You can call Tender Loving Care a lot of things, but uninteresting is not one of them. In it, you get to watch a bit of the movie as well as answer some psychological evaluation questions and your reactions to the last scene you've watched. This format is unique - you don't play a character, nor can you directly influence what happens, yet your responses do affect how things play out, including the ending. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling how your responses affect the story and with just one save slot, you'll have to start over to see any alternate scenes. The parts where you wander about in 3D recreations of the game settings are very much like Rob Landeros's previous 7th Guest, only it totally strips out the puzzles. You get some additional insight if you read some of the character diaries or files, but you won't miss much if you skip directly to the evaluation. It's essentially like DVD bonus content for a movie. The acting is probably some of the best the FMV genre has to offer, for what it's worth. The production value is on par with your average TV movie and the actors are okay. John Hurt surprisingly doesn't phone it in (a lot of these FMV games have one "name" actor during a drought period in their career) and I found myself just wanting to listen to his voiceover. The "adult" scenes aren't anything you wouldn't see on late night cable TV in the U.S. It's all serviceable erotic thriller cheese. This version of the game seems to be a port of the iOS version, which in turn was the DVD version reprogrammed to run a WebKit browser. As a result, the video is in terribly compressed WebM. And although it's supposed to be "uncensored" at least one scene is edited presumably to comply with App Store rules. Would've been great to just have the DVD ISO mounted in a DVD player. In the end, TLC is definitely an interesting little nugget that shows the intriguing direction FMV games could be taken in, as well as a study into why the genre ultimately failed.
Ah SiN. It was supposed to be the next Duke Nukem, with extensive voiceover and interactivity and some badass combat. And the game delivers - in the first level at least. Unfortunately, the game really peaks at the first level, the huge bank stage. There's a lot less interactivity and varying paths in the later levels, set in boring places like sewers, city buildings and a lab. It's too bad, because the game does so much well and was in some cases ahead of its time. The sound design is great, the weapons are cool, there's one of the first instances of location based damage and some stealth elements. SiN was positioned as the start of a franchise - even an animated movie was released; the game's ending leaves room for a sequel, but it never received a proper follow-up. It didn't help that Half-Life captivated everyone like a month later while Ritual worked out their game's technical problems with a series of patches. Despite all the disappointment, SiN is still a decent shooter worth playing. It wasn't the revolutionary title it could've been, but it's still a fine FPS.
Torin's Passage is an odd entry on Al Lowe's resume. Unlike his Leisure Suit Larry titles, it's a game the whole family can enjoy. There are cute character designs and childish jokes for kids, along with the more mature humor only adults can appreciate. The game's puzzles can be challenging, but never too frustrating. The only really tough parts are the sliding type puzzles that end some levels. Like King's Quest VII, the game uses the infamous "smart" context sensitive cursor and the inventory screen that allows items to be viewed in 3-D. Torin's Passage also adds a hint system which can be accessed at timed intervals. Still, the game never descends to Telltale depths of triviality. Torin's Passage has a decent story, good sense of humor and quality presentation. It's too bad it came along when the adventure game genre was starting to die out. I'm sure a lot of people got the game when it came with certain new computers, and now more gamers can have fun with it today. It's definitely worth a buy for fans of the genre and those looking for a computer game to play with their kids.
