Inherent Evil: The Haunted Hotel

The Good
As the name implies, this is a ghost story. You play Kyle who has inherited an old hotel from his parents. The hotel has a colorful history according to newspaper articles you find in the beginning of the game. It doesn’t take you long to find out that even though you play the game alone, you are not alone inside the hotel. Something evil is here with you and is causing all sorts of weird things to happen. For instance, there’s hot, molten lava in one of the guest rooms!

The story itself is very spooky and eerie, and it unfolds gradually as you play. (In retrospect, some of it reminds me of Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion, which I played a year or so after this one.) Your first main objective is to figure out what is going on and to do that you must find the missing pages of your mother’s diary and read them. Eventually you discover part of a strange and ancient “seal”. Find the rest of the pieces and reassemble the seal to solve the mystery of the hotel’s strange occurrences.

The game is mouse driven, and the point-and-click interface is easy to use. The graphics of the rooms and furnishings within the hotel are realistic, and the “hot spots” are not difficult to find. Transitions went smooth and fast. You are able to look in all directions in most screens, although your angles are sometimes disorienting. Video cut-scenes are well done and move the story along, although there is no way to skip through them. While the music provided the correct mood for each scene, it sometimes got in the way of the sound effects. Voice acting was good, when you could hear it.

The Bad
I guess many people just do not like change, and I’m probably one of those people. Whether we know it or not, certain “standards” with regards to adventure games have been set – things that we have grown accustomed to and expect to find within them. Any deviation from the norm subjects the entire game to thorough scrutiny. If everything about the game isn’t flawless or something about it doesn’t follow the unwritten “rules of the road”, ridicule abounds, its ratings are bad, and sales plummet. I think this is what happened to Inherent Evil and the reason that no sequels have been released thus far.

Several things in Inherent Evil go “against the grain” and I will go into them one by one below. Not to say that they are innovative or groundbreaking (in fact some of them seem to revert backwards in game design), or even necessarily bad. They are just different than in other games. The following did not sit well with me:

1. Copy Protection:
   How long has it been since you had to type in a special password code to play a game? My guess is that the majority of you have no idea what I’m talking about. Inherent Evil requires you to use a password at the end of the first part of the game. This is because all of Part 1 was released as the demo.
2. Saving and Loading Games:
   We’ve been taught from day one to “Save and save often”. Not so with this game! There is no save and load feature! The game is set up in segments, called “Parts”, almost as if they had thought of releasing it in serialized segments. If you exit in the middle of a “part”, you can’t save. Instead, you must replay that entire portion when you restart. Successfully completing a “part” boots you out of the game and back to your desktop. Only by restarting can you continue onto the next part.

   Since you can die in this game, not having an option to save your game is really annoying and a needless omission. The “you have died screen” tells you to pick a tombstone to continue with the game. This reminded me of the old carnival trick where you must pick the right cup containing the pea. Random and ridiculous.

3. Objects and inventory:
   We have always been drilled to ”pick up anything and everything” hoping to find a use for it later in the game. In this game, you cannot pick up something until you have a reason for it. The first time you come upon something, you can look but not touch. (This is an inconsistent problem, by the way.)
4. Settings and Options:
   There are none. You are stuck with the graphics and music as presented. You have no choice to have dialog text (subtitles) displayed or not. The music can drown out the rest of the game – sound effects as well as voices. The only way to adjust the volume is outside the game within your computer’s master volume control.

In addition to the above, the game is very linear and everything is dependent upon what you have done (and slight spoiler read) beforehand. Objects are illogically placed in odd spots (or perhaps the ghosts moved them?). It has a visually irritating maze which relies on color-coded doors. (I hope you’re not color blind!)

The Bottom Line
Believe it or not, I did enjoy playing Inherent Evil, but its shortcomings far outweighed its achievements. The story is fairly strong, the graphics are pleasing and the game was easy to play. It had potential, but it lacked many of the standard features we have grown to like (and expect) in adventure games. To the initial audience, PC adventure gamers, it was a flop. Although this game was named “Chapter 1”, it is unlikely that there will ever be a Chapter 2, thank goodness!

The bottom line? Look elsewhere for a horror/mystery adventure game. This one is too much trouble.