Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice

Prisoner of Ice is a big improvement over its predecessor Shadow of the Comet in terms of gameplay, but still a bit of a disappointment for a Lovecraft game. Pros: The annoying, unresponsive controls are gone, replaced with a simple point and click interface. The backgrounds look good and are highly detailed. The pseudo-3D characters less so, but for the time they're not too bad. The plot moves along at a brisk pace, there's quite a bit of action and suspense, and you'll rarely find yourself wondering what you're even supposed to be doing, unlike Shadow of the Comet. The plot starts off rather dull, but soon takes some unexpected turns. Some of the plot twists are pretty clever and cool. Some of the puzzles make sense without being too easy. I never got stuck for long, though I may have gotten lucky. Cons: There's barely any characterization for anyone. More than in the first game, but still bare bones. Ryan and Diane begin to show hints of personality while solving puzzles together, but it's over all too quickly. A lot of puzzles require you to do random things with no indication of why, especially towards the end. The lack of hints or logic for some events just feels lazy. Other puzzles require pixel-hunting. The game is quite short, and leaves you wanting more. While enjoyable, the game does a pretty poor job of capturing the feel of a Lovecraft story. The mood is more like a cross between a spy movie and a sci-fi B movie, instead of cosmic horror. You get the feeling they weren't taking this very seriously right from the opening credits, where everything is prefaced with "Prisoners of" (Prisoners of Script, Prisoners of Graphics, etc.) Yeah. Hi-larious, guys. Truly the height of wit. This might be just me, but there were several graphics and sound bugs. Again, still fewer than the first game. All in all, a huge improvement over Shadow of the Comet, but awfully lame compared to what was yet to come, like CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth or Eternal Darkness.

This game is a step forward from its predecessor Shadow of the Comet, and its definetly more comfortable for the modern audience, but it also lacks the atmosphere of SotC and it's very short. Graphics are good (for '95) (monsters look silly though and aren't very lovecraftesque) Controls are good (classic point n click controls) Sound is ok (I had few sound and fmv glitches, but nothing major) but music kinda sucks (15s loops repeated over and over) Voice acting is good Puzzles are ok, nothing special but they follow logic and are pretty straightforward. There are a few hard, pixel hunting puzzles, but in general this is an easy game. There is an autosave system so death scenes aren't a big deal. The story would be nice and interesting (much better than SotC IMHO) if it wasn't extremely rushed: the game starts in media res and feels like it's the final act of a much longer game. Monsters and magic are introduced right away at the beginning with no explanation, so the game lacks the mistery and suspense of a good lovecraft story. The characters, even the protagonist who plays a pivotal role in the plot, are extremely dull and generic and lack any kind of conversation beside what is strictly necessary to make the game progress. The world is not interactive at all. The story it's also a direct sequel to Shadow of the Comet so everything will make more sense if you played it (even though it's not mandatory). In the end, it feels like the authors learned and improved from SotC and had an actually really interesting story in mind for this one, but lacked the budget or the time to make a full fledged AAA point n click adventure title, and resorted to put everything togehter in a very condensed manner. The same story but with a Broken Sword or LucasArts production value would deserve 5 stars. As it is, it only deserves 3: buy it on sale if you liked SotC or if you like CoC and 90s adventures.

I first played this in 2021 so I have no nostalgia for the game. It has surprisingly easy and intuitive controls for such an old adventure and the cinematic scenes look great. It's mostly very linear and easy but sometimes I got stuck and had to look at a walk-through. Some items and buttons are only a few pixels and are hard to find. As a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft I have to admit that modern games like Dark Corners of the Earth, Darkness Within or Conarium can create the atmosphere of insanity and unspeakable horrors much better.

I'm dissapointed about this game. Long time ago I already had this title and played it. In my memories it was a quite OK adventure, but now I would say it's annoying and frustrating. The artwork is mostly great, but that's the only positive thing I can say. The animation of the characters are ridiculous, and also Ryan stands in a strange posture. There are some items which are almost impossible to find. It's really boring going over and over on every scene and moving the cursor slowly from left to right from up to down pixel by pixel, just to find an object. And if you think the pixelhunt is just for about 1 or 2 items, I have bad news for you: almost every difficulty comes from these hard to find hotspots. The puzzles are quite simple. You have only a few items at the same time, so it's really not difficult to find out what are they for. Problems come when you know what to do, but don't know how (e.g.: try to use something on the creature instead of Ryan, etc). Also there are some points in the game where you just want to scream and break your monitor in anger, because you keep dying and reloading for 30 minutes, just because the time is too short to find out what you should do or in what order. Buy it when it's discounted and don't expect too much.

Great game from my childhood! Just wanted to confirm that the savegame bug if indeed fixed! That's one of the great things I like from GOG.