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Review: Cursed Desires
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It's nice to play a game that's a breakaway from traditional RPG's. With this puzzle horror game you get just that. The genre inspired me to play, the graphics left me in awe, and the puzzles destroyed my sanity.
It's nice to play a game that's a breakaway from traditional RPG's. With this puzzle horror game you get just that. The genre inspired me to play, the graphics left me in awe, and the puzzles destroyed my sanity.
-I've played a massive amount of games and in all my experience I've never been more impressed by the graphical presentation of a game then this one!
-The custom sprites really added to the game. It's a shame Sir Sniffy isn't around anymore, so many good games out there could benefit from his artistic hands. Yet I think others in our community do just as well in making their own sprites. Anytime when you have an attempt at a custom sprite set in a game you add a new element to your game. That dedication says you're willing to give your game something no other game has. In this games case it was used many times as theatrical, as playable characters, and to add special effects. -There were a few more obvious errors such as graphics changing to their default color. Some of these where easy to miss while editing but should have been caught during the testing phase. In another case, every other barrel was one color and then there was one random barrel of another color.
-The game's focus of puzzles was great, it drove the game onward and made traversing long dungeons fun.
-I enjoyed the throw back to past RPG's where you could look, smell, and feel your way in a situation. The extra depth added that special flavor that is often lost in today's games.Though I always checked the look, smell, options before choosing the advancing last option, I was disappointed to find that they did not lead to hidden scenes or advance the game in their own way. Choosing look always gave a description and nothing more.
For a game with this many puzzles I was expecting to find more serious bugs then I did. Though I found plenty, more so towards the end of the game, there was far fewer which is good.The only real problem I had with this game was the bone breaking bugs. I encountered one serious bug at the end which forced me to restart my Playstation (good thing I didn't save after I got the bug!). Other bugs ranged from refusing to acknowledge solutions to outright shattering of the puzzle engine. In one case I was able to move blocks into areas they weren't meant to go, in other cases I turned sliding on ice into walking to where I needed to go. Since the puzzles where a primary focus of the game, I'd of hoped to see much fewer bugs in this area. In the same token I understand the difficulty of debugging a mini game and with the huge amounts in this game I found that though they where frustrating, they proved to an irritant rather then a turn off. Perhaps having a "reset" switch in each puzzle room would have solved many of these issues, allowing the player to give the puzzle a fresh go rather then have to restart or reselect mistaken choices.
-The story was very simple and modular. It was enough to progress the game, yet the real focus was on the questing itself. I'd like to have had more freedom between puzzles, perhaps tooling around your mansion gaining additional story bits from your staff and artifacts. I'd of also liked to have spent more time on my vampire love, but over all I was satisfied with the plot.
Beyond the stunning use of graphics and graphical effects, the puzzles are indeed fun and challengingly frustrating. I found myself using fingers and racking brain cells trying to solve riddles or find solutions. Sometimes the solutions wouldn't come to me so I had to resort to plain trial and error but that's ok, the system was designed so you could do just that. its only the more complex puzzles near the end that made guessing much less desirable. The game is fun, but restarting is not. I had to reset several puzzles by leaving the room or following through with my accidentally chosen results. Only one case I had to restart the game and thankfully I didn't need to restart the entire game again!
Finally the end was pretty good, I won't spoil it for anyone, but it wasn't blockbuster or square epic. It resolved the story yet proved to be almost anticlimactic. Yet I enjoyed the end credits with the animations and custom thanks. Also the snapshots in the game's credits were used properly. Most people neglect the use of it, myself included.
Overall I was very satisfied with this game, I highly recommend it. Total playing time was somewhere in the 4-5 hour mark.
It's nice to play a game that's a breakaway from traditional RPG's. With this puzzle horror game you get just that. The genre inspired me to play, the graphics left me in awe, and the puzzles destroyed my sanity.
-I've played a massive amount of games and in all my experience I've never been more impressed by the graphical presentation of a game then this one!
-The custom sprites really added to the game. It's a shame Sir Sniffy isn't around anymore, so many good games out there could benefit from his artistic hands. Yet I think others in our community do just as well in making their own sprites. Anytime when you have an attempt at a custom sprite set in a game you add a new element to your game. That dedication says you're willing to give your game something no other game has. In this games case it was used many times as theatrical, as playable characters, and to add special effects. -There were a few more obvious errors such as graphics changing to their default color. Some of these where easy to miss while editing but should have been caught during the testing phase. In another case, every other barrel was one color and then there was one random barrel of another color.
-The game's focus of puzzles was great, it drove the game onward and made traversing long dungeons fun.
-I enjoyed the throw back to past RPG's where you could look, smell, and feel your way in a situation. The extra depth added that special flavor that is often lost in today's games.Though I always checked the look, smell, options before choosing the advancing last option, I was disappointed to find that they did not lead to hidden scenes or advance the game in their own way. Choosing look always gave a description and nothing more.
For a game with this many puzzles I was expecting to find more serious bugs then I did. Though I found plenty, more so towards the end of the game, there was far fewer which is good.The only real problem I had with this game was the bone breaking bugs. I encountered one serious bug at the end which forced me to restart my Playstation (good thing I didn't save after I got the bug!). Other bugs ranged from refusing to acknowledge solutions to outright shattering of the puzzle engine. In one case I was able to move blocks into areas they weren't meant to go, in other cases I turned sliding on ice into walking to where I needed to go. Since the puzzles where a primary focus of the game, I'd of hoped to see much fewer bugs in this area. In the same token I understand the difficulty of debugging a mini game and with the huge amounts in this game I found that though they where frustrating, they proved to an irritant rather then a turn off. Perhaps having a "reset" switch in each puzzle room would have solved many of these issues, allowing the player to give the puzzle a fresh go rather then have to restart or reselect mistaken choices.
-The story was very simple and modular. It was enough to progress the game, yet the real focus was on the questing itself. I'd like to have had more freedom between puzzles, perhaps tooling around your mansion gaining additional story bits from your staff and artifacts. I'd of also liked to have spent more time on my vampire love, but over all I was satisfied with the plot.
Beyond the stunning use of graphics and graphical effects, the puzzles are indeed fun and challengingly frustrating. I found myself using fingers and racking brain cells trying to solve riddles or find solutions. Sometimes the solutions wouldn't come to me so I had to resort to plain trial and error but that's ok, the system was designed so you could do just that. its only the more complex puzzles near the end that made guessing much less desirable. The game is fun, but restarting is not. I had to reset several puzzles by leaving the room or following through with my accidentally chosen results. Only one case I had to restart the game and thankfully I didn't need to restart the entire game again!
Finally the end was pretty good, I won't spoil it for anyone, but it wasn't blockbuster or square epic. It resolved the story yet proved to be almost anticlimactic. Yet I enjoyed the end credits with the animations and custom thanks. Also the snapshots in the game's credits were used properly. Most people neglect the use of it, myself included.
Overall I was very satisfied with this game, I highly recommend it. Total playing time was somewhere in the 4-5 hour mark.
