at the time i didn't quite know what to expect. it seemed an awful lot of years had passed since lechuck's revenge. gone were the years on which lucasarts was incapable of doing a bad game (not by much, though). the first two games were so legendary, and of course, no ron gilbert. plus, not exactly every brilliant disk-based series was making a good transition to cd-based games. turns out, no need to worry at all. i wouldn't say it got to be as insanely perfect as the previous two, but the fact that it could even be compared was a wonder. the graphics and sound were not only much better, but really beautiful. and it was really a laugh a minute, with a strictly classic lucasarts structure and puzzles on very much the same level of wonderful insanity. and, at the price you're offering it, i'd say it's a total no-brainer. that's good, we'll need the brain for playing!
Jim Walls has always been very bad at crafting stories, but two of his three Police Quest games were fun to play. Having become more sophisticated with PQ2, he embarked on this tour de force, upgrading from law enforcement to espionage. Always with an eye on following procedures, which in this case seems to mean that in effect you have to re-type in the parser the whole manual at various points. While I'm a huge Sierra fan from its time, I see no reason to play this unfairly unforgiving, way too frustrating game ever again. Everything here is very dated - on most Sierra games this adds an endearing quality to them, but not on this one. As with virtually all other games that offered a mix of adventure and simulator, this one falls very flat, none of the ingredients are very good. Buy any other Sierra game, this is easily one of the very worst. The only good thing about this? If relatively obscure games by Sierra keep on being slowly re-released, maybe one day we'll get to Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow by the great, underrated Christy Marx.
This one has a lot of 'find an object, find where to use it' as it's a classical adventure game. However, it's also a game where it's critic to be in the right place at the right time to listen to other characters' conversations, and to spy on them. Apart from a fairly standard prelude and coda, most of the game takes place in a handful of museum rooms you'll visit again and again. The feel and play, at least among adventure purists, is very different to a King's Quest, Space Quest, etc. You (the player, not the character... well, the character too, but I hope you know what I mean) must make some deductive work, as you'll be tested at the end, and from your testimony the culprits will be apprehended or not. That's the only thing I don't quite like about Dagger - you can solve it to perfection and still feel some pieces of information just weren't there, you just had to make up some parts of the solution. This is a fault I find in most games of this kind. But there are a whole lot of great things about this game - the hand-painted graphics, the very dark humor, the tongue-in-cheek characters, the wonderful music... Voice acting is attrotious but in an endearing way. If you like period mysteries such as Murder on the Orient Express, there's a good chance you'll enjoy Dagger of Amon Ra. Just bear in mind the game was made about 25 years ago.
