DreamWeb

The Good
I enjoyed so much this game. I love cyberpunk movies, novels and atmosphere in general: this game IS the core of cyberpunk. Violence, a dirty world, neverending rainy days, dark atmosphere and music are some of the good things I can mention about Dreamweb. Music is also very well composed and it fits exactly in a game like this. Do not play without a soundcard! As an adventure it has a good plot, never boring. You can pick up quite everything and operate many of the thing you see on you monitor. For example.. you can switch on and off the fan in your girlfriend's room, you can even light and smoke cigarettes.

The Bad
The worst thing about Dreamweb is its difficulty. As I said before, you can get many objects and you have a wide range of thing you can do... so... when you're stuck and you begin to try every combination object-object... ouch.. there's a plenty of choices...

The Bottom Line
Every cyberpunk lover must try this game. Try not to read the walkthoughs... if you're able!

The Good
Ah... the infamous Dreamweb, a dark and gritty cyberpunk adventure game known for it's violent and sexually charged content. The game itself is definetively not as "disturbing" as some may lead you to believe, but it's still pretty powerful and makes for one very entertaining adventure game.

First of all you have the backbone of every adventure game: the story. In Dreamweb you play this lowly bartender Ryan who somehow has this psychic link to a group of guardians of some sort that watch over the Dreamweb. The Dreamweb is, to put it shortly, the thing that keeps us all alive and allows us to continue our putrid cyberpunkish lives, and some individuals have been syphoning it's power in an attempt to evolve into some sort of mystical form. These guys will destroy the Dreamweb if left unchecked so it's your job as appointed by these guardian dudes to go forth and kick ass in the name of the Dreamweb. And this is where the game starts to distances itself from the "average" adventure games, your objective in the game is quite simply to go and kill these guys, and the puzzles for the game all revolve around this sort of things, for instance: you'll have to journey to seedy bars to meet a gundealer and get yourself a gun, break into a penthouse or tv station to carry out a murder, etc... The plot will continue to move forward with each killing and eventually end up with an-all out battle against the head psycho behind everything and ultimately resolve itself with a very surprising (or not so really if you consider the game) ending, but the storyline makes the right decision and doesn't turn the whole affair into some heroic bullshit, instead each one of your actions takes a backseat to the grinding and all-encompassing reality of the gameworld never glorifying you or your quest. Essentially the whole game follows a very "zen" mentallity with every action leading you to the next logical solution, so there are few surprises in store for the storyline, as I mentioned the main attraction for the game is that of seeing the world that revolves around this story. Each subsequent murder will have it's consequences in the "real" world, and as you evade the cops and kiss your girlfriend goodnight you'll get to see the nice gameworld crafted by the guys at Empire much more as an actual character and the true protagonist of Dreamweb than Ryan or any of the other characters that populate it.

Truly these guys understand what Cyberpunk is all about, the game feels very very very close to the idea one gets of the world when reading Gibson novels, you know, that of a world that has attained near technological perfection, but that perfection itself has also corroded the very fabric of human nature and left the land with as much giant skycrapers as well as hollow industrial wastelands and murky gettos. Yeah, you get all that in Dreamweb. From the carefully constructed gameworld that merges giant and antiseptyc corporate structures with the rundown hotels and shady bars left behind in the wake of the information revolution, to the eternal rainy nights that plague the city and it's fusion of blocky gray architecture and neon signs.

Of course, no praise of Dreamweb's world would be complete without a mention to the excellent synthetized music. The collection of moody sounds and eery Vangelis-like cues bring the world alive and almost make you feel like watching Blade Runner all over again, except on Dreamweb somehow it sounds even more apocalyptic and loses that saxophoned "Noir" vibe you got on Blade Runner.

Oh yeah, and you also have some brutal (if pixelated) violence to enhance the "in yo face" attitude and some of the first actual sexual content in a videogame (i´m talking about fornication and actual genitals here, not just some sexy remarks and bouncing boobies) product of that wave of "adult-ness" that surfaced with the multimedia revolution. Sure, for the most part it's just there for shock effect, but it's still another exciting part of the dark world of Dreamweb that paints it as even more decadent and disturbing.

The Bad
The ambience in Dreamweb is also enhaced by the fact that there's lots of stuff you can interact with, from your computer to the lightswitch in the hotel room, and you can pick up everything from that rusty pipe over there to that bible or soda can in the floor. Cool isn't it? Well unfortunately this doesn't work in the context of an adventure game, because the end result is that you have a gazillion red herrings that have absolutely no use whatsoever. Furthermore the puzzles themselves are not always clear (you'll be surprised how often the "solution" to a puzzle is just shooting someone's ass) and if you mix both factors you get a rather confusing game that isn't really hard or long, but is... confusing!

Besides why the waste of time and space in drawing all those soda cans if they have no use in the game?? tsk, tsk...

Anyway, save for that there's the fact that the graphics aren't that nice really. You have a top-down perspective which I believe works for the game since it places the spotlight in the gameworld instead of the characters (and we know which one of the two is the star here), but the play area is horribly small, and the addition of a "zoom" window is just a sorry excuse to cover the fact that the play area is horribly small and pixellated. Furthermore the proportions for the characters don't always match up and they can end up feeling rather amateurish and cartoony, just look at the screenshot of the pool in the penthouse suite to see what I mean.

The Bottom Line
Despite some graphical problems and some confusing adventure design this is one hell of an experience. Truly one of those oddball "experimental" adventure games like Loom or Bad Mojo that just has to be played for the sole purpose of soaking in on all of it's vibes.

The Good
Empire Interactive has been known for creating simulation/strategy games, but I wasn't even aware that they also created great adventures such as DreamWeb, created in 1994 and developed by Creative Reality. Ryan, a bartender who is employed in the big city, has a dream in which he is transported to the DreamWeb. There, he is asked by the head keeper to be the “deliverer” and assassinate the seven people who are bent on destroying the DreamWeb.

The game's interface is a lot different to many adventure games. You see, rather than employing a first/third-person perspective, DreamWeb uses a top-down approach, similar to the likes of Grand Theft Auto. A square window at the bottom-left of the screen shows what everything on the screen looks like up close when the cursor is over it. What I like about this is that it is useful for finding very small objects that are hard to spot in normal view. I had a hard time finding small objects in the games that I have played so far.

You access the inventory by clicking on the picture of Ryan. There are 36 slots in which to store items that you have picked up. Some of them have a yellow W icon at the top-right corner of the slot, to indicate that Ryan is currently wearing the item (normally clothing.) As you may not know, Ryan is an asshole. He may look innocent at the start of the game, but if you place the sunglasses on him, he looks like one mean son-of-a-bitch. One of Ryan's watches can also be worn, but the time displayed on the watch is irrelevant to the completion of the game. The inventory also have a drop icon, which is useful because if you no longer want something or the inventory is full, you can drop one of your items just like that.

The atmosphere is similar to Rise of the Dragon. There are a lot of locations that Ryan can travel to, but no matter where you go, the place is dirty. You'll notice it when you go outdoors that it keeps raining all the time and rubbish is left on the ground. Indoors are a lot better, but you still have to put up with dirty apartments, dirty bathrooms in bars, and people who just don't want to know you. The amount of litter in this game is disgraceful. You would have thought that there is a bin every five meters, and all you had to do was pick it up and put it in there.

The thing that grabbed my attention is the music. It sets the mood of the game and describes what situation you are in. If you about to kill one of the seven people, for instance, the music is of high-impact, but if there is no danger coming your way, the music isn't quite as powerful. I love the music played when you select your next destination. As usual, CD-ROM users are treated to full speech, and the voices are well-done and the script is well thought-out. The bonus track included is sensational, and if you are a fan of excellent-composed pumping CD-Audio tracks, I suggest that you listen to it. It is totally unrelated to the game

The puzzles are slightly easy, and the solutions to most of them are found in the Diary of a (Mad?) Man that came with the game. It also serves as copy protection. If you happen to have a pirated version of DreamWeb, you will have no idea what Ryan's access code for his own apartment is, nor will you know the password for logging onto his computer. The diary is a good read anyway, as it contains information on Ryan's background and his relationship with women, plus some funny bits.

The Bad
You can pick up rubbish left on the street and place it in your inventory. Most of the rubbish serves no purpose, other than waste the available inventory slots. Solution: just don't bother picking up at all.

The game is quite violent. There is one scene where Ryan puts an axe to a guard at the beginning of the game. When you kill one of the seven people, the blue orb that appears from the bodies makes the situation worse. Later, Ryan holds up a crystal, which leaves a bloody mess behind. I don't have a problem with the violence, but there is one situation that I considered over-the-top. You see, Ryan encounters a woman with half of her body chewed off. The woman really begs for you to kill her, and you have to shoot her while she drags herself away from you. Violence against women is just not on.

The Bottom Line
In DreamWeb, you have to kill seven people who are going to destroy the DreamWeb. You find out where they are by talking to people and gaining information from the computer. Parts of the game rely on you to do some digging in the game's documentation. The graphics, music, and atmosphere is excellent. An adventure game that is definitely not for kids, DreamWeb has a fair dose of violence, whether it's against men or women. Sex plays a small role in the game as well. You must be 15 or over to play it.