A Touch of Horror

This adventure was produced by Frogwares, and puts you in the role of Abraham van Helsing in pursuit of Dracula; your job is to end his evil before he succeeds in using the hapless Mina Harker as the host for his lost love. The storyline moves from Victorian London to Egypt, Austria and Transylvania, taking in some very atmospheric locations.

It has a great deal of atmosphere but it falls down in some important particulars. One is that the dialogue is often nonsensical, suggesting that the game is in fact a translated version of an original not scripted in English. The fact that it does not adhere to the novel is no great issue, but that it does not stick to its own internal logic is annoying. Some of the puzzles are completely extraneous, clearly used just to give you something to do at a particular point, and all too often you wind up trekking laboriously back and forth trying to solve problems which require more luck than intelligence.

And finally, the ending seems rushed and unsatisfying; instead of an action-packed climactic battle against Dracula himself (not in terms of an end boss fight as in FPS games, but in terms of a confrontation needing skill and wit to resolve) you get to do very little, and it all dissolves away in a rather vague and inadequate cut scene. Fun in its way, but not as good as it could have been. 3 out of 5.

This puzzle adventure is the sequel to Riddle of the Sphinx, and was made by Omni Creative; it was released in 2003. I had not played the first adventure and was in fact not aware it was a sequel till I began to play, but it did not spoil my enjoyment of it at all. The plot has you playing an archaeologist/ adventurer looking for mysterious Omega Discs at ancient sites around the world: Easter Island, Stonehenge, Chichen Itza and even under the waters of the Bermuda Triangle. At various points you interact with a senior archaeologist, a pilot, a driver and other characters - all of whom are played by the same man, in filmed cut scenes cleverly inserted into the game scenery.

It is not an especially horrific game, though I found the time spent in dark tunnels beneath the ruins of Chichen Itza rather creepy (and be warned, I needed a notebook to make records of where I had gone so i didn't miss the various hidden side passages and rooms). But it is good fun, and with a sense of humour. I found at the end of it I had quite a sense of achievement, and the ending was not a letdown. It may not run too well with Windows 7 or later, though, so you may be as well waiting for a revamped release. I'd give it 4 out of 5 as a horror, but 5 out of 5 as an adventure.

This game was developed by Frogwares and has been issued twice; the Remastered version offers the option to play the game in a third person format, but I played it in the original and enjoyed it immensely. For me it is the best Sherlock Holmes game I have played, far superior to the later Nemesis game.

The puzzles are mostly sensible and logical, not often to be solved by luck or guesswork, and when it comes to atmosphere this is a first-class contender. Poor old Dr Watson finds his sanity becoming decidedly shaky as you progress, though Sherlock is made of sterner stuff. But even he has cause for concern as you track a band of cultists from the docks of London, through a Swiss asylum, and on to New Orleans before a confrontation - well, I won't give the game away on that one. Suffice it to say that sleuthing has never been scarier, and this is the first detective game where I found myself regretting that I managed to solve a problem. If I had really been investigating this in real life, I'm afraid I would have turned tail long before the end! But I didn't, and I was totally satisfied after some 40 hours of hard detective work and horrific exploration. 5 out of 5.