Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness

Playing this game years ago, it was obvious to me that the developers put a lot of effort into this. I got stuck multiple times on puzzles that stumped me, and yet I still score this game high because of the stellar job they did in creating a Lovecraft-worthy atmosphere. A perfect game to play on a rainy day, or better yet, stormy night. I can easily recommend this, whether it's on sale or not, as the non-sale price is really quite reasonable. One of my favorite Lovecraftian adventure titles.

So the game looks great for its age, and does a pretty good job of emulating the Lovecraft slow burn, building of dread style, it falls short with the lack of direction though. The game starts with your friend, Edgar, running to your house and giving you a mysterious hand held pyramid. He warns you to not give it to anyone, not even himself if he asks again. No sooner than you close the door, there is another knock with a doctor concerned about Edgar and asks you to check up and see if he is okay (I guess they just missed each other outside). Judging by the name of the game, I figured the story would be focused on the Necronomicon, when it is actually based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (which also has a pretty good movie called The Resurrected, if anyone is interested, free to view on a certain archive site). Back to the game though, I played about 3/4 of it until I caved and looked at a walkthrough. I still have no idea how anyone would figure out the laboratory area on their own (I figured out how to turn on the lights, that's it). I don't expect handholding, but there is a room full of 1000 vases (with ashes of dead people) and you need to know that you are looking for one with E.L. (the guy from the old letters) written on it so you can commune with his spirit for some exposition (no idea how you're supposed to guess this). Same with a map you have to mark spots on with items from your inventory (no hinting toward this at all). On top of that, once you complete the map puzzle, your two buddies don't even acknowledge anything and you leave unceremoniously for the finale. So overall, it has great atmosphere, but it feels like the developers either cut scenes or ran out of finances to weave a tighter plot that gives you the most basic of guidance on what needs to be done next. You basically just roam around sometimes clicking everything until the story progresses. The setting looks great though so if you're patient, it will still be enjoyable.

3D point and click adventure very similar to first two Dracula games, using the same engine and made by the same studio as Dracula 2. It has FPP view but there is no free movement, only jumping through nodes on predefined paths which makes navigating certain locations needlessly annoying. Mostly static graphics looks pretty good, unlike animations but there aren't many of those. Eerie atmosphere is strongest point of the game, creators really did a good job at depicting world from Lovecraft's stories, whether it's bleak coastal town, creepy catacombs (parts of which have to be explored almost blindly at near total darkness) or underground temple (well, the last one is sort of underwhelming). Sadly the plot, writing and direction are completely nonsensical and off-putting from what could be captivating story. This with pretty bad design makes this game rather hard to recommend unfortunately. Puzzles are either easy and tedious (like searching library for the one book you are allowed to pick up at the time, or basically first third of the game is nothing but walking from one person to the other looking for someone to talk and progress the story) or overly convoluted (like parts of laboratory section). To makes things worse there is no journal of any sort and no items descriptions at all. On the other hand, number of available locations, characters, items and interactive hotspots is usually rather limited so most of the time it's not that hard to figure out where to go and what to do in case you didn't deduce it from vague dialogs. Speaking about dialogs, there is afaik no way to turn on subtitles! It's also one of these adventures where you can die on occasions and there are few timed puzzles so remember about saving. The game is short, took me just over 5 hours to complete with checking guide only to skip through some of the lab puzzles. Even though it's cheap I would recommend only to hardcore adventurers.

If you've played the two Dracula point and click titles, The Resurrection and The Last Sanctuary, by the same developer you have a good idea of what you're in for for the most part. Unfortunately where it falls flat is that it's rather inferior to both of those games despite being released later. Not sure if maybe it was developed earlier only to be released later or not but the character models, environments and puzzles just aren't as good. Some of the puzzles are downright confounding with little to guide you so it's best to keep a walkthrough on hand, others are simple but a bit tedious. Still, the atmosphere is pretty good and if you like horror point and clicks, Lovecraft and were perhaps fans of the Dracula titles it's worth grabbing.