The 11th Hour

The Good
Trilobyte upgraded the groovie engine, with better graphics and interaction. The videos were clearer and not nearly as pixelated as in 7th guest.

The acting was about the same, hammy, but interesting. Stauf came back with a whole collection of snarky comments for the player. The puzzles were as good if not better than the ones in the original game. Some of the anagrams were pretty cool.

The Fatman came back to create the soundtrack, a definite highlight of the game. You can even play the tracks as the 2nd CD has CDA tracks on it.

The developer did a good job of aging and destroying the house so it looks like several years have passed since the original.

The Bad
4 freaking CDs. Swapping wasn't bad because the game swaps out only during milestones in the game.

The story makes even less sense then the original. The raunch, as mild as it is, was kicked up a notch to give it a more adult feel.

And the really frustrating anagrams brought the gameplay to a standstill.

The Bottom Line
Plays solidly on XP machines, give it a try and see a could've been classic.

The Good
First of all, let me say that I rated The 7th Guest fairly high, mainly due to the fact that it was groundbreaking technologically when it released.

Which is why I think that The 11th Hour isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

The only 2 things I liked are the Graphics and the Sound,

Graphically, the game (although mostly in Black and White) is good. Gone are the days of smoothly walking around Stauf's Mansion. Now head bobbing movements are added along with a flashilight.

The sound/music is pretty much the same as the original. Creepingly eerie, but childish in a way.

The Bad
OK....

First of all, for a puzzle game, the puzzles are kinda stupid. Your PDA holds all the clues for the puzzles, along with a helper (the girl you are looking for) to help with the anagrams. Although you can get clues to the puzzles, the game offers to solve them for you EVERY time. Why bother publishing a game that you can easily walk through without doing anything?

The anagrams are particularly weird. Some are real easy to figure out, while others are SO obscure, you'd have to be a Cryptic Crossword specialist to figure the meaning out. Couple that with the fact that after you solve the anagram, you have to look through a DARKENED house, armed with only a flashlight, and you have to find the item described by the anagram to unlock the next room. All in all, it produces tons of needless mouse-clicking and re-re-re-exploring the house.

And Control... Well if you thought it was bad in 7th Guest, it's EXACTLY the same here. Once you click on an area... you are sunk. The fact that it spans 4 CD's doesn't help much either. Sometimes you end up swapping CD's back and forth... which gets tiresome after a while.

The Bottom Line
Bottom Line: Hardcire 7th Guest fans will flock to this like birds attacking a human dipped in honey and rolled in birdseed. Other people... It's iffy. You may or may not like it. Basically it's a game you'll either love or hate. No recommendations for this one.... and I hate doing that to a game.