Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within

I was intrigued by the idea of this game, after reading the gushing review at adventuregamers and playing the amazing Gabriel Knight 1 for the first time a month ago. I should've read a few of the reviews before wasting money, and more importantly time on this suckfest. I really do not understand any of the positive feedback on this one. After the masterpiece of an adventure game that Sins of the Fathers was, there is nothing good about this game. Here are a few of the more important flaws. Acting Not only is the voice acting pretty bad, especially compared to the MASTERFUL voice acting of GK1, but the full FMV style also forces the second-rate actors to fully act, which greatly compounds the problem. When (whatever's-his-actor's-name) Gabriel Knight version 2 opened the door to his castle, my heart sunk watching his annoyingly smug face. But it got worse from there. This game completely gutted the character that I loved dearly from GK1. This game made him from an intelligent, sly, charming, funny, and laughably pervy Southern guy who gets into trouble and then out again, sometimes by accident, into a bland, bland, bland, bland, bland American guy who acts like your average American tourist in a foreign country and has absolutely no redeeming qualities. If I were these Germans suffering from the ravages of the supernatural, he would be the last person I would turn to. What makes GK2's Gabriel's horrifically ugly butchery of the German language that much more stupid is GK1 Gabriel's almost perfect pronunciation of German despite not having lived there!!! What, am I supposed to believe that constant exposure to the language made him WORSE? The actress who plays Grace is almost as bad, and right there you have the two main characters. FMV's worst problem isn't its goofy style that makes it feel more like a game/movie Frankenstein, it's that the pool of voice actors is extremely limited by the fact these people also had to look and act the part. None of the insanely talented voice actors from GK1 looked the part, but they also literally blew me away. So they got replaced in this one. If it ain't broke, why oh why did they have to fix it?? On the other hand, the actress that played Gabriel's housekeeper is extremely attractive. But if that is the sole reason they had for making the entire game FMV, because they wanted to show off a hot blonde, there is something seriously wrong with the developers of this (but we knew that). Interface GK1's interface was really, really, really bad. Somehow they found a way to make it a lot worse. I think the sheer magnitude of that achievement is what earns this game a star. Oh wait, no, that was the lowest I could rate it. Oh, and no captions in this game despite almost everyone in the game speaking in a heavy German accent with early 90s-era video game sound quality? Ugh. My late night adventure game sessions of blasting the audio of poorly-written German-accented lines confused my roommates, no doubt. Story Most predictable story ever, in any medium. Puzzles You know what. . . Everything Don't buy this. Don't go anywhere near it. Play GK1 if you haven't already. I hope GK3 sucks, because after this, not even the return of Tim Curry would be enough to make me go anywhere near another game like this.

If you've seen my review for GK1, you know that I absolutely love it. Unfortunately, The Beast Within forfeits everything that made GK1 awesome. Forget that Curry is no longer playing the lead, nor is Leah Remini playing Grace. That is forgivable. Gabriel himself has been somehow trans-morphed into a bumbling idiot. He does not at all take what he's doing seriously, even less than how serious he was in the first game. The swagger has been exorcised from this once-lovable oaf and now he's a boy doing a man's job. Gabriel goes so far as to not even care about Grace's research until the very end, which makes it kind of a waste to play as her (though she does most of the work). Where the game really falls flat is the plot. The game is about [*Possible Spoiler*] werewolves. Everyone knows about werewolves, and few people care about them, while the direct opposite is true about Voodoo, about which SotF taught me a lot. It further doesn't help that the actual perpetrator--the werewolf--is obvious from the beginning. There is no mystery at all as to who our werewolf is. I don't even have to tell you because as soon as you meet the character, you know. The game can't even do a bait-and-switch. There is one little problem with the game, however, and it involves exploring one of Ludwig's preserved castles (which is a museum in the game): Unlike GK1, where hotspots were kind of obvious at least in terms of the plot and you could be reasonably sure if you got everything in a certain area, there is one point in the game where Grace must visit a fairly large museum and examine *EVERYTHING.* Without an extremely specific walkthrough, this section is impossible, and it frustrated me. It's not even a puzzle, and while it is important, the way it was implemented was painful. In itself, GK2 is OK, but compared to the first game it is a disaster. The game isn't *terrible,* but you couldn't tell if you compared to its predecessor. It does have it's moments. A few of the NPCs we meet are lovably weird, like the old couple, played by celebrities whose names I cannot recall, and the man who originally calls upon Gabriel as a Schattenjager. It also does a decent job of incorporating Bavarian history--specifically Ludwig II's reign--but I found this nowhere near as interesting as Voodoo and New Orleans, as it is much more likely for a religion to be used for evil than a 19th century king to be a werewolf. It's OK if you've never played GK1 (in that case, get your butt over there and buy that instead, you nut!), but if you're expecting another tale of that same magnitude, you won't find it here. This game is for the bored only.

Probably was a fun game to play at the time for a teenager, but wasn't worth the time playing now as an adult. (1) Story was a let down. There was a lot of complexity there but it really wasn't resolved in a particularly fulfilling fashion. (2) The FMV sucked. Tedious -- there are movies of characters picking up rolls of tape, badly directed -- many scenes end with 5 seconds of the actor sitting there with nothing to do/say, and badly acted. Dean Erickson is a good looking guy and all, but there's nothing charming or heroic about his portrayal of Gabriel Knight, nor does it resemble Tim Curry's character from GK1. (3) Adventure games sucked. After playing through a few recently for nostalgia, I have to conclude that games have just moved on from when I was a kid. Spending hours wandering through every room looking for things to click on -- not fun.

As much as I liked GB1 I just can't recommend GB2. The game is extremely boring and the plot is nowhere near as gripping as GB1. If I could remove 2 of the chapters ( those that played know which ones) I think I would of like it more. But as it stand I was just hoping for the game to end. Not a terrible game, just not the 5 stars that GB1 is.

crashed on me because you e keep asking me to write a review