I loved this game when I was a kid as it was one of the first games I bought myself. The mysterious science fiction atmosphere was cool. However, I wasn't able to finish it as a kid. I got relatively far, but there were too many long stretches where it wasn't clear where to go next. Now out of nostalgia I downloaded "The Dig" again. It brought back old memories and was a fun experience to play through the whole thing. However, reading through other reviews, I would concur with a lot of the criticism. Positives: the atmosphere of the game is top-notch. The ambient symphonic soundtrack, beautiful painted backgrounds, and realistic sound effects (footsteps clicking on stone, crunching on sand) make the game extremely immersive. Negatives: The desolate atmosphere of the game, while mysterious at the beginning of the game, starts to wear thing by the middle. The beginning of the game after you arrive is the most fun, because at the point the world is relatively open, there are multiple items to collect, and there are some relatively fun trial-and-error puzzles. After that, the game starts to get frustratingly linear. You are supposed to go certain places, or talk to certain people or show them things only in one particular scene, and there's no kind of nudge or clue as to what or where that should be. The mysterious empty atmosphere of the game starts to get, well, boring, as you half to (slowly) walk back and forth between the same scenes, all across the game world, to collect one item or talk to one person. After a certain point, the puzzles stop being puzzles, and the game becomes a sort of wandering around, looking for the one trigger to advance the storyline, and finding it often has nothing to do with logic. I wish the game would provide more clues from dialogue as to where to go next. I also thought the puzzles sucked after the halfway point. The ending was also really cheesy too, and I would agree with the dialogue/voice acting being stiff. But still a cool game.
