Avoid Dreamfall at all costs

[Paul Adams]

Bought "Dreamfall" the other weekend as it looked like one of those rarest of things - an adventure game, having "completed" it last night I would strongly recommend against anyone else bothering with it.

First, it installs Starforce protection drivers - which did have the benefit of proving unsigned kernel mode drivers will cause Vista x64 to refuse to start up, but the installer just said "some DLLs need to be loaded" and then "you must restart your computer to play the game" - no indication it was screwing around installing filter drivers.

Second, the acting quality of the voice actors is dire - I'm no film critic but this was painful to watch at times, despite the graphics engine being great.
Imagine a 2-second gap between 1 character talking and the next "interrupting" them.

Third, and probably most significant to a lot of players, there is about 3% of the "game" which is interactive - this is basically an animated film where you infrequently get to walk a few paces or click on the only usable object in the room before the next cutscene plays.

It is virtually impossible to die, the biggest challenge in the game is trying to figure out why the hell moving the mouse to the left turns the character to the right and vice versa (you play third person but I have never experienced this configuration before).

The storyline itself sounded interesting, but having finished it now I am just confused - so many threads left hanging, so many bizarre, unwarranted actions, holes in the plot you could drive a truck through.

A serious let-down, and proof that fantastic, detailed graphics and backdrops do not a great game make.

The Fahrenheit demo looks a lot more promising, and it's only a tenner from play.com so that'll be by next investment.

[luap.h]

I've been hearing a lot of that lately. Isn't it supposed to be a sort of sequel to The Longest Journey (which is supposed to be really good)

Ah well, you shouldn't be disappointed with Fahrenheit - it has it's silly moments, but is well worth it. I got it for my xbox, and played through the first level (the demo level) while 2 of my friends were watching. They both went to the 24hr Tesco and bought it themselves!

[Davey W]

Really that bad?

I too was looking at it wondering if it was worth picking up along with it's sequel. Admittedly starforce is enough to turn me off but with so few decent adventure games these days this is disappointing to read.

Oh well. Thanks for the heads up.

Davey

[Frosty]

No matter how bad that voice acting is im sure its not a patch on KREED *shudder*..you literally need to experience it just to realise how bad things can be...and be thankfull for the rest

[Lee H]

...
First, it installs Starforce protection drivers ...

That's all I needed to hear - thanks Paul I'll avoid this one like the plague