Dark Seed

The Good
As you'd expect from a game with name of a world-renowned artist situated front and center, this game is visually wonderful. The eerie, disturbing, fascinating nature of Geiger's work is lovingly rendered despite the limitations of the PC hardware of this game's day. If this game doesn't make you think of the Alien movies, you've never seen them. It's gorgeous.

The Bad
The game play is much more problematical, in two basic ways.

First, this is a point-and-click adventure of the most frustrating kind. You will make no progress unless you patiently and painstakingly move the mouse over every pixel of every screen. If this style frustrates you, you will quickly grow to hate this game.

Second, the overall setup of the game is unusual. The game will last exactly three game days, and time is rigidly accounted for. The only way to win the game is to figure out exactly what your character must do in exactly what sequence at what times each day. If you don't realize this, or again if this is not fun for you, you will hate this game. OTOH, I must admit that the idea is very innovative, and hasn't been done many times since; the other case I can think of is a console game and nowhere near as deep.

The Bottom Line
A landmark game in many ways, and really worthy of the artist's name it bears. But for many players, it will be an exercise in frustration to actually play it.