Shades of Death: Royal Blood. The title of this game speaks for itself. Right from the start you understand that everything in the storyline of the game will comprise death, blood, murder and mysteries. If you like dismal games with lots of locations and hidden objectsy, if you are fond of ghosts, ancient castles and knights, there are no lingering doubts that you will get everything that you would expect from this one. If the game has a story it makes it interesting even when the game follows one of the ordinary scenarios. The storyline has no twist but it is well developed. You get an unexpected telephone call with grievous news about your father's death. It is calling your sister named Violet. She asks you to come to their family castle and help her to put their father's business in order. Since now you assume a role of her sister and help her to uncover the secret of their father's
The fans of the highly polished creepy games will appreciate the work invested into Hallowed Legends: Samhain. This hidden object/adventure kind of game makes a perfect blend of the two parts of the quest. You are introduced a little bit to the story in the very beginning, but you still get more of it as you proceed in the game. You set to help your friend who got into trouble dealing with some mysterious cases. You are to find out where did the people at the celtic festival disappear. You will soon realize that you are going to deal with some demonic powers here. The game creates a perfect atmosphere of place where you wouldn't want to be.
Aspectus: Rinascimento Chronicles is one of the recently released games. It belongs to the adventure genre supplying you with a lot of wandering and puzzles to solve. The game turned out to be not as impressive as it seemed. Hopefully this short review will make it clear for you what to expect in it. The game starts in a very promising way. It looks like a movie where one scene is changed by the other, and you don't get too much other than that something terrible has happened. The graphics are not stunning with their beauty and attention to details, but they do their job good enough. Plus the lines of the people are all voiced, so it does look great and itriguing.
The title of the game didn't seem too attractive to me at first, but the game itself turned out to be quite beautiful in different ways - in how it looks and in the story it tells. I wonder what would Freud would say if you saw games like Echoes of Sorrow. I'm pretty sure that he would have been amazed with how one's wonderings within their mind and memories were brought to a more casual level. The game starts with you running away from a shadowy figure following you. But then you fall and the next thing you know is you are locked within your own mind. That may be not the worst thing that could have happened, but you still need to get back to the reality.
There are different stages of how things come and go. For example, long time ago we had the genre of hidden object games. Then they slowly turned into the hidden object/adventure kind of games. And right now, we observe the stage when things become more and more polished, which is inevitably followed by something new. We only have to wait now. Shiver: Vanishing Hitchhiker is a great example of how things new to this genre are being developed and taken to the point when they eventually make up a bigger part of the game than other parts.
