The Dig

The Good
The art design, while not breathtaking, was actually quite good. The early segments of the game set up some suspense and hinted at a great game ahead.

The Bad
While the early portion of the game set things up well (and "killed" off one of the most annoying characters) the middle and final segments of the game were a complete letdown. With a plot that seemed to have been hacked out of mediocre pulp SF films of the mid-50's, ridiculous dialogue, and characters that seemed to have been stereotyped from the same era as the plot. Oh, and the annoying character comes back as some sort of Undead Bavarian Lingust From Hell.

The puzzles were only average, and some of them were patently absurd and/or obtuse in the extreme. The turtle-thing skeleton puzzle comes to mind.

And I just wonder why so many writers and art directors seem to think that -any- dead civilization would have built with stone in a vaguely Egyptian style, regardless of technical advances. Like they were building their cities with prior knowledge that one day they would vanish and so they should design everything to look sufficiently "ruined". Sure, whatever.

The Bottom Line
If you really like adventure games of the SCUMM variety you might want to check it out. It's not so much a bad game, as a game that isn't a fraction of what it could have been. The story would have been excusable 50 years ago, but today it is just trite and insulting.

Well, ok, it is pretty bad.