Legacy: Dark Shadows

The Good
I admit that I was curious about this game from the moment I heard about it and I anxiously awaited its release. The long descriptive "history" behind it sounded intriguing and the comparison to Blade Runner made it very tempting. After its release, I was perplexed by the differences of opinion posted on all of the web sites whose ratings I trust. Reviews cover the full spectrum from really good to a major flop. Curious, I had to see for myself whether this was good or bad.

The game ships on 3 CDs which are copied in their entirety to your hard disk during a very lengthy installation routine. You can then put the CDs away since they are never accessed during start or gameplay.

One of the first things I noticed was the lack of a printed manual. I found it later on my hard disk after installation in an Adobe PDF file. It appears that the developer intended to print one but did not for some reason. (A budget issue perhaps.)

The game begins not with a customary video, but instead with a short "prologue" chapter to help you get accustomed to the simple point and click interface. The location is 1942 in a bunker during the battle of Stalingrad. Two Russians occupy the bunker, one of which you play. Unless you've read the background story (on the web or on the game box), you'll have no idea what this part is all about. After your character finds a strange box in the wreckage of a downed airplane, the actual title page appears, followed by the main menu. Clicking on "new game" you meet your new character, Ren Silver, as she arrives on the planet Mars for a much needed vacation. The year is now 2138. Sounds pretty good so far, doesn't it? Well ..

Legacy: Dark Shadows does have many of the components that we adventure gamers have found to our liking in the past ..

• An attractive female heroine

• A science fiction setting
• Multiple locations on Earth and in outer space
• 3rd person perspective
• Easy point and click interface
• Interactive puzzles
• Numerous people to meet and talk to

But .. you will find, as I did, that those things alone do not make this game worth playing. It takes more .. much more.

**The Bad**
Legacy has some major deficiencies as well as some irritating technical problems .. all of which detract from the players enjoyment. If you depend entirely on what is presented within the game itself, these questions remain unanswered ..

1. Who?
   The character development is a joke. Who they are and what relationship they have to each other is not explained .. at all! None of the dialogs or journal entries help. For instance, early in the game you are told that someone named Ted is missing. It is never really explained why on earth Ren should care what happened to Ted .. or even who he's supposed to be. What you find are cardboard characters with blank slates - absent of personality, backgrounds and purpose. This includes the main character, Ren. She is advertised as being similar to April Ryan (The Longest Journey) and Kate Walker (Syberia). Unfortunately, she's not even close. The bad character development is compounded by poorly written dialog scripts and abysmal voice acting. Ren sounds like she's speaking through a tube. I grew tired of listening to English badly spoken in a thick Russian accent, mispronounced words, and sentences that didn't make sense. Subtitles contain numerous misspellings as well.
2. Why?
   The vital component which separates the good from the bad is an engaging story -- and this game doesn't have one! If there is a plot, the player never learns it. Reading the box, manual and company lines only give you the gist. We are -never- told about the supposed evil plot. Nor do we learn why Ren should care.
3. What?
   The puzzles in the game are few .. and very easy. They're similar to some I've seen in Nancy Drew games only not nearly as imaginative. Nothing worthy of note here.
4. How?
   Although most of the collectible objects are conspicuous, the "hot spots" for using them aren't clear. As an example, Ren finds a safe that needs to be opened. Running your cursor around the safe's door doesn't yield any interactive spots. You can interact with it .. but you're not shown where.

And there's more ..
The graphics are only fair with low quality cut-scenes and short animation loops in the pre-rendered backgrounds. Lips don't move, the hands are fingerless, and body movements are unrealistic. The whole thing looks out of date .. say 1997. The music neither adds nor detracts .. except for the obnoxious rap song that plays during the rolling credits. The game crashes to desktop (often) and every time you exit.

**The Bottom Line**
Needless to say I was disappointed .. but more than that -- I was bored! But .. adventure game players take heart! There are much better games out there. Forget about this crap and move onto something else.

The Good
Graphics: Well, to be honest, I liked the graphics. They were nice, but they weren't "wow, this view is breath-taking!". If you don't expect eye-candy here, you'll be pleased, and a bit surprised.

Interface: Clean. You only get to choose between three actions: "Look", "Take" and "Talk". The inventory was clean also; the items that are not longer useful will banish from there 'almost always'.

Sound Effects: Uhm... "suitable" I'd say. Nothing impressive, a bit repetitive. Sometimes scary, but sometimes boring (more of this later).

Dialogs: They were funny; I liked the dialogs. Ren will make some jokes here and then; nice clever character. Pretty sarcastic too. I loved the crazy computer! Too bad this was obscured a bit (sometimes, not always) by bad translation (again, more of this later). But I enjoyed the dialogs anyway.

The Bad
Music: I don't remember any music, except by the rap music that played while the credits are shown, every time you exit the game and when you beat the game. I actually liked that ending theme, but that lady didn't have a melodic voice (to my taste).

Length: A bit short... well, the story deserved more development. Ren, as a character, had a lot of potential. This was a missed opportunity; there could've been a lot more puzzles, more characters, more twists... plenty of room to be an epic story. Too bad. Also the story sometimes felt broken. I would've loved more character background and more story development. Sometimes the characters seemed to be emotionless and the cut-scenes were so brief and disjointed that I felt that perhaps I skipped one of them accidentally. The ending was a bit generic. But don't get me wrong, I did like the game.

Stability: I'm afraid it was just bad... bad, bad... I didn't play the "out-of-the-box" version, I installed the latest patch available at the moment (v1.4) before playing. And the game crashed like 8 times, from the beginning until I finished it. And the game crashes every time you exit from it, every time the credits start to scroll down the screen and that rap music starts playing. I got Windows XP with Service Pack 2, by the way. On the bright side, I saved often and all my saved games were always intact. Oh, and don't "Alt+Tab" while playing also; the game will crash too.

Voice acting: While I liked the dialogs and the personality of the main character, the voice acting was not very good. Some characters, especially the female characters, had voices that were just too... "soft". It was like the vocal actors were faking how "soft" their voices were. Some characters sounded lifeless also.

Puzzles: Mostly inventory-based puzzles... don't get me wrong, I liked them, they were logical, perhaps a bit easy for some players, but I liked them. But there is some abuse of pixel-hunting... sometimes I couldn't tell the difference between the background and some items. And there are two mazes. Not difficult (I got out of them in a few tries), but I really hate mazes. Just a note in case I'm lucky enough and an adventure game designer is reading this little review: please, do not abuse of pixel-hunting. More (varied) puzzles. And if you include a maze, make it fun to navigate into.

The Bottom Line
"Legacy: Dark Shadows" is a classic point & click adventure game. By "classic" I mean all the actions are made with the mouse (except by a puzzle in which you got to use the arrow keys... but it's just a puzzle), you can't die (I like when a game does not punish me when experimenting, by killing my poor character instantly), you can save whenever you want, no time limits, etc, etc.

It's set in the distant future and you play as a single character, Ren, a private investigator which is on vacations on the Mars. But soon your plans of having a good time will end, as you receive a call from a friend of yours, Hacker. Something terrible just happened back on Earth. Duty calls.

Problems aside (if you decide to play this game, save often! and by often I mean every time you solve a puzzle or visit a new location) -and they were a lot- I can't say I disliked this game. It was a nice little adventure, which I enjoyed while it lasted. Perhaps a bit easy, a bit short, a bit unstable. But I liked the leading character. Too bad the developers/designers didn't make a deeper plot or managed to squash all those nasty bugs.

So, should you, dear reader, get this game? If you can forgive the bugs, if you are interested in a "light" adventure, if you don't expect something epic, if you just want some days of entertainment (I think you should be able to find a copy this game quite cheap now), I'd say yes, you should get it.

But have in mind that there are other (better) adventure games you could play instead of this one. For example, you could play "Sanitarium", which is an excellent horror game. Or "The Longest Journey", which is epic and has great characters. Or "Syberia", which has a lovable story... I could mention several titles that I could recommend you over this game. Sadly, yes, there are lots of better adventure games out there.

So, if you had to decide, I'd recommend you to get and play "Legacy: Dark Shadows" only if you already played all those big titles. But if you are an adventure gamer, starving for something new, and haven't played this one (and if you are able to forgive all its mentioned short-comings)... give it a try. If you know what to expect from it, you won't be disappointed. At least I wasn't.