Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice

Let me say right off that I am glad I have this game for my collection for these reasons: the art is very very well done, the animated scenes are perfect and well drawn, lovely at times. The sound track is also very good and atmospheric, the closing scene with the rock blaring is like watching an action movie. The adventuring is decent and on par for a point click adventure as well. Why the 3 stars? bah, numerous timed deaths detract from the immersion and ruin pacing. Often you are just reloading a save to try the next attempt, die, rinse repeat. Due to the sheer numbers of deaths and reloading it is also very easy to accidentally delete or overwrite a save, which I did twice. Thank god the devs instituted an autosave at most of the timed deaths so you can resort to that reload. Now to address the pixel hunting. At a few points I was totally stumped, trecking back and forth over and over only to resort to a walk thru and find out that there was a teeny tiny hotspot that I had missed. Also some of the puzzles were bizarre (needle on a displayed map im looking at you) and unless you just cycled thru inventory and mindlessly applied them to every hotspot there was no progress, so not very fun game play there. For those reasons I wont be playing this game again unless to watch the animated sequences which are beautifully drawn, and I recommend to those playing this the 1st time to have a walk thru near by in order to keep the pacing and fun of the game. but i repeat, for the reasons stated at the beginning im very very glad to have this charmer in my collection.

It gets 2 stars because I made it to the end without rage-quitting, but overall it's not very good. You'll probably want to play with a walkthrough. The puzzles / interactions needed to proceed aren't complete moon logic, but just have to be done in precise ways with no real hints. You'll get stuck a lot, and have to try every combination of interactions until one succeeds. The story is really disconnected and doesn't make much sense. There were so many NPCs with limited dialog options, and interesting bits of scenery with minimal descriptions... It's like they were actually avoiding every opportunity to add some flavor to the game world and characters.

As a fan of Cthulhu mythos, I loved Shadow of the Comet (the prequel to this game) and wanted to play Prisoner of Ice for ages. I have to say, Prisoner was very disappointing. The first segment is okay, even though there is some lack of logic and pixel-hunting involved (which is kind of expected of classic adventure games). But from second chapter on, the gameplay goes downhill FAST. A certain segment plays like a bad Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis rip-off, some puzzles, while not actually hard, are so badly implemented gameplay-wise, that it's nearly impossible to solve them unless you make a lucky click or consult a walkthrough. The worst thing is, the game completely lacks the Lovecraftian atmosphere SotC had. Come to think of it, it lacks any kind of atmosphere at all - it tries to be everything at once and fails. If you're a die-hard fa of the genre, you'll sit through this. If you're a SotC or Cthulhu mythos fan, you'll be very disappointed.

(полная версия ревью, без ограничений GOG по длине, лежит тут: https://t.me/astravirtual/111 ) В какой-то степени - памятник своей эпохе куда больше, чем фантазии на тему лавкрафтовского бестиария. Да, уже из названия ясно, что там Лавкрафт окопался хорошо и прочно (и даже один из эпизодических персонажей назван в его честь). Но… не только Лавкрафт (хотите истинной труЪ-лавкрафтовской атмосферы, лучше поиграйте в более современный Conarium). А тут - и очевидные приветы "Чужим", а под конец и "Терминатора" только ленивый не вспомнит… то, что захватывало умы в девяностые, так или иначе оставило отпечаток на этой игре, ничуть не меньше, чем пререндеренные бэкграунды и спрайтовые персонажи в низком разрешении и достаточно глазоломной цветовой гамме :) Про сам же геймплей сложно сказать что-то особенное. Это типичная квестоадвенчура девяностых, со всеми проблемами и приколами жанра. Собирай предметы в инвентарь, используй их с другими предметами, говори с людьми - и двигайся дальше по сюжету. Классика! Из минусов геймплея я бы назвала разве что ну очень уж издевательский пиксель-хантинг. Для очкариков типа меня в игре очень много боли и унижения. Нет, я не могу просто так зайти в лифт. Мне надо напиксельхантить и нажать малюююююсенькую кнопочку на стене справа от него. Но её я хоть нашла сама. А вот эта ИГОЛКА БЛИН ВАШУ Ж МАТЬ на столе доктора - это уже пришлось подглядывать в гайд. Своими глазами в жизни б не разглядела. В общем и целом - если по гоговской пятибалльной шкале, то 4/5 - минус балл за издевательство над глазами. В остальном же мне показалось довольно приятным и добротно сделанным продуктом, после которого захотелось всё же узнать, что было в предыдущем Shadow of the Comet. Fhtagn, ибо!

This loose sequel to Shadow of the Comet does a few things better than its infamous predecessor but overall pales in comparison. You could say that the developers listened to all the criticism of SotC and tried really hard not to make the same mistakes. First of all, there finally is a proper point-and-click interface, which works very well and is pretty much identical to Beneath the Steel Sky (or most modern adventure games). Second, the gameplay is much more forgiving. This time you won't make it to the final stages of the game just to realize that you can't win because you missed some item in previous locations. Scripts just won't let you progress without doing key things first. There are also no cheap deaths, and while it's still possible to die occasionally, the game always kindly performs an autosave before entering such sections. Finally, it's quite hard to get stuck here. Puzzles are very basic and unoriginal, and there are always very few locations available to explore at a time, with not many items and interactive hot spots, which, combined with all of the above, makes this game rather easy, especially for an adventure game from that era. So, it's almost like a polar opposite of SotC in that regard. The only moments that may give the player a hard time are occasional pixel hunting and timed events when things need to be done quickly. Those can be quite annoying. But other than that, Prisoner of Ice lacks pretty much everything that made SotC good. Graphics might be more advanced but lack charm, and IMHO aged worse than the pixel art from SotC. The story looks promising on paper but doesn't work well in the game. It's just not engaging enough, kinda messy - with the Cthulhu mythos and ties to the previous title that feel out of place. Music is dull and forgettable compared to the phenomenal SotC soundtrack. Overall, Prisoner of Ice just lacks atmosphere and good storytelling to be something more than an average adventure game, of which the main selling point is a superficial connection with Lovecraft's works. And it's very short, about 4-5 hours, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in this case.