Dark Seed (Second Review)


Title		Dark Seed (Second Review)
Game Type	Adventure
Publisher	Cyberdreams
Players		1
Compatibility	All (May require degrader)
HD Installable	Yes
Submission	Emanuele Rodolà

When I was a child, my father used to come home with a bag full of new
Amiga games, most of which I never played because either they refused even
to start, or they were - at a first glance - too scary for me. Dark Seed
belongs to the second group.

Notoriously boasting an almost unprecedented high resolution (640x400!)
and digitized pictures for the characters, the first thing that comes to
mind when recalling this game is the stunning work of surreal painter
H.R.Giger for the graphics. As the story goes, it was Giger himself who
wanted the game to stay at such a high resolution, presumably for giving
better justice to his amazing drawings. Unfortunately though, the second
thing that comes to mind when thinking of Dark Seed is frustration. But
we'll say more about that later.

Dark Seed is the classical type of adventure game one could expect in
those days: third person view with a reduced point-and-click mechanism,
with the possibility to look at, pick up and use obects, talk to people,
visit places, browse the inventory and take some (actually, very little)
time to come up with something to solve the riddle on call. We follow Mike
Dawson, a science fiction writer, who recently purchased a new house to
draw the inspiration from for his new groundbreaking novel-to-be. Which is
all great, if not for that first terrible night, when the aliens come and
implant an embryo in his brain (all of this is shown in the short
introductory video sequence). Mike has now got a good source of
motivation: he has no more than 3 days to get rid of the embryo and send
the aliens home, before they get rid of him and of the entire human race.
And to do this, he (we are told) needs a minimal amount of puzzle-solving
capabilities (the least required, enough to use a shovel with a grave or a
clock key with a clock), a lot of luck and maybe some help from a
"concerned friend".

But what really sets the game apart from more successful examples of the
time is, in fact, the most terrifying nightmare of all the nightmares an
adventurer could possibly have: the possibility of death, or, even worse,
to reach an unwinnable state without even knowing it. The first few plays
go undeniably wrong as time passes (yes!) and after three days we are
presented with a "Load Savegame" but never a "Game Over" screen, so we
have a sneaking suspicion that we might be expected to do certain things
in one specific day or fail. After that, we are absolutely sure there are
things which must be done in specific places at specific times, with an
unwinnable state just round the corner; and the savegame list begins to
grow. So this is what all the frustration is about.

While not being a hard game even for the casual adventurer, and having a
great visual presentation, a neat story, cool music, and all right
playability, Dark Seed manages to be a tough experience even for the most
dogged player. What's really wrong with this is not the actual
likelihood of death, which one can patiently cope with, but the fact that
there is really no reason to know why Mike should be home at 11:00 a.m.
because the phone is going to ring, and if the call is lost, so is Earth.
No reason but guessing. And what is worse, as the story proceeds, the more
this will happen, reaching the point where you know precisely what actions
need to be done (as stated, the puzzles are not that hard really), but
only need to "discover" which action should come first, and when.

In all of this, what really amazes me is the fact that I couldn't simply
turn off everything and forget about Dark Seed. Once started, this game
will refuse to leave you, and you will refuse to leave the game. Dawson's
adventure is just too attractive to be left unsolved at day 1, when only
two days are left till the end of everything. And I found myself immersed
in it for five full afternoons, humming the radio song, shuddering at the
rooms in the house, struggling to brave a walk in the Dark World. And for
these reasons, without forgetting the above-mentioned defects, I cannot help
but recommend this adventure to anyone fond of the genre; any passionate
adventurer should have a chance to play and finish Dark Seed, even at the
cost of keeping a walkthrough at hand.




Category list.

Alphabetical list.