Adventure Gamers - Forums

Casual Friday

There are a lot of games in all the adventure game genres that have a love/hate relationship with players. For every person that loved Myst, there is one who “just didn’t get it.” Many people have The Longest Journey in their Top 10 list. I would be hard pressed to put in my Top 100.

The above scene is from Mystery Case Files: Shadow Lake. While many lauded it, I thought it was just awful. It was created by Big Fish Studios, the same organization that gave us the wonderful Drawn Trilogy. It came out in November, 2012, shortly after Escape From Ravenhurst. (For what it’s worth, I disliked that game as well. Whoever thought morphing objects in hidden object scenes was a good idea should have been fired.)

The basic game really isn’t that bad. Except for the fact that it is buggy, makes horrible use of FMV, (which is kind of ironic since most games that use FMV are pretty bad.) The “star” is Lea Thompson, who overacts in every scene. This isn’t Shakespeare. And you must, unfortunately interact with her on a regular basis. And the bonus material in the Collector’s Edition, which I had the misfortune to buy, is simply a carryover from the Escape game. That is, you revisit every location in the game searching for the morphing object in that scene. That’s it! No plot twist. No revelation of how the evil artifact, which plays a main role in the game, came into being in the first place. None of that. It’s sole reason for being is find the morphing object.

As for the bugginess, I remember getting stalled in the exact same place when I first played the game. It was at the school, which is the next major location after the above scene, which is the exterior view of the Shadow Lake Prison warden’s house. If you don’t do things in the exact sequence the designers planned, you will lose a piece of inventory. And without that piece of inventory, you can’t proceed.

And if you’re thinking “Wait! I’ll consult the Strategy Guide and find a way around this,” you would be wrong. The Strategy Guide, which is another part of the bonus CE package, is static. It only shows you what actions you should be doing at your current location. If you want to go back to a previous location to see if you missed something, you can’t! If you want to take a peek ahead to see if the item you are looking for lies ahead, you can’t.

I did finish the game after more than a few restarts, with SE blog walkthrough at the ready to help me get around prior bug stalls. I’ll give it this much. It turned a five-hour game into a twenty-hour game.

I would never have bought this game if I knew how bad it was going to be on so many levels. But if you feel challenged, buy the SE version. Play it in a Window. And keep the walkthrough open in a second window at all times. That’s not to help you get through the game, which is fairly easy. It’s to help you finish the game in one pass.

I didn’t dislike the game, but it’s my least favorite of the series.  I came across no glitches when playing and found the puzzles a mixed bag.  Also, I don’t mind morphing objects in hidden object scenes, although I usually forget about them unless they’re staring me in the face.

I haven’t played the two new Ravenhurst games, so I can’t say Shadow Lake is the worst of all the MCF games. But it is definitely the worst of all the ones I’ve played.

I’ve been a fan of the Mystery Case Files since the beginning. The Ravenhurst ones are my favorite of the lot. A good solid story that even tied into the Madame Fate games. I would have to say though that Shadow Lake was definitely my least favorite of them. I just didn’t enjoy the puzzles. I understand they were trying something different in hopes of maybe reinventing the genre but it didn’t fair to well.

By the way, The newest Mystery Case Files Broken Hour will be releasing on Tuesday the 22nd

Big Spoiler which is the big glitch early in the game.

You enter the school and turn left. You start randomly clicking on lockers. One on the upper right is the teacher’s locker and you find something. You can’t find anything in Sam’s locker until you turn over the swing. The problem locker is the Billy locker. You can open it and retrieve the baseball card that you will need later. Then you enter the schoolroom proper. You will eventually find the teacher’s desk drawer and will open it. Cassandra will utter the name Billy. You return to Billy’s locker, and not only is there nothing there, but the baseball card has vanished from your inventory.

So you can’t return to the warden’s house and put the baseball card in the slot. Which triggers Cassandra to call you back to get the cards to match with the scenes.

In other words, if you do what any normal adventure game player would do, which is to click on everything at every opportunity, and you click on Billy’s locker when you enter the school, you’re f***ed.

And there are a few more similar bugs. This was simply a poorly designed game. Which is why I call it awful.

FWIW, I changed to a new player and started from the beginning. It was as I suspected. If you only open the teacher’s locker and get his desk key, and wait until you are prompted to open the other two lockers, you will be able to proceed. I’m not sure if will continue to play the game. I may do it just to identify the other problem areas I encountered when I first played the game.

I usually don’t keep many games loaded since they are so easy to re-install from purchase history. Shadow Lake was re-installed specifically for the screenshot, so it is the latest and greatest.

Edit: I should note that I rarely see games updated via BFG.

I don’t mind glitches. An occasional game crash is par for the course. I’ve also had very good luck with BFG tech support. If they can’t figure out what’s wrong they will invariably give me a game credit.

I was probably in error when I called what happened here a “glitch” or a “bug”. What it is is a dead end. I HATE those. A very long time ago Sierra noted on their Compuserve forum that their new game Shivers had no dead ends. I found one. They were quite surprised. As far as they knew I was the only person who had run across this problem. To the best of my knowledge the problem was never fixed. Because of the random nature of the pot/lid locations, they probably decided that it wasn’t worth rewriting code to to avoid the astronomical chance of the problem recurring.

To me, a “glitch” is the result of something as simple as an inadvertent coding error. It should have been caught in beta, but it’s a relatively simple fix if it wasn’t. A dead end, on the other hand, is a result of bad game design.

I finished the game without any other problems. I remember there being some, but this time I simply followed Cassandra’s instructions. If she told me she had new drawings, and that I should return to the motel as soon as possible, I did that.

Although doing that made it feel less like playing a game than following a walkthrough. It probably wasn’t actually as bad as that, but I didn’t enjoy it. After all, exploring without Cassandra’s approval is what lead to the first dead end. Why would I wan’t to repeat that? I wouldn’t. But it sure sucks the fun out of the game.

Sir Beardalot - 19 November 2016 07:41 PM

A good solid story that even tied into the Madame Fate games.

You must be referring to the pachinko machine in the pharmacy. I didn’t see that until you mentioned it. Good catch!