Posted on: July 25, 2015

Bajamamut

Games: 1180 Reviews: 3

The Best Good-Old Horror Graph.Adventure

I have fond memories of this game. When I was a kid of twelve or thirteen years old, me and one of my class mates used to play PC games. One day he bought this game called "Shadow of the Comet", as part of a collection of PC Games. When we booted the game for the first time, we were sucked into the mistery right away. We couldn't part with it until we beat the game. This is one of my favouritest games of all time. Based on H.P. Lovecraft's Story 'The Shadow over Inssmouth', it's a brilliant work of writing and programming. The game developers managed to create an immersive, atmospheric jewel of an adventure game that, back in the early 90s, was something difficult to achieve, due to the obvious limitations. The controls are a bit weird, though. In the floppy disk version of the game, it was entirely controlled by keyboard, using the arrows to move your main character around and interact with the environment - for example, pressing 'L' to 'Look'. This was a bit frustrating for certain parts of the game, but bearable. Another brilliant feature was the release of something that was top notch back then- The Glorious CD-ROM version. It was one of the first games to use that technology. They included a brand new mouse control interface, and they were brave enough to give voices to the entire dialogues in the floppy disk version. They also included a demo of what was to become a revolutionary game ('In 3D!') 'Alone In the Dark', *And* a Homage to Lovecraft's works, in the form of a 'Museum',like some kind of mini-game in which you can navigate much like in the main game - using the arrows to move the visitor (Edward Carnby?) around the Museum, and pressing ´L´to take a look at the various pieces of artwork, jewelry and many other things that appear in some of the Lovecraft's stories. If you like horror games, be sure to play this one. It was one of the first, and possibly one of the best. I could talk about the music, but you'd better experience it by yourself.

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Posted on: May 14, 2022

Robinson02

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 14

Even for £1.19 on sale this was too much

I can’t believe this was a game put on shelves that passed any kind of quality checks. I like the atmosphere, even the over-the-top voice acting. That’s where the praise ends however. The interface and control scheme are awful, you can easily miss vital things and get your character stuck (both physically and in terms of the story). There is a heavy, actually exclusive, reliance on ‘trigger events’ (where certain things won’t work or appear before a particular unrelated thing has happened elsewhere). You may think you’ve searched somewhere, tried an item, talked to someone… but no, the game wasn’t ready yet. So you’ll spend an hour aimlessly wandering around, thinking you must be stupid, only to resort to a walkthrough and find out some arbitrary thing you need to do before an item magically appears in that box you already looked at. It degenerates into repetitive guess work, and that isn’t my idea of fun. There are a couple of things that I can’t imagine anyone could discover without a walkthrough: -Having to be close to an innocuous background item that the character hasn’t acknowledged at all previously and would have no reason to examine, while holding a certain item that it can combine with…and only after a certain event has happened. -Getting killed in a particular scene, but if you stand slightly to the right your character has the opportunity to escape, absolutely no logical reason why this is the case and no indication that you have to suddenly use the keyboard keys to move your character when you’ve been using the mouse up until then. -You’re told to speak to a guy for help (you spend the first third of the game looking for him), he agrees and you go with him…and die. No explanation at all. But if you don’t go with him, a random unrelated event happens and your character goes off with someone else…neither your character or the player would have any reason to know or do this. Spend your pound/dollar on a chocolate bar, it'll last longer!

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Posted on: July 28, 2019

AunEgg

Games: 274 Reviews: 5

Worth the Price of Admission

This is your standard early 90s point-and-click adventure fare, with a fairly well-crafted Lovecraftian story for you to become immersed in. It's definitely a bit of a niche game, and modern gamers without the background in early adventure games will likely be confused and/or frustrated. The gameplay itself is rather mediocre. You have puzzles to solve in a specific order. You must answer certain dialog trees in a certain way or else you will be in an unwinnable state. It's definitely a save often type of game, with lots of trial-and-error. If you enjoy Lovecraft and point-and-click adventures, this game is worth the price of admission: $5.99. The story is its strength, yet the obtuse puzzles often interfere with - not add to - the experience.

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Posted on: February 1, 2021

ejbittner

Verified owner

Games: 137 Reviews: 2

Work of Art - Be a Lovecraft Protagonist

Actually a rather faithful Lovecraft adapation in that you play as person completely powerless before the seemingly arbitrary machinations of powerful entities... however here instead of unspeakable horrors we have tricky puzzle design driving us to madness. For that they did an excellent job, a true Lovecraftian experience.

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Posted on: November 10, 2017

dacanizares

Verified owner

Games: 484 Reviews: 3

Irregular game with a powerful setting

Great atmosphere but poor game design. The first half its remarkable because of the general feeling of mystery and horror, even if you need a guide to advance in the story. Second part it's not worth your time.

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