Sanitarium

After reading all the great reviews on GOG and noticing it was on the GOG Starter Mix, I decided to purchase this game and give it a try. After reading the description, I was expecting something fantastic. To be honest, I found Sanitarium to be a somewhat mediocre game. It's not bad by any means; but it's not particularly good, either. Essentially, the protagonist awakes in an asylum and seems to have all these insane, crazy journeys, presumably in his mind, that have little to do with the main plot besides a symbolic connection. The puzzles weren't particularly interesting, the controls were clunky, and, while I found the individual adventures to be somewhat entertaining, the main plot didn't come together well and the plot twist at the end was a bit of a disappointment. I can see how some people would love this game; it has a fantastically creepy atmosphere and it IS undeniably interesting. I enjoy adventure games, and I enjoy stories involving insanity and psychology, but to be honest, this one just wasn't my cup of tea. I often found myself somewhat bored, and parts of the game, particularly the second chapter, are somewhat disturbing. Overall, Sanitarium is a decent game, but if you want a good adventure game (or even a good psychological thriller), you could do much better. The promise of exploring a man's insanity is enticing; it's too bad that Sanitarium does not come through.

Hard to rate - the game seems to be quite a gem, considering its age! But I think it's unfair by GOG to sell the game NOT telling us, that it is UNPLAYBLE on a Windows 7 system. No matter what copatibility mode you are using, it keeps crashing! My rating: **** for Sanitarium - * for GoG (in this case)

Sanitarium is a moderately interesting point and click adventure. most of the game is going around collecting the items that allow you to proceed, usuallyb y talking to a bunch of people. The good : The voice acting is generally good, the story is weird and will take to to many twisted and bizarre places. The bad: movement is slow and clumsy. some levels require an "action" sequence with can be difficult do to the aforementioned controls. Sometimes you know exactly what you want but are missing a small detail that you hadn't clicked thus getting stuck. The Ugly: Crash , Crash, Crash. I came very close to not being able to finish due to a consistent crash. (running "sntrm.exe -w" from an admin command prompt got me past the spot) for me it was mostly transitions to new areas that would crash it. Buyer beware, the game is not very stable.

It's ridiculous that GOG continues to sell this product that they know is broken. Their version of Sanitarium crashes every 5 or 10 minutes. It's been that way since they first released it. It's still that way. Yet they still sell it.