Sanitarium

It was a great experience, unique and insane unlike any other I’ve had before. The game becomes crazier and crazier as it goes, and is even seemingly disjoninted and downight nonsensical at first, but but in the end they all fit together, relate to each other and to the greater story. Figuring out HOW exactly it makes sense was the greatest pleasure of Sanitarium for me. So overall, the story of Sanitarium, or maybe even more strictly speaking, the way the story is told and the unique enviroments you explore are the strongest points of the game for me and I would definitely recommend the game on that basis. The soundtrack is something worthy of praise as well – not every theme is memorable, but there are a couple that are definitely great. Now, Sanitarium is a point-and-click adventure, so there’s plenty of puzzles to go through. And I’m happy to announce that they were pretty well done and mostly enjoyable, even if sometimes hard for a newcomer to the genre like me. They overall avoided the “moon logic” problem – when you had all of the tools, solving the problem would maybe not be easy at first, but almost always made sense in the end. One of the biggest issues I had with the game was something the fans of the genre seem to call “pixel hunting”. There were more than a couple of instances where to proceed you had to interact with an item that was so miniscule, so seemingly insignificant and so devoid of any uniqueness that it was almost impossible to fish it out of the background. And that’s just not fun to me. If I managed to pique your interest, feel free to try the game for yourself, or if you don’t feel like it but would still like to experience the story and see how a person trying it blind was trying to piece it together as they went along, you can check the full playthrough on my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QM112ONK_0&list=PLp4TpsJ7HUWVvbaHwHi9MNEzeQNJsYWpE

I played the Sanitarium demo when it first came out, but never got my hand on the actual game. I was so intrigued by the demo, that I regretted that decision. Well now, thanks to GOG I finally had a chance to play the full game, and it was well worth the wait. Sanitarium follows an amnesiac mental patient who wakes up in an asylum after an explosion. Throughout the game, the character seemingly gets transported into various dimensions based on his own twisted psyche. The game often leaves you to wonder what is real and what isn't, as the game slowly reveals who your character is and what he's doing there. The graphics are nice, especially in the bizarre dimensions your character visits. Voice acting is done tolerably well and there's a good learning curve on the puzzles. The ambient sound and score are all excellent, and the game even manages to get in a few touches of off beat humor, with several prominent red herrings throughout. By the end of the game, the puzzles get challenging without ever requiring the kind of moon logic leaps that often accompany these kinds of games. All in all this is a great example of the classic adventure game format.

I played this ages ago and it's one of the best puzzle/ adventure games around. I'd say it's as good, if not better than Broken Sword and Monkey Island. While some of the puzzles are not as challenging as other games, and there are two action scenes that simply have no place in the game the atmosphere makes up for these flaws. I have never seen a game that can create such a creepy/ melancholic universe, filled with bittersweet characters. It's one of the few games that I feel are more art than video game. To make things even more interesting this is a hard game to find, with a new copy selling on amazon for 43 bucks... Do I really need to say what a great bargain this is?

I'm certainly not a hardcore adventure gamer, but I enjoy a good adventure game every now and then. This is one of them. Sanitarium is less of a game with difficult puzzles and mind-bending dialogues, it's more of a journey. It's nicely designed and you can see all the blood, sweat and tears that went into making this game. Yes, there are some bugs (no, that's a lie, there are tons of bugs). Yes, the controls take some time to get used to. Yes, the puzzles are very easy to solve if you have some experience with adventure games. But does this spoil the fun? Nope. All these imperfections makes you appreciate the game even more. The story is deeper than you may think at first: it's a travel through a human mind, troubled by traumas. Within this journey you learn to deal with foes and fears in a clever way. I wouldn't describe it as a horror or scary game, it's more of a thriller that is set in an unpleasant atmosphere. And that's what gets you in the end: a deep feeling of trouble. Additionally, the graphics are very pretty and beautiful. Graphics definitely hold up until today, with a bit of tweaking you can get it to run in 1080p as well (see forums). If you get around the bugs - and they seem to get worse with every year that passes - you get an weird and fun ride for some bucks. For some help with the annoying bugs, check the GOG forums where I put up to threads to help with the most common bugs.

This game is very good, and has only a few frustrations. The good elements about the game is the fairly good story, which is quite dark and has a brooding, eerie quality to it, especially in the beginning I think. The different worlds the main character go through are very different, but all fit in very well with the overal story, which I find to be quite an accomplishment in a game. Another big plus is that all the puzzles in the game are logical and make sense. The puzzles, however, also stand for the only major frustration I had with the game. Often what kept me from figuring out a puzzle myself (yes, I used a walkthrough a few times in most chapters) was that sometimes a possible path or object, that can be interacted with, is hard to spot. The game is very much worth the cost :)