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QF's Comp'06 Review: The Sisters

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quic...@quickfur.ath.cx

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Nov 16, 2006, 8:24:32 PM11/16/06
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[See my PTGOOD review for an explanation of my score breakdown scheme.]

The Sisters:

Whereas "Enter the Dark" tries to be scary (and fails horribly), this
game is genuinely scary. At first I was nonplussed about it, due to
little nagging flaws here and there. But as I went on, the story became
more and more gripping, and the setting became more and more scary. One
example of the fine horror writing is the fact that the bathtub in the
first bathroom was empty instead of having a corpse in it or something
like that: suspense makes the real scare all the scarier! Overall, in
terms of atmosphere, the writing and plot were excellent, quite
successful in the haunted house genre which tends to be spoiled by
cliches.

Unfortunately, the implementation is buggy and not as thoroughly tested
as it could be. For example, "TAKE A, B, C" is not correctly understood,
and in the car crash scene, things only work in a specific order (you
can't open the door before cutting the belt, but it doesn't tell you
why). When lost in the woods, going in an unpredicted direction gives
away the solution: the default message should've been customized. Also,
turning off the tap makes water come out of it. I can't eat the fish
after opening the tin (there is a valid reason for this, but the game
fails to explain it). SIT ON CHAIR --> "that's not something you can sit
on". Hmm, more betatesting needed here. Some decoration objects are also
not as thoroughly implemented.

But now I'm nitpicking. The one MAJOR flaw I did find, is that you can
walk through the locked door leading to the cellar without opening the
door, and therefore you don't need to find the key, which means you
don't have to go out to the lake, thereby completely missing a critical
part of the story!! I accidentally did this my first time round, and it
quickly became clear that the story was missing a piece, so I replayed
and found this bug.

Due to this fatal flaw, I had to lower the score of this entry from 9 to
8---it is otherwise an excellent example of the horror genre.

Writing: 8 Quite good, but could do with more proof-reading and
spellchecking. Spelling errors in the conclusion passage
detract from the effectiveness of the text.
Setting: 10 Very nicely-done horror story, without the cliches, and
genuinely scary at times.
Story: 9 Nice story, if a bit morbid (but what do you expect from
a haunted mansion story?). Nice twist at the end.
Puzzles: 9 Good puzzles, makes sense in the context of the setting
without feeling contrived.
Technical: 5 Needs more betatesting, has a nasty bug that can ruin
the story by allowing the player through the cellar door
without opening it. Also, minor annoyances with missing
synonyms and alternate phrasings of important actions.
Brownie: 1 Horror isn't really my preferred genre, and this one is
quite morbid. But it still deserves a Brownie point for
having a convincing setting that doesn't sound cliche,
and for a story that doesn't sound contrived, and
genuinely scary.


QF

--
"640K ought to be enough" -- Bill G., 1984. "The Internet is not a
primary goal for PC usage" -- Bill G., 1995. "Linux has no impact on
Microsoft's strategy" -- Bill G., 1999.

TheR...@gmail.com

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Nov 16, 2006, 8:30:19 PM11/16/06
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Initial State suffered from that same "win the game before it should be
possible" problem. (Despite being a homebrew effort with a limited
parser, it WAS fairly decent, IMHO.)
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