The game is good if you only want to do mild exploring and some mild puzzle solving. There is only one place that requires that you avoid a bad guy, otherwise you can solve the "puzzles" at your leisure. The big issues that I have is that the three main draws for this type of game are the world, the plot, and the puzzles, and they fail at all three. WORLD: pretty, but is extremely linear. Although you could miss puzzles, you can't really "explore" as any slight unexpected path is quickly blocked. PLOT: people have said that they find this moving, but I find it unrealistic and melodramatic. Just because it's about a child doesn't make it deep. I won't say more to spoil it, but don't expect deep thoughts or insightful reflection. PUZZLES: there aren't any real puzzles. They tell you "not going to hold your hand", but as soon as you see something, they tell you what to think about it. If you need to find an item, they tell you exactly what direction to go and where it is. To make matters worse, to progress you have to replace items to their original locations, which is the last thing I would do to a "crime" scene if I was trying to figure out what happened. It's ridiculous. So in summary, it's real pretty, but it's real dumb.
I remember playing this game on a friend's PC years ago, and I remember loving the dark, scary nature meshed with puzzles. As soon as I discovered GOG, I immediately looked for this game. I soon wish I hadn't. The scary nature wasn't so scary anymore, but that I could forgive as I am older now and harder to freak out. The part that I can't forgive is the painful puzzles. I finished the game, but found that for many of the puzzles, it was easier to guess randomly until you stumbled on the answer rather than figuring it out (dollhouse window puzzle, I'm looking at you). I only give it two stars because some of the puzzles are fair and I liked the general feel of the game, but as soon as I finished it I deleted it off my HD and will never look at it again.
Not having played this when originally released, I went in based on the glowing memories of critics and others. So what does this newbie find? Horrible controls. Horrible camera. Horrible combat. I gave up on this game about 2/3rds of the way through because I was tired of guessing how the camera was going to change during the middle of a section. I got frustrated trying to aim my strikes during combat as the camera would change angle constantly, especially in close quarters, and stealth sections were sometimes made more difficult due to a camera shift partway through that was unexpected. On the good side, the cartoonish nature of the world makes the graphics acceptable; I never thought it looked bad. The story seemed okay, so as long as you are willing to deal with the camera/control issues, it would be worth a playthrough.
