Summary
Starts strong, but disappoints as a whole
The Good
Well, it may certainly take some time to appreciate a game like "Sanitarium". It is one of the strangest and most confusing games I've ever encountered. But the fact is that "Sanitarium" has loads of atmosphere and is in many ways much, much scarier than well-known games like for example
Phantasmagoria or
Alone in the Dark.
"Sanitarium" begins as a psychological thriller. You have lost your memory and can't remember even your name, all you know is that you are in a strange place, surrounded by strange people. Piece by piece you must reveal the mystery, but first it seems that the mystery gets even more complicated as you advance in the game.
Right in the beginning there's so much suspense that it took me several attempts to actually start playing the game. Not only that you don't have any idea about what to do next, you even don't have any idea about who the hell you are. However, already the first-level puzzles prove that "Sanitarium" is anything but a "modern age" adventure game with obscure puzzles: in fact, you'll mostly follow the same logic as you did when playing classic
Sierra and
LucasArts adventures. Which can be both good and bad.
"Sanitarium" manages to be so scary (well, at least in the beginning) without resorting to cheap effects. There are very few standard "horror" elements in "Sanitarium": minimum of violence, almost no gory scenes at all, no creepy monsters (the monsters themselves aren't scary at all). What is scary is the psychological suspense and the madness surrounding the hero and torturing him from within. What is scary is the inability to tell what is dream, what is hallucination and what is reality in "Sanitarium".
An example for that is the first real chapter - by far the strongest in the game. Everything is actually very quiet here, and it seems like a peaceful little village. But then you start talking to those children... and those deformed children were probably the single scariest thing I have ever seen on my monitor. This chapter was masterfully done.
The gameplay is essentially of the adventuring kind, with the exception of few action sequences. The most common activity in "Sanitarium" is talking. You have to talk a lot, talk to everybody and about everything. Often you advance in the game through simple dialogue, much like in
Gabriel Knight or
Tex Murphy games.
The isometric view is unusual for the pure adventure genre, and I don't know why it was preferred over normal 3rd person perspective. Still, the graphics are pretty detailed, although many objects look very small, due to the perspective. The music in "Sanitarium" fits well the eerie atmosphere, although there could have been more of it.
The Bad
Alas, "Sanitarium" is a textbook example of a game that promises so much, has a great initial impact on the player, only to let him down the more he plays. Instead of gradually building the suspense up and preparing for the culmination, "Sanitarium" chooses the path of degradation from quality horror to mild, harmless fantasy adventuring.
Did you expect to unveil a great mystery, to find missing puzzle pieces, to discover a strong story line that ties all the loose ends? Sorry, but this does not happen. The explanation for the whole bizarre stuff that was happening in "Sanitarium" is absolutely unsatisfying. They should have either presented a more complex story line, or thrown the story line completely over the board in favor of pure psychological horror.
What really kills the game is the gradual weakening of the horror aspect and atmosphere. The first chapter is by far the most horrifying and atmospheric. Then everything goes downhill, until you end up in comic-book and Aztec mythology environments, which have nothing to do with the theme of the game, completely destroy the psychological suspense and replace dark and twisted images with bright, almost cheerful fantasy.
Then there is the discrepancy between the story and the puzzles. It is not as huge as in
Feeble Files, for example, where you have a supposedly macabre story and puzzles taken from
Day of the Tentacle, but it is confusing to ride a toy pig in order to proceed in a level full of children with deformed faces and bodies. The puzzles of "Sanitarium" really don't fit the rest of the game. They are your typical puzzles of a classic adventure, only a bit simpler. There is nothing original in them, they are not connected to the story line and feel absolutely out of place. This game would have been better if it had no puzzles at all.
Finally, I find the isometric perspective totally unsuitable. The rooms are just too small. This isn't a problem in a RPG, where you have to overlook a large world and where there are less plot items. But here, every item is needed to solve some puzzle, so expect a good deal of so-called "pixel-hunting". And the isometric perspective generally doesn't fit a game that emphasizes the protagonist's inner qualms instead of world exploration. First-person view, for example, would have been much more suitable.
The Bottom Line
+ Very strong initial impact
+ Great first chapter
- The atmosphere gets reduced as you advance
- Unfitting puzzles
- Uninteresting explanation for the whole thing
- Perspective problems
In the end, "Sanitarium" is a disappointment. It has a great beginning, and the first chapter is a masterpiece of horror fiction. But then it leads us nowhere, to weak puzzles, a trivial story line, and gradual destruction of horror atmosphere. This game would have been much better if it could keep the promise it gives us in the beginning.
