First and foremost it is the story that makes the game bland. And every single character, especially the protagonist is devoid of personality; The games plot is uninteresting, never explained, and unbelievable. More then anything the actions, personality, dialogue, and looks of the protagonist reminds me of Ken, as in Barbi and Ken. He is just so dopey, and does not really seem to have any personally to speak-of; I can only assume that this game is aimed as young girls as I cannot see anyone else even potentially enjoying playing as him. The rest of the game follows pretty similarly. The vampire(s) in the game do not really make an appearance nor is any of their actions ever explained. If anything their main goal in life seems to be to simply make the city slightly spooky, like they were planing to turn the city into haunted house style attraction and they were practising for this role.
The game is also extremely linear, far more then it has to be. You often have multiple puzzles on the go, but that does not mean you can solve them whenever you want, for the vast majority you will have to complete a bunch of unrelated puzzles before you are allowed to find/pick up the needed object or try to solve the logic puzzle. But despite this linearness you are constantly backtracking to solve old puzzles and find new items; At random points in the game old previously used HOG locations will suddenly and inexplicably become active, with absolutely no in-game indication that they have done so. Which basically degrades the entire game into, solve a puzzle, check the "map" (picture album) for the new puzzle location, warp there and solve, repeat. And one rather strange thing is that the game does not even change the scene one iota when reusing a HOG location and many items you will be finding several times. So by the end of your game, even if you have a moderately bad memory, all HOG puzzles will consist of a significant fraction of objects that you remember the location of.
The rest of the game is pretty much what you would expect. the graphics are OK; The sound effects and music are OK; The gameplay is very repetitive but other then that about what you would expect from a casual HOG title. So all in all, it is a sub-par game but, while I am no expert, is it probably still an average, to above average, HOG title.
My mini-review of Vampire Saga: Welcome to Hell Lock.
I'd heard good things about this, but your review seems more realistic. Still thinking about trying it, though.
ReplyDeleteWell there is a demo I believe, so you have got nothing to lose.
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