Paranormal Dilettante or Avenger?

If the Delaware St. John games were a book series, they would fit quite nicely on the YA fiction list. This isn't intended to denigrate the games or the stories, just to suggest that this is the sense one gets when one first boots the game and hears Kelly Bradford’s cheery voice. In fact, considering that some of the hottest selling fantasy books are to be found on the YA shelves (does Harry Potter or The Golden Compass ring a bell?), this may not be a bad thing. The young 20-something protagonists of the Delaware St. John stories will appeal to teenagers and up.

Delaware St. John (or “Del” as Kelly likes to call him) has a special calling. Just as the enchanting child in the film, Sixth Sense, could see the dead, Del can hear them. In fact, they frequently call to him to solve the injustice of their last moments in order to bring about some cosmic equilibrium. Yet, as though to mock Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben (of Spiderman fame), with Delaware’s great power comes great fallibility. Del is not the brightest bulb in the fixture. To solve the meatier portions of the mysteries will require the computer savvy and raw intellect of the perky Miss Bradford.

The good news is that even though the first voiceovers sounded more Scooby-Doo or Nancy Drew than Nightstalker or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it wasn’t long before the game’s somewhat retro-graphics and appropriately eerie musical soundtrack began to create a beguiling ambiance and an artistic effect of their own. Since the first two adventures (from Delaware St. John: Volume 1: The Curse of Midnight Manor) covered here take place in an old manse turned Catskill-style hotel (complete with lounge and far-off Broadway entertainment), the graphics have the right feel for conveying the atmosphere.Further, the soundtrack is has just the right tonal quality that I wouldn’t want to have been playing this game late at night.

DSJ Review: Seen a Ghost?

SEEN A GHOST? Midnight Manor’s lounge is full of disembodied spirits and phantoms. The old mansion’s dark past still pulls the unfortunate into its vortex of evil. You have to discover why. Notice the interface within the interface in the lower right-hand corner.

Another attractive feature about the game is its interface within the interface. Delaware collaborates with his detective partner, computer geek and gadgeteer extraordinaire Kelly Bradford, via the VIC, the Voice Imagery Communicator. It’s a great idea (maybe not quite as unique as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis when it made you “earn” your interface during one sequence, but potentially interesting nonetheless). Unfortunately, the VIC becomes monotonous if overused in the first chapter and really only starts to get clever in the second chapter. It would have been really superb if you at least got traces of supernatural activity in the report from Kelly, even if those traces only provided a “warm, hot, cold, freezing” type clue of how you were progressing toward a given goal within the game.

The truth is that the game path is relatively linear. That is to say that some locations won’t open up until you’ve solved various puzzles or had certain encounters. You can explore a lot without being on the right track, but it isn’t as satisfying as it could be with a slightly richer environment. Yet, there is just enough that the game pulls you into its vortex. And, the chapter approach means that they are short enough that you get a “payoff” more often than you did in the bigger adventure games (think Sierra and Lucasfilm in their graphic adventure prime). In short, by the time I had played halfway through the first chapter of Volume 1, I had left the irreverent echoes of Scooby-Doo behind and was thinking of Delaware St. John as more of a Gabriel Knight and less as one of the Hardy Boys.

Puzzle fans might be somewhat disappointed. Not counting the maze (more about that later) in the first chapter, both chapters only deliver one major puzzle of the classic variety. Both chapters use a keypad like the one pictured below as the main problem. The player has to find the clues that will enable him/her to determine the proper combination for the keypads. Gamers who simply like to explore and pick up clues (both of the physical and supernatural variety) will enjoy these games much more than those who like the intense puzzles of text adventures or early graphic adventures.

DSJ Review: Pad Locked?

PAD LOCKED? Maybe it would help you solve the combination if you knew where the electricity was going?

Another fact that gamers like me will enjoy about the game is that, with some exceptions, the exploration isn’t totally about “finding the pixel.” The active spots (illuminated by having the cursor transform into an eye) are fairly good sized and seem logically placed. The design team also wisely placed some red herring spots to explore. Given a larger budget, one wishes one could open certain “active” desks or bureaus—even if nothing in the drawers or on their surface was relevant. It would have been nice to have to make some inventory choices. Instead, objects will only enter your inventory should you need them.

Many adventure gamers don't like action sequences in their games, but these games have a couple of very forgiving sequences that are time-driven. If you fail, you "die" in blackness and restore to wake up in the same position. If you succeed, you're usually rewarded. Most of these in the first volume are chase sequences, but the final room contains a sequence I call "supernatural whack-o-mole." Sure, you use a supernatural object and those are frightening images that crop up, but the gameplay is similar to the familiar action game of years gone by. Still, the game is so forgiving that it was more fun than frustration--a rare experience when action sequences are placed in adventure games.

One thing that seemed common to the first two chapters was that using an object from inventory was not always intuitive. Sometimes (maybe even often), merely placing an object upon a certain spot will conjure a vision or reveal a clue. The only time this seems frustrating is when some situation specific opportunity arises. For example, you can never bust down a door except when the situation allows you to do so. For me, there wasn’t enough of a clue that this was possible.

I also liked the second chapter better than I liked the first one. The team cleverly reused locations with different visions, ghosts and clues. It also seemed like the designers were more comfortable with what they could do. The puzzles and the story seemed to hang together better than in the first one. It makes me truly look forward to Volume 2.

Reviewer’s Snapshot: 7 (on scale of 10)

Story/Creativity 8
Puzzle/Creativity 6
Replayability 2 (typical for adventures)
Graphics 6
Price/Performance 9
Reviewer’s Bias 8 (Wanted to Enjoy)