Sanitarium

Brilliant, stunning, genius, excellent, I simply can not name off enough words to describe how great Sanitarium is. Unique plot and gameplay, a colorful array of characters and settings, and something one could call "taste". The initial premise makes Sanitarium sound like any other point and click adventure game. You wake up in [insert location] with amnesia, and you must travel through [insert location] to uncover who you are and how you got there. However, Sanitarium ditches this almost 10 minutes in when you touch an Angel statue and she comes to life, transporting you to a strange little town where there are no adults, the children are all horrifically deformed, and there is constant word about a figure named "Mother". This is just one of the many colorful locations you will visit in Sanitarium, and part of the game's appeal comes from the feeling of "What's next?". I won't give them away, because they never fail to impress. Sanitarium plays from a sort of isometric view, and everything is controlled by the mouse. You move by holding down the right button and moving it in the direction you want your character to move. It sounds frustrating, but it really isn't, and it actually makes for a few action/combat sequences that work surprisingly well (and even if you die, you simply respawn at the begginning of the sequence with no consequences). You move around the enviornment, collect items, talk to NPCs, and solve a variety of puzzles. It does feature that bizzare 90's adventure game logic that expects you to think a lot differently than you normally would, and some items blend in REALLY well with the enviornments, making them difficult to see. Sanitarium isn't too long of a game, but that's not a bad thing considering what you get. I only experienced a glitch or two, and those I fixed by fairly simple means. All in all, Sanitarium is a brilliantly written and beautiful game, with ideas, people and places so strange that you'd think the developers created a machine that turns the musings of a derranged subconcious into a game. And what a game it is.

Grabbed up Sanitarium ages ago on sale. Its old, weird, wacky and crazy and all in a good way. The story is quite standard yet draws you in in a weird way. Gameplay is classis old standard point and click mystery style game like King's Quest and such. Look wise the game dident age great since 1998, but that to me added to its charm because it uses such haunting models and such. Dont expect to be blown away by anything daring other then the theme and its execution. Pick this game up if you want a nice experience with a point and click horror game that has some very nice (and also frustration puzzles) that does not shy from adult storytelling and pure lunacy. Enter the Sanitarium, but beware, you might leave more insane then you entered :D

I was happy to learn that ScummVM supports Sanitarium! First, you have to run the setup.exe to extract all the files. This works with WINE, too. Then you have to move all music and video files in Data/Music and Data/Vids to Data/. You can then add the game in ScummVM by providing the path to the Data directory. Have fun!

I somehow missed this game initially, even though I had played classic LucasArts and Sierra point-and-click adventures. The darker, creepy atmosphere was a great change of pace. Some great grotesque stuff without going overboard. Puzzles and interaction are fairly standard for this type of game. I'll admit to using a walkthrough occasionally just because of impatience, but I think I could have figured most of them out. I had this game on Amazon Games, but it crashed even with fixes. This GOG version runs perfectly though. Two negatives- the movement is atrocious, you right click and your character clumsily slides around the invisible barriers, often missing things and "locking" into stairs you didn't want to go to. I almost gave up on the last puzzle as it required semi-precise timed movements. The other negative is the main voice actor, he is pretty bad. It's like they went to a small community theater and picked the guy that overacted the most. Keep your hand near the ESC key so you can skip his often-repeated dialogue when you are clicking around the screen.

This is one of the few games that've stuck with me through the ages. I remember buying this game (the original, in the box) in the store, and taking it home, excited for no real reason at all, since I hadn't heard anything about the game - I just looked at the box, and the pics on the back side, and decided that this sounded and looked like something I wanted to play. When the game first started, it seemed to me like a pretty standard adventure game - granted, the starting point, in the asylum, was a bit on the weird side, but nothing that I hadn't really seen before. Then the fun began... This game is one of the best games I've ever played when it comes to the FEEL of the game. It never lets you go, it's always right behind your right shoulder, yet you're never really able to catch a glimpse of what it is, hiding there. You need to explore, to take in all the creepy, weird, scary set-pieces. It never gets boring, it keeps a very nice balance between difficult and just plain fun, and it's to this date one of the best games out there. If you haven't played it, give it a go!