Black Mirror 1

Had to restart the first chapter seversl time due to the fact that it wouldn"t save my progress. Very frustrating. Finally I gave up.

3 stars just because of the story...alot of pixel hunting...Gabriel knight wannabe...

Pixel hunting Lot of padding I didn't expect a dead end in a 2000 adventure game. SPOILER ALERT When you are reaching the mine exit, look for the door, then right click the padlock. The character will examine the padlock and shoot only one bullet. You will need the second and last bullet after exiting the mine.

The good: Environments are very atmospheric and often beautiful. The puzzles rarely have simple solutions- what would be the solution in any other game either doesn't work here or is only the first of two or three steps. The puzzles usually make logical sense and are quite enjoyable. The pixel-hunting is tolerable with a few exceptions, and things that aren't used in puzzles will stop being hotspots once examined, letting you explore freely while still narrowing down the possibilities so you don't get stuck. The bad: Character models are stiff and primitive, with repetitive animations. Puzzles involve a LOT of backtracking, and the character walks at a realistically slow pace. A lot of conversation-opening dialogue is repeated word-for-word over and over, even when the game requires you to talk to the same characters many times to advance. After a promising beginning, character development grinds to a halt and you never learn much about the people in the game- they become little more than tools to exploit for your goal. Along these lines, a massive number of puzzles seem to involve being a jerk to honest people just trying to do their jobs. Some puzzles involve right-clicking, which you're most likely not aware you can do at first, since it usually has no effect. The REALLY bad: Some puzzles involve just waiting for someone to prepare something for you, with literally nothing to do meanwhile but pace back and forth until the game decides it's ready. Bafflingly, everyone is a decent voice actor EXCEPT the main character, who sounds like a malfunctioning android. You can die from innocent mistakes- trying to look at a cable will result in you grabbing it like a moron, and two holes in walls near the end are traps, despite being identical to a third hole containing an item, with absolutely no way of knowing this beforehand. The big twist is easily predictable from about 1/5 of the way into the game. The ending is massively anticlimactic, pointless and brief.

Although a much better story than its sequel, this game has plenty of plot holes that the developers never bothered to cover up. There are issues like the main protagonist being present on two places at the same time and so on. Game mechanics consist of pixel hunting, red herrings and illogical puzzles. There was a lot of dying involved before I managed to figure it out what the game wanted me to do. It required to save the game frequently. There were no hints available anywhere to at least give you some indication what was expected from you. Terrible voice acting, obnoxious people, wolves in England in 1981, really? It looks like an Eastern European story transplanted to England. It would be more believable if it was taking place in Poland or Roumania than in UK. Anyway, apart from those things mentioned above, I enjoyed this game enough to try playing it's sequel, and that is another story.