notice is the exceptionally good graphics for a game of this age. This was an absolute must for a game like this, as the blood scenes should look a bit horrible. There are lots of tunes and music is not really spooky but somehow fits into the atmosphere. Generally the technical parts are above the average, but the gameplay is a bit below. This could be a much better game, but the amount and hardness of puzzles are reduced, while the biggest problems are the enemies and especially time.
Fighting enemies consist of hitting and dodging. FIRE + Dylan's direction is for hit, while FIRE + the opposite direction is for dodge. So, you hit an enemy, dodge and repeat it until you kill him. Some are slower so you can hit them more before dodging and some are faster and so you need to dodge twice before hitting them. A big problem arises if there are two enemies at once. This doesn’t happen often but it is very difficult. Also, all this fighting takes a lot of time.
You control Dylan using numpad (or arrow keys). 7, 8 and 9 are for the jumps (directional), 2 is for ducking and 1 and 3 are for running. Also, side-jump while running gives a long jump (for example press 9 while running to right). Press right SHIFT for FIRE and SPACE for inventory. Using items and activating secrets is done by pressing up or 8 on the "hot spots". If there is something to be done there, Dylan won't jump but will face the wall and try to do something instead. You need to know a secret or have a proper item selected for a successful execution of an action. That is also a problem. There is no way to find the right place, so you need to rely on your hunches. This is not a problem while using a secret or a key, but if you want to use all the items, you'll have quite some difficulties. Well, you could slowly move all around the house pressing 8 on each step you make (if Dylan doesn't jump, something can be done there) but common sense will probably prevent you from doing this.
This game barely deserves the mark of 3 but it could have been much, much better. This is surely a must for Dylan's fans and horror fans. But know that you will be fighting bad guys mostly. The game will be more interesting as you progress but it may unfortunately get disappointing at the end.
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