The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure

The Good
The story is hooking enough and kept me playing.

Let's see. It's visually interesting. The black and white style adds dramatism and atmosphere; it combines computer generated artifacts with real life photographies for backgrounds, giving the game a dose of realism. The selective use of colour is very special to communicate sensations. The graphic models might seem outdated nowadays, but I thought they were more than enough.

You get to solve some Myst like puzzles; they were entertaining and nicely constructed. The use of ghost hunting gadgets was quite a refreshing touch.

The Bad
This game have several ghost storylines, but due to a dull narrative and a poor presentation, the game ends up feeling half baked and with a mediocre resolution. The ending feels rushed and unsatisfactory and with unanswered questions.

The character animations are cheaply done. Talk about slowness. This made the pacing dull and boring.

The voice acting: it's dreadful. The amateurish people who gave their voices were not even actors. Crappy dialogue delivered with no inflection whatsoever. The main character was voiced by Jonathan Boakes himself and he is actually the worst of the bunch.

Also, the characters are shallow and lack charisma and substance. The dialogue is feeble: full of clichés and wooden phrases.

The game is not really scary. Yes, it has some loud boo scares, but overall it's not scary, it's just full of fluff. The ominousity is corny and the phantasmagorical manifestations are neither subtle nor smart. They ghosts and evil forces in the story are way too explicit; that for me killed the mood and banalized the whole ghost thing.

The Bottom Line
Don't believe the hype of the cover art. This game is far, far, from being the next Gabriel Knight.