User Reviews (1 - 3 of 3)

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I Couldn't Even Play These Games

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

For the first time in my life, I actually got motion sickness due to playing a video game! I think it's the way the cursor jerks around in this game - I'm not too sure. But, within about 5 minutes or so of playing, I began getting the same symptoms I get with car sickness - the queasy stomach & an inability to focus my eyes.

Because others may be sensitive to this as well, I thought I should write a review describing my experience...

Don't Need A Plane Ticket

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First Scotland, then Egypt. I enjoy traveling to foreign lands. The graphics were attractive, as both the mansion in Scotland and the hotel in Egypt had me feeling as if I were actually there. The music score was appropriate and especially lovely once I entered the tomb in Egypt. Puzzles were challenging but not impossible to solve.

I was mildly disappointed that I couldn't explore the rest of the mansion and other cabins on the ship, even if they weren't important to the game. Because of the lovely graphics, I yearned to see more.

I expect to see future Cameron Files with perhaps a more rich and interesting story line and more exploration possibilites.

A painful game from the Adventure Company

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Cameron Files 1 is an older game, made sometime around 2000, when game makers utilized the 360 degree panning mode of FPS games such as Doom (well, I think it was Doom). Basically your character stands in a box and you can use your mouse to pan the camera angle around the entire environment. Sounds nice, but for two problems. First and foremost is the fish eye effect of the environment. I don't know if this is caused by the older technology, or if it was done on purpose, but it really hurts the eyes. It also makes me sick to my stomach. The second problem is that this is a point and click adventure. There really isn't anything to see on the floors or ceilings and you aren't looking for something big to shoot, you're looking for things like pieces of paper or a key or something small.

Because of the fish eye effect, I tried to keep my character from "looking" all over the place. If I didn't see what I needed right away, I would consult a hint system and find out exactly where I needed to look in a particular room. It was the only way I could actually get through this game. For this reason, I can't truly comment on how easy or hard were the problems. Which is why this game has received 3 stars instead of 2 or 4.

Graphics: The environment looks a bit pixelated. Given the age of this game, I think this is something to be expected. What I found very annoying is how much everything looked exactly the same on the inside of the castle. Some of the rooms had an individual flare. Objects within the rooms were easy to discern from the background. However, the rooms that you enter the most, and especially the hallway, all look very similar. What I remember of the hallway is a big red thing. At first, it was very disorientating trying to find my way around. Considering how much time is spent traveling between rooms, it would have been nice to make sure there were very definite markers in each part of a hallway to help guide the user through. Actually, there may have been, but I was so busy trying not to be sick, that I may have missed them. About half the rooms you visit are also red, with red tones, so there really isn't much of a break. I'm happy to say that once out of the castle, many of the other scenes felt much better to my eyes.

The cut scenes were done well, and though the lips didn't really match up, the mouths moved on the characters and some expression was attempted.

Movement: After the fish-eye issue, this is my biggest problem because it required me to pan around when I didn't think it was necessary. Sometimes you would click to move forward in a particular area, going straight ahead, and the next scene would find you staring at a wall that was previously on your right. So you pan left to face the hallway or whatever, click to move forward, and now your one screen ahead, facing the left wall, or a chair, or something that is blocking your path. It's really disorienting because you're trying to figure out why you're suddenly facing a wall, or where the path has gone. I don't know why this was done, but it was extremely annoying and became a hindrance at one timed point in the game.

Item interactions: I found some items very difficult to differentiate from the background. At times when I knew there was an item in an area, I couldn't see it very well or I had to be just so before I could pick it up. This may not have been such a big issue but that I was trying really hard not to move the camera around too much. However, most items were fairly easy to discern even for me.

Voice: I thought the voice acting in this game was really good. Cameron's voice seem to match the character, and was done well. Overall, this was the most well done feature of the game.

Puzzles & Story: As far as I can tell, the puzzles in this game are story specific. As I used a hint system, I can't really say if they were hard or not, but all of them seemed to make sense and fit in with the context of the story. I didn't feel like I was doing something just to waste some time in the game. Everything had a reason or a result. The story I thought was also very good. Overall I enjoyed discovering what was happening at Lock Ness.

Other: You can die in this game, particularly at some timed sequences. I wouldn't say you need to save often like the in good old days, but if you think you may be entering into danger, go for it.
Saving is a bit of a pain because you are presented with 8 (?) save slots arranged in a circle around you. You can pan left/right to rotate them into view. This was another annoyance to my eyes and also I couldn't easily tell which I saved first or last. There is a time/date stamp below each save slot, but because these weren't in any order, I had to make sure the one I was clicking really was the latest save I wanted.

This game worked at first in Win XP, but at one point early on it froze. The only way I could fix this was to set the compatibility to Win ME/2000. To do this, right click on the icon you use to open the game, choose "Properties" and under the tab "Compatability" choose the Win ME/2000.

Cameron Files 2: Unfortunately, this game uses the same interface as the last one. I only began this game and I'm giving myself a break. Here's what I can tell you about this:
The graphics are cleaner and crisper (as expected). The pan left/right happens MUCH faster and I overshoot often. To be fair, this is something that I can probably adjust, just haven't done yet. The in-game problems I've encountered so far are fairly all right and story specific, though I did run into one silly issue early on where I didn't stand in just the right spot, so the prescribed action didn't happen until I read about it. Even then I almost missed the cue. Voice acting sounds like the same actor and is equally well done.

One beef I had is with a weird confluence of space in this game that I think I ran into in the first version. The hallways on the second floor appear to lay along the front of the building. Logic would say that when you reach the end of the left hall, you should turn right to travel towards the rear. Maybe it's the confusing sameness, but I paid careful attention and it's the opposite, I had to turn left and it was the same on the opposite side, as if the hallways magically extended towards the front of the hotel. I also ran into the "walking straight ahead and suddenly face an obstacle" problem.

Even with all of these issues, I still really want to play this game, which I think speaks to how well the first was put together in terms of story and game problems. I'm hoping that after a long rest, I'll be able to pick Cameron Files 2 up and play it through to the end. So if you can stand watching the fish eye pan, then I think both these games will be very enjoyable for you and well worth the money you'll pay.

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