User Reviews (1 - 11 of 33)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

7 games of cool atmosphere and confusion

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

7 games of the soul is interesting enough if you enjoy puzzles solving games.The graphics are outdated, but the music is timeless. So it's six of one half a dozen of the other. If you enjoyed MYST, this is about the level of graphics MYST was, but without the LOGIC of the MYST puzzles. "7GOTS" consists mainly of hunting and pecking with your cursor finger, trying to accidentally roll-over the important spot on the screen that lets you know you can do something there. The main problem is, there is no real logic or pattern to the events and objects and things you are supposed to touch and move with the cursor. I found I was unable to get past certain points in the game due to the complete ridiculous nature of the thing you were supposed to do and thusly,I had to rely on hints from the internet. None of the puzzles seem make much sense in the problem-solving fashion, but if you have a lot of time on your hands and enjoy SLOWLY playing games, you might actually enjoy this. The music and the scenery are just cool enough to make this NOT a total waste of your time.It has a certain charm and dark appeal of some kind.
I am using the game on WINDOWS XP and I am not having trouble with the game function in that respect. It installed and played fine.No trouble with the animations or the basic game play. But my Mcaffe anti-virus program does pop up every time I try to save the game and says it removed a Trojan masquerading as another type of program. So, either it's incompatible with Mcaffe or it really includes a Trojan on the disc. Puzzling? YES!
I am inclined to think the Trojan might actually be there, because when I originally played this game, several years ago, I had a pc with windows 98 installed and there were also problems whenever I tried to save. I didn't have Mcaffe then, but something always went wrong when I tried to save, and this was a completely different computer and different game discs. So, you be the judge. Is it worth it to play this slightly interesting, but totally illogical out-dated game with possibly a STORED Trojan on the discs....?
I am beginning to wonder if I should finish the game a second time...but since it is very pretty and atmospheric to look at and has GREAT music, am I in an actual debate as to whether I should continue. Who knows, what danger lurks in the realms of the 7 games of the soul....

Great Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This a fun adventure! I am new to adventure games and this was good. The puzzles were not too hard to figure out. I did have to cheat a little bit.

Confused and Angry

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am often a little suprised at the reviews some games get, but i can understand that everybody has different tastes so it does,nt bother me. But this has me stumped this is by far the worst adventure game i have ever played,i did,nt even play it exactly i actually used a wwalkthrough for the entire thing just so i could also make a review on the storyline and plot otherwise i would have stopped lpaying right there

Lets begin with the puzzles probably the lowest point of the game they are impossible for the player to solve for the most part Some of the more ridiculous ouzzles include finding a tiny rectangular metal plate on the ground its colour almost matches the ground making it even more impossible to find but there is absoloutly no indication that you have to find this metal reangle which then makes a clicking sound and you are now able to open a plaque on the wall which before if you tried clicking on it nothing would have happend not even a click to indicate it is locked but can be opened. In another puzzle you enter a bathroom and there is a hotspot on a part of the wall the entire wall is the same with no distinguishable features but for some reason there is a hotspot on just ONE part of the wall clicking on this NOTHING brings up a mirror(??) a mirror just appears in thin air with what appears to be the reflection of a drawer in the bathroom, but when you look the actual drawer has not opened only the drawer in the mirror image and you must open the drawer in the mirror image not the real One. hows that for ridiculous. Furthermore much of what you do you dont know why you you need to do that, it lacks purpose and logic.

As for the plot it leaves alot of unexplained questions one of the characters "two siamese twins" are seen seperate in one clip, this is never explained or even referenced ever again, there alot of things like that, and the character animations are just terrible they have no facial expression the character mephisto has a constant grin on his face and for some reason his arms are constantly flailing about the place as he talks, actually all the characters are like that. You will find nothing in this game, If i were a game develop giving a presentation on what NOT to do in an adventure game id bring this along as an example.

Very Imaginative

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The seven separate parts were enjoyable to play and had interesting (although in a few places odd) story lines. The puzzles contained in the stories were related contextually and had varying degrees of difficulty. There were few, if any, puzzles which had solutions that were so far removed they would be impossible to figure out.

I was disappointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: April 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In the early part of the 20th century, a man named Theodore More built an amusement park called Dreamland. The park was inhabited by various societal misfits--a pair of Siamese twins, an animal trainer with parental issues, a fat lady, etc.--all of whom had some dealings of an infernal nature with a gentleman named Mephisto. Now there's some dissension in the upper realms as to whether all these people deserved what they got and an everyman--Marcellus Faust--is sent to explore the past and sort things out.

_Faust: Seven Games of the Soul_ is a game that players seem either to love or hate. The ones who love it cite its adult themes, great soundtrack, decent graphics and freedeom of exploration. Its detractors refer to illogical puzzles, technical problems, random action triggers and lack of a truly coherent story. All these things, both the good and the bad, are part and parcel of this game. Taking all into account, I fully expected to be one of the pro-Faust camp. I wasn't.

In the first place, as another reviewer has pointed out, this game really doesn't run very well on XP. You can get it to run if you use a compatability mode and turn your sound acceleration all the way down. But sound in the cutscenes is still extremely choppy and there are numerous things in the game that don't work. Half the features on the main menu simply don't function. Some of these features are supposed to be helpful in gameplay (detailed notes on each character, for example, that just aren't there). Some are things that have led others to give Faust high ratings (no matter what, I could only access one song from the soundtrack)so their lack really had an impact. Within the game there are numerous glitches as well--hotspots that don't appear, or appear far from where they're supposed to, cutscenes that don't play, things that don't work. Just for that, I found attempting to play Faust a frustrating experience.

But it's when you get to the story that things really fall apart. In seven episodes, each devoted to one of the park's denizens, you're supposed to unveil a greater mystery. And you do, kind of. But the episodes themselves are too short and lack detail, and only a few of them contribute to the greater story. Otherwise, you're exploring territory that's infuriatingly random. Some of these people had relationships with each other. Some didn't. What's the point and who cares? By the end, I didn't.

The puzzles were a mixed bag, mostly inventory-based with a few combination locks--not enough variety to excite me, I'm afraid. And here, too, the randomness showed. There was too much inventory that you picked up that had no purpose other than to trigger a cutscene. There was other inventory that you picked up that had no purpose at all and later disappeared (what was that baseball bat for?????) There were puzzles that were so obtuse that there was no possibility that one could solve them without at least a nudge and puzzles that gave no indication they HAD been solved, so I still had to consult a walkthrough to see what was going on. There were puzzles with so many possible solutions--putting a number of words into order in a sentence, for example, when those words would make sense in a hundred different orders--that solving them would take days. I generally play without hints or a walkthrough, so having to exit the game and consult one about five times an episode just to follow the gameplay was truly annoying. Also, towards the end of every episode you're suddenly thrust into a totally different location where you have to complete some action unrelated to anything else to move on. The whole experience was like being shunted back and forth along a series of badly running bumper cars.

After everything else, the revelation of the "true" story and the final decision were a letdown and the two endings, good and bad, were frankly abrupt, meaningless and had the feeling of being slapped on.

I completed Faust in under 20 hours. It would have been shorter if I'd known what was going on. I have to say, for all the disappointments, it IS a haunting game and I DO keep thinking about it. I think if I had an older computer on which to play older games I'd play it again; maybe I'd like it better. But on modern machines, by the standards of today's games, it just doesn't measure up.

It was okay

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: January 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I kinda liked it at first. I love puzzle, gotta figure things out kind of games, but after a while this one got pretty dumb. The graphics are pretty 'archaic' as far as 3D animation goes now days. It's definitely not Titan A.E. quality. Some of the puzzles were impossible to figure out in my opinion. Like I said, it started out okay, seemed like a really intense story but it got pretty dull and dumb pretty quick.

Who stole the rest of my game?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 22 / 24
Date: June 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game begins very nicely. It's a fun premise, having to go back in time and learn about peoples lives that are in the balance between being really good and really bad and then helping to decided what happens to them. Even more fun is the Devil, or Mephesto, is going to "help" you and the game does a great job at the begining creating a feeling that he's after more than he says and that you are somehow at risk as well.

Then it goes down hill.

Don't get me wrong, there is some fun game play here, it just missed so much of what it could be, and falls prey to some adventure game conventions that I hate and I feel have lead to the decline of the genera. First of all it's 1st person perspective...I HATE THAT! Adventure games are called interactive fiction for a reason. It is much more engageing to watch your character move around and explore things than to get a camera's prespective. I know this was the format for "Myst" and that sold a bizillion copies, but that was 1994 and it was visually new. It's not and it lessens the story telling aspect of a game like this. The idea of a wize old black man from Mississippi as your hero is great...then we hardly ever get to see him.

Which brings me to another point. There is no character interation in this game. Every so often you get a cut scene, but you never get to ask another character a question that gives you insight and information to further your quest, alow for us to get to know our hero better and suck us into the world of the game more.

Some of the puzzels are quite nice, but some are a bit random and there is no information in the game as to how you should find your way through some of these, you just have to guess, trial and error or go to a walk through. I have no problem with useing walk throughs, the way I see it is I paid money for the game to enjoy it, not be frusterated by it so at a certain point I will turn to one. I was just dissapointed with how random some of the puzzles seemed to be.

I guess the biggest disapointment was the ending. I don't want to spoil it, but it changes the opening premise totally and suddenly Mephisto is your harmless, charming buddy. All the reference to tricks and deciet and twists vanishes into thin air and suddenly we are playing the ending to what seems to be a totally different, and much less intersting game.

So, after all of that why 3 stars? Like I said, it does have some very nice moments, it is visually very nice and the MUSIC. If nothing else they made wonderful use of music for mood and period. One of the nicest features of the game is the Juke Box feature that allows you to play any of the music from the game. I sometimes open the game just to play the music.

Point and click, only better.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 18
Date: May 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This would be your average point and click game, if it weren't for the compelling story and the great characters. This game takes some getting used to, and I nearly gave up playing after half an hour. I'm glad I kept going, though.

The seven different stories are worthy of a good short stories book. The graphics look a little outdated, but they do a great job at reproducing the atmosphere of an creepy abandoned amusement park. The voices are more than acceptable (better than most Dreamcatcher games), and the musical score is fantastic.

I agree it can be difficult at some points, but it's always up to you to decide how long you want to spend figuring out a puzzle. Walkthroughs are all over the internet.

This game rates lower than "The Longest Journey", but only because the latter was such a grandiose game. "Seven Games of the Soul" is definitely in my top ten for adventure games. It's the kind of game you are sad to finish, because you know you are going to miss the characters.

Don't they test these things?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 29 / 35
Date: December 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

In SEVEN GAMES OF THE SOUL, you play the role of an elderly caretaker of an abandoned amusement park. You are approached by the devil with a task: witness the stories of seven individuals, and decide whether their souls will go to heaven or hell. It seemed like a fascinating premise, and I was eager to see how it would be handled in a computer game.

I'll admit it's my own fault for not making sure the game would run properly under Windows XP. It doesn't. It will run, but it isn't at all pleasant. The animated sequences get stuck frequently, and the audio is choppy. It's a good thing subtitles are available for the dialogue, although most of it is nonsensical, metaphysical gibberish anyway. As of this writing, there is no patch to make the game XP-compatible.

But operating issues are only part of the problem. The puzzles, if they can be called that, are so obtuse you'd have to be some kind of savant to be able to complete them unaided. There is absolutely no logic to them at all. At a later point in the game, you're rewarded with a demonic assistant, but the clues it offers are invariably for activities you've already completed. Apparently the clues are based on your physical location, not how far you've actually progressed in the game. Except for a couple manual tasks you need it to perform, it is useless.

The graphics are fairly nice, but interacting with things is also problematic. Hot spots are frustratingly obscure and you can move over them a half dozen times before they register. Occasionally, they are misplaced entirely. There is one room you can't exit until you make a quarter turn away from the door and click on a blank wall. And I am currently at a standstill in my game because a drawer I need to open will not open. I have gone over every inch of that room to no avail. What good is a game that you cannot finish even with a walkthrough?

SEVEN GAMES OF THE SOUL (or FAUST as it is referred to in the game itself) is a huge disappointment. It could have been interesting, but it getting through any portion of the game was torture.

Wow!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

A beautifulu made interactive adventure based on old leadgends and tales. Though mostly it stands behind the old masterpiece, Goete's "Faust".
This game begins in the sky and from there, it goes down to earth. You meet an old troubled man, names Marcellous Faust and very quickly you learn that he is being played by greater forces. The story investigates an old theme park, a mysterius place with a dark past. You need to clear it. But as you do, you find more turns and you see that something bigger then what you had believed is accuring.
Through the seven sins you learn about lonely characters, good and evil and you get an insight at many philosophical questions that were placed through the older "Fausts" stories. The old story of demnation and solitude.
An excellent game. Right up the ledder among the greatest (Gabriel Knight, The longest Journey and so for).
Enjoy!

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 Next 

Actions