Sanitarium

The Good
(eh, I'll just start by saying that I refer to the main character as "the character" as well as "you", since it is you playing it. I just can't remember the guy's name...it's been a while)

I heard nothing but bad things about this game. My uncle thought it was horrible, my friends thought it was the worst game ever made. They probably weren't alone, since at the time the only places I'd even heard of the game was through their ranting. I picked the game up out of boredom - just to see what was so bad about it, if nothing else - and was surprised to find such a great game!

This is what an adventure game should be. It reminds me of the old Lucas Arts adventure games, but with updated graphics and a story that's completely unique to the computer gaming world.

Sanitarium was one of the few games nowadays that actually brings a chill to my spine. Not necessarily because it was scary (though, there were times...), but because surprise plot elements that were revealed were actually interesting. It wasn't just a "oh look, he's a demon" or "oh wow, that guy's evil" plot twist that you find in so many other games.

The thing that adds to the game's atmosphere the most is that it all takes place in a man's own reality. Because of this, the game is not limited by what can and can't be, but every area and object you find is related to, and contributes to the game's plot. Every part of the game you see is coming from some deep recess of the character's mind, some dark, destroyed, warped, fading image of something, and it is a wonderful thing. You will journey into images from his childhood, from the insect-like world from a comic book, to a melting image of his once home, through his mind and destroyed memory all the while trying to understand who you are and what lead up to this. And the second area you visit, with the mutated children - it is one of the most chilling and memorable places I've ever seen in a computer game.

Though it becomes obvious who the real "bad guy" is in the game, you are never distracted from it, because you get the feeling the character in the game suspects as well, but he is more concerned with finding out who it is and what part it plays in his madness.

Puzzles are fairly simple, but I like easy puzzles in adventure games. I love the adventure genre because it often feels more like playing an interactive movie than just killing brain cells playing a computer game, and too many adventure games have ridiculously pointless, impossible puzzles in it.

When you complete some of the more plot-contributing puzzles, you are rewarded with fantastic cinematics. They're all high quality and very well-done. Sometimes they're just a more detailed view of what you just accomplished, and sometimes it's another journey into the character's mind. And you can go back and view them all later, if you want, which I loved.

Even though all the characters in the game were either warped memories of someone from the character's past, or a completely imagined person, most of them were quite interesting and had some actual depth to them. I liked listening to them talk about themselves and coming to realize how they might have spawned from the character's madness.

This game gets my highest recommendation. The adventure genre is dying, but it's because there aren't more games like this.

The Bad
While I grew to love the character in the game, I thought that (especially in the beginning of the game) his voice was annoying. It was acted well enough (though not perfect), but it just had a certain tone to it that was annoying.

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I wish there had been more emphasis or explanation as to some of the parts of the game, particularly the Sanitarium areas, especially the second one, since it seems much less insane than the first one. Were they the character's subconscious realization that he was trapped within his own mind? Or were they spawned from coming in and out of a coma and interacting with doctors? Well, like I said, maybe I'm dumb or missed the reference, but if we were expected to just draw up our own conclusions...well, I don't like that.

Some quests involve asking dozens of characters the same questions over and over. Now, I didn't mind this because most of the characters were so interesting, but some parts had characters that were no different than the one next to it, save for a unique name or something. Though I think there were only two parts where this was necesarry, I think this is the game's biggest drawback.

The Bottom Line
Journey into the mind of a madman and follow the footsteps through your destroyed memory to find out who you are and how you got here. You'll begin to question what is reality and what is madness. This game is one of the best adventure games ever created.

The Good
As the main protagonist of this game, the player gets involved in a car crash and ends up in a nuthouse. They are trying to figure out who they are and how they got there in the first place. This storyline is similar to Countdown where the player has to escape from an asylum in a certain amount of time. Unlike Countdown, however, the player gets to see the sorry people who ended up at the asylum. The dark and dirty look of the asylum and the constant noise of the other prisoners help create the atmosphere.

Answers to the questions the protagonist has are given through a series of flashbacks (cinematics) he gets throughout his adventure. Sanitarium is supposed to be a game of suspense, so I won't spoil it for you here. Anyway, these flashbacks also focus on his past, and most of these are rather interesting to watch. Some of them are even quite scary, especially the ones toward the end of the game. These flashbacks were probably enough to warrant a 15+ age rating.

Sanitarium is spread throughout nine chapters, with each one containing a distinct atmosphere and represents the real or imaginary world of the protagonist. Each chapter has its own objective for the player to accomplish. I enjoyed playing some of the chapters, particularly the early ones where you are trying to find your way out of the nuthouse; deal with some deformed, innocent children; and kill whoever distorted them. The background music reflects the situation the player is in. I love the energetic music that is played later on in the game.

The protagonist has the ability to transform into different characters, and the player gets to play these characters in every second or third chapter. There are two characters that I like playing as, and one of them is the protagonist's little brat, who, as long as you keep playing her, will churn out those annoying comments that brats usually make. What's more: if you press the function keys, she will churn out such classics like “Wheeeeee!”, “Oh poo!”, and “Uh oh”. The other character is an Aztec god who is trying to save his people from an erupting volcano.

The conversations between the protagonist and the characters are well-scripted, and most of them are related to what you're doing in each chapter. They were easy to follow, and I really enjoyed how angry the protagonist gets throughout the game. The window in which the conversations take place appear in the game quite nicely, and it is good to see the protagonist's face change to reflect what mood he is in.

Some elements of the game are rather disturbing. I just finished playing this game, so I will never forget how deformed the children from Chapter 2 are, especially a girl named Jessie. But what's more disturbing is the fact that something is making them deformed and that it puts them in the dreaded “pumpkin patch”, where bad things happen. As I mentioned earlier, the flashbacks can be quite scary, especially the ones near the end.

The small animation effects are quite nice to look at, and these effects are mostly found in the control panel: effects like the rotation of a symbol when you hover your mouse over it, as well as the way the person's eyes follow the mouse cursor. I also like how a CD icon travels from one end of the screen to the other (in the chapter opening screen) and the way that flashbacks appear.

The Bad
No matter what anyone thinks, almost all of the puzzles in the game are quite hard and have no logic to them. When players are faced with such puzzles, it is just a matter of “click this, click that”, and except for a puzzle near the end of the game, there are no clues to help them solve it, taking them about thirty minutes to complete all of them.

Players are limited to just twenty-five save slots, including a slot reserved for quick-save. Like the recent adventure games I played, Sanitarium is a rather long game, and keeping more than twenty-five slots are necessary for the important events that occur in the game. Seriously, the limit on the number of saves players can have is comparable to those of Sierra's earliest games.

I am not the only one who thinks that disc-swapping is unnecessary. There are about three chapters stored on one of the three game CDs, and players are asked to insert each CD during the game. Disc-swapping is the reason why my old CD-ROM drive died in the first place. If only installation programs ask players to insert each CD while the game installs itself.

The Bottom Line
ASC Games did an excellent job at portraying what life is really like inside an asylum, and it wouldn't take long for players to be hooked; and like Countdown, the entire game doesn't take place in an asylum. Each chapter in the game has players accomplishing tasks that may or may not be related to the flashbacks they have, and the music suits the situation that they are in. The flashbacks are scary, especially the ones toward the end of the game. Finally, it is nice to be certain characters in the game, especially if players are tired of playing the same one all the time.

Players will have no problem playing Sanitarium on Windows Vista, as that OS's capability of running old games like these is high. I really enjoyed playing the game, and would play it again in the near future. What a shame there was never a sequel.

The Good
The man just found the missing link for a project he's been struggling with for several months. He makes some urgent phone calls to spread the news, and then flees towards the parking lot.
The excitement of the man is contrasted by the night, stormy and full of awful premonitions.
After driving for a few minutes, the man loses control of the car and gets out of the road, falling off a cliff. It all fades to black.

Suddenly, a siren goes off and a harsh voice starts yelling, much like the warden of a prison. The man wakes up in a small cell. The door is not locked, so he gets out into the hall.
He finds himself at the top of some ancient-looking tower, with several cells in which other people are being held. Chilling screaming sounds in the background, coming out of the cells. Clearly, all of these people are mad.
The man's suit and white lab-coat have been replaced by green scrubs. His face is covered by bandages. He can't remember who he is, he doesn't know what he is doing here. He's now another patient at the sanitarium.
The persisting sirens keep ringing, something bad is happening.

From this moment on, Sanitarium will take the player through a journey in which nothing seems to make sense. The very moment it seems like it would, the whole world is suddenly changed into something totally different.

Sanitarium is a point n' click graphic adventure, shown from an isometric perspective. The typical old school use "this" with "that" kind of game.
Gameplay is spiced up with some classic mind-breaking puzzles, and a few action scenes.

The game is divided in ten chapters, and each of them takes place in a totally different location. Sometimes even the character is transformed into someone else. The atmosphere is very surrealistic and will have you totally confused for the first three chapters, at least.
Throughout the ten chapters that form the story, you will have to accomplish several missions which don't seem to be related to one another at first, but slowly start to interconnect, while also giving out hints on the character's background, to finally understand what is all this about.
Supporting the storyline, there are a total of 40 pre-rendered clips, adding up to around 750MB of full motion video storytelling.

The "adventuring" is pretty simple, you can only perform one action per object, and the inventory never grows so large that you get lost. Worst case scenario, if you reach the point where the only solution on sight is the good old try everything on everything, this can be easily done in a few seconds.
The puzzles are cleverly designed, and while they ARE mind breaking, they are also logical enough so they can be figured out with some thinking, no need to be some kind of mind-reader to understand what the hell the developers were into. In fact, the puzzles were one of the things I liked the most of the game.
Finally, as I said, there are a few points of the game in which you will have to fight, but these fights are pretty simplistic, and hardly pose any challenge. It's a way of offering some variety to the gameplay, more than anything else.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, but they do their job correctly, specially considering the unfortunate perspective chosen for the main portion of the game. More on this in a minute.

Hands down, the best part of the game is the atmosphere.
Some people said they were disappointed because they expected a horror story, and as such they think Sanitarium turns too silly near the middle of the game.
Me, on the other hand, I never thought of Sanitarium's genre as horror, but rather as bizarre or absurd; and as such, the more impossible and ridiculous a given situation got, the more I liked the game. All in all, granted, this is a game for a very special kind of public.

Through its surreal ups and downs, the constant premise of the game is "save the children". Every mission starts with children under some kind of inconceivable peril, and you will have to make your best to set them free; the real story is about saving children from something; and a certain child's death marked the main character's background.
The situations the children are put through in the different levels create a very disturbing atmosphere, even though there are no explicitly gore scenes or anything similar. Children are doubtlessly an effective resource in any story which wants to be scary or disturbing.

The background story, once uncovered, is not exactly ground breaking, but it's good anyway, and it has a few brilliant points. The ending itself is pretty smart, holding a slight sense of irony.
I found the story very enjoyable, specially the way it's told, all the twists and turns until the plot itself is fully uncovered.

In my book, this is one of those games that deserve a remake with modern technology. The potential to make an awesome game is all there.

The Bad
The worst flaw of the game is doubtlessly the isometric perspective. I find it inadequate, to say the least, for two main reasons:

First, everything looks too small. Since this is a graphic adventure we need to pick up a number of objects to use; and more often than not you will be missing things because you just didn't see them. Because of this, every time I got stucked I found myself scanning the scenario with the mouse, millimeter by millimeter, to see if I missed something I was meant to pick up. Needless to say, this is really annoying; specially since the character can't run, so walking back to "scan" the places you already been to can take quite some time.

Second, and even worst to my eye, I agree with Coldbringer's review when he says that this perspective puts characters so far away that you can have a hard time getting involved with them. At times it feels like you're watching the scene across the street; something IS happening, but it happens to other people.
There are a couple of points in which the story turns quite emotional, and the atmosphere that the brilliant storytelling tries to create is slightly spoiled this way. At least dialogues should happen in some window which shows the characters closer —come on even the first MONKEY ISLAND had that feature to enhance dialogues.
The dialogue window which shows the faces of the characters is not enough, specially since the faces are totally immobile.
Also, the moments where the game should turn mysterious and even scary get plainly ruined by the perspective.

The other important flaw is the voice acting. Some of the voices sound pretty well, some not that much, but not one single character is convincing enough: they all sound like they were recorded while reading the script for the first time.
On top of that, voice acting for the main character is simply awful. The worst of the whole cast, by a fair margin.

The Bottom Line
Sanitarium is a strange game from its very conception, and for this reason, many people might even hate it: it's not exactly horror, it's not exactly suspense, it's not exactly drama... it's just strange. It can —and will— go from disturbing and terrifying to utterly silly in a split second, before you understand what just happened.

The choice of isometric perspective is unfortunate, to say the least. It makes hard to see the items you need to pick up, at times it makes hard to get involved with the story; and it just doesn't fit the game, period.

However, in my personal opinion, bottom line is the game is totally worth playing for whoever cares about a nicely-told storyline. Not only that, this is in fact one of those oldies which deserves a remake with all the power of current generation PCs.
Once uncovered, the plot itself is not exactly brilliant, but this is one of the cases in which the smart storytelling stands over the storyline itself. It's crafted in a smart way, starting in a confusing nonsense and slowly interconnecting parts and making more and more sense. With a more adequate perspective, a few dramatic changes of cameras, the game has everything else to grow to the extent of a must-have classic.