Review of Dead Reefs by emric
i actually feel sick when i remember playing this game. it's that bad!
this is one of the worst adventure games i’ve had the misfortune of playing. i did finish it, but now wish i’d just followed my instinct and given up on it quarter-way through.
one of the biggest problems was the main character. he has no personality, history or anything that might make a gamer even care what becomes of him or what he discovers.
most of puzzles feel like they’ve been forced into your path in a very contrived and artificial manner and they destroy the flow of the uhh “story”. what’s worse though is the game’s inability to give you necessary details about puzzle solving. without the walkthru that i was quickly forced to resort to, i have no idea how i would’ve even known where some puzzles existed let alone the bizarre ways to solve them.
the interface sucks majorly as well. they’ve attempted to do a no-mouse-control-at-all deal. so it’s fully keyboard. but it’s pretty complex and takes you awhile to remember which specific keys control document viewing and scene scanning and object combining etc. inventory control is awful! you have to scroll through items one at a time, and the mechanics for combining objects are so tedious.
technically this game is rather poor as well. on my system, the very first thing i see after starting the game is a blank white screen and that’s all. after taking ages searching thru forums assuming there was some kind of video card issue, i finally found someone who said “oh btw, if it starts up with a white screen, just hit spacebar a few times” so i did, and then i got to see the opening menus. OMG! about 3 times throughout the game i was once again greeted with this dreaded white screen which showed as a substitute for a cutscene i should’ve been viewing.
the full 3D environment was very choppy and mostly unattractive. i also came across a handful of bugs where random objects would appear just floating in the air.
it’s a 3rd-person perspective game in full 3D environment with the camera mostly following along behind you. but it bounces when you move in such a manner that it actually caused me motion sickness—which i’ve never experienced in any other similar game before.
there are only 3 positive aspects about this game. voice acting was reasonable. a sequence near the beginning where you follow a ghost through secret passages in a scary house was actually sort-of captivating. and the persistent fog affect throughout all outdoor environments was quite a nice visual touch. so i’ll give it half a star for each of these three elements and, believe me, overall that’s being rather generous.
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Time Played: 10-20 hours
