I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

I expected an enjoyable and climatic advanture - the rating (4,5/5 stars) and comments suggested so - but I was disappointed. The biggest problem for me were bugs. This game requires from you walking around and trying everything with everything, pixel hunting and, in general, it's not very forgiving, you may have to use save/load feature quite frequently. I'm patient, I'm okey with pixel hunting and testing things, but not if there are significant bugs. For example, in one place the item becomes clearly visible, but the character "doesn't see anything" - and then you start to think, if you broke the game - do you need to start all over - is it even possible to finish it? This makes you go straight to a walkthrough and I personally hate it. However, it is quite climatic, so if you want a climatic adventure and you are okey with using a walkthrough to pass the game, then you may find it enjoyable.

IHNMAIMS is a classic point and click game from the mind of Harlan Ellison, the man who wrote the short story the game is based on, which is included with the game (I very much recommend reading the story, as its very well written). Graphics: Can run on a Speak-N-Spell (its a 90s point and click, for goodness sake). Nothing to write home about, but it gets the job done. Story: Probably the best part of the game. Learning about the backstories of the 5 trapped humans was very interesting. You dont have to read the story to know whats going on. Gameplay: classic 8-option control scheme for a point and click game. Each character is given whats essentially a hintbook, but if you use it too much, bad things start happening, and it could prevent you from getting the best ending. IMO, its a bad mechanic, but as Ellison wanted the game to be hard as possible, I guess I cannot complain. Scenarios vary from pretty simple (Ellen, Benny), to pretty annoying if you dont know what youre doing. What youre supposed to do next could either be intuitively obvious or stupidly vague. Sometimes both (or maybe Im just bad at Point and Clicks...) Id recommend a walkthrough, but if you wanna go in completely unaware, I wont stop.

Just a short review about the grip of the game. I think the reason it has gripped at least me so completely has something to do with its lack of humour. Or how to say? The lack of relief for the characters. Its so vastly different from a lot of point'n'clickkers (Not that there is anything wrong with those either) and when I go through the game world, everything is so desolate. And I start to feel like "Wow, what an atmosphere, what a complete game world." And it seems so amazing.

Wait, what do I mean "tired"? Am I implying something insidious about how this game aged? Sure I do. There's too much pixelhunting for pixelhunting's sake.

This is a fantastic science fiction 'what if', however the execution is pretty bad. I love the story and the concepts, but getting to the end is a painful repetitive bore. Be prepared to listen to the same canned dialog over and over as you work through this using trial and error. You have to complete 5 individual story lines, but each one has multiple places where the key dialog branch will not display because you did not interact with everything on the screen in the right order. Example: the Anubis character will not give you a needed dialog option unless you looked at and tried to use the sarcophagus just prior to that. Even the official strategy guide leaves out these gems which you will only find by repeating each section until you stumble on the required permutation. My aversion to repetition of the same dialogs over and over, got the best of me and I could not finish this. It was taking more time than I wanted to put into it. If you like that kind of thing you might like this, but it was a disappointment for me. Again, it is a great story, the graphics and game play are serviceable, but, you have been warned about the need to complete seemingly trivial unrelated tasks (you forgot to look at that poster on the wall!) in the right order, or you will not be able to progress.