Dark Fall: Lost Souls
Review
Dark Fall made me a Lost Soul
by Caitlin Roberts
reviewed on PC
Controls, Gameplay and Puzzleplay
Controls, okay. It was a little old-fashioned in that you could really only look directly in front of you at any given time, and needed to move the mouse to the sides (or top and bottom) of the screen until the little hand appeared before you could turn in that direction – and look straight forward again. That being said, given the eye for detail required in a clue-finding game such as this, it is really almost a necessary evil.
The gameplay has some real high points. I loved the use of the text-messages sent by ‘Echo’ to try to lead the Inspector in the direction he’s meant to go. It also makes interesting use of a variety of vehicles to impart information to the player. Books and diaries, newspaper articles, clipboards, conversations with spirits – in person or on the phone – and broken televisions replaying scenes are just a small sample of the offering in Dark Fall: Lost Souls. There were low points, but they need to be put into the right context: the puzzle-play.
Puzzles, bad. Very bad. No, that’s not true. The specific puzzles themselves, once I knew I had a puzzle on my hands, were intriguing and many were quite original. My issue is with the puzzle-play as a whole: outside of the mini-game type puzzles, I could not for the life of me figure out what to do next. Ever. There was little that was logical, let alone intuitive, in the clue-hunting between the actual puzzles. Looking back at some of the clues, there are a few for which I can go ‘oh, yeah, now it makes sense, sort of’. But most of the time the connection between what I had just found or accomplished, and what I apparently needed to do next was so far-fetched or lost in the murk that I wandered around aimlessly clicking on random areas to see what might pop out half the time. Despite being a veteran problem solver, I have to admit that this aggravated me so much that it drove me out of the computer room completely several times.
Replayability
The jury is still out on that. I think before I considered it, I would need to stop playing Sudoku on my cell phone for a while, because Sudoku sets me up for logical puzzle-solving, whereas Dark Fall requires intuitive leaps and skewed perceptions. Then I will read a couple of creepy stories, throw everything I learned by watching CSI out (you shouldn't really watch CSI as an educational program anyway. -Ed), maybe watch a few episodes of True Blood, and then just... click madly everywhere... yeah, okay, maybe I could get into it again, but I just don’t think so. Then again, with this genre it is quite rare that you can honestly say you would replay it. So don’t think of that as a negative or take marks off the game for it.
Conclusion
Despite what might seem to be more negatives than positives, I really did enjoy my struggles with Dark Fall: Lost Souls. My husband and cats will attest to that fact. I was so gripped in the story and clue finding that when the game did send one of its ‘whammies’ my way, I screeched, I jumped; I even freaked out when MY cell phone started vibrating at one point. I have not yet played the first two instalments of the Dark Fall series; you can be sure that I will be looking them up in the near future. After I delete ‘Logic’ from my hard-drive of course!
7.5
fun score
Pros
Scary as hell!
Cons
You’re never really sure what’s expected of you.
