User Reviews (1 - 11 of 17)

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Scotland Castle, secret rooms, great fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 28 / 30
Date: February 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I had a great time exploring through an old Scotland castle looking for clues, finding secret passages and getting knocked off cause I did the wrong thing. This is a truly fun game that works on all levels. There are enough clues to make the puzzles solvable, though the lab measurements are a groan (you will see what I mean).

I really was immersed in the atmosphere and the story.

Enjoy.

FINALLY, A FINE FIND

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: March 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I AM A OLD FART AND THOUGHT FUN WAS FOR THE YOUNG... NOT SO, OH WRINKLELESS ONES... FUN IS WITHIN 'THE CAMERON FILES' FOR ANY AGE, ENJOY.ENJOY.ENJOY!

Lots of Good, Clean Fun!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: March 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This was a game for all ages. It was funny and smartly put together!! A little humor in a game goes a long way!! The graphics were great and the puzzles we fairly easy to solve although watch out for the lake:-)

Another pleasant DreamCatcher game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 51 / 57
Date: March 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Actually this one is above DreamCatcher's usual standard, with plot, acting, writing, and graphics far above today's adventure games. Main character is a detective exploring 1930's Scotland to help uncover a Sinister Plot to Take Over the World, run by a Sinister Cabal using a Mystic Artifact. Okay, so the story doesn't win any prizes for originality. But it's fun, diverting, and well done. You won't find any chess puzzles here, and there's no monsters you have to take out with a shotgun either.

Well worth it, for my money.

Eh! It was alright

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game 3 days ago and I already beat it!! I hate it when a game promises me a lot of game play and thinking, but I personally found this game too easy and kinda boring. The graphics were great and loading and saving games was extremely quick. I recommend people to try it, beat it, and then trade it!!

Short and Easy, but Fairly Enjoyable

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 30 / 30
Date: April 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

_The Cameron Files: Secrets of Loch Ness_ is a pretty good game and a prety standard one for Dreamcatcher -- first person adventure interspersed with third person cut scenes. The premise is that you are a Chicago investigator of Scottish descent who has been called to Scotland by a friend of your father's to investigate mysterious happenings at his ancestral manor. When you get there, you discover that the person who hired you has disappeared. Now you have to find out what's happened to him and why.

The scenic graphics are very good and immensely detailed. In fact, I would almost say they are too detailed. If you are the kind of gamer who is frustrated by seeing a great number of objects that you can't examine or a lot of doors that you can't go through, you will be irritated by this game. Most of the set pieces are just that: little things that make the scenery interesting that you can do absolutely nothing with. There are books you can't read, cabinets you can't open or even come close to. I thought there were lots of opportunities for giving more information about your situation that were totally passed up. At first this was annoying, but I quickly learned to ignore anything that didn't leap out at me.

Game play was initially slow and navigation a bit confusing and difficult to get used to. A lot of this was due to the over abundance of detail. There were lots of times I wanted to go someplace or look at something that just wasn't accessible. In particular, the castle layout was hard to learn. And once you had learned it it became clear that there were quite a number of places that were just irrelevant. This became a burden in the later portions of the game when you had to go back and forth through great empty stretches of castle to reach the rooms where something was happening. A quicker way to navigate the castle, such as a castle map or diagram, would have been helpful.

_Loch Ness_ is an exceedingly linear game. Everything has to happen in a specific order. You are barred from exploring certain rooms and areas until you've completed the necessary prior actionsand you often are barred from leaving a place until you've solved all the puzzles there. While this does keep you from a lot of backtracking and prevents you from running around looking for inventory items that you either don't need yet or are right under your nose, it cuts down on the need for real thought. In a way, this game plays itself. This sensation is enhanced by the main character's notebook and by the comments he is given to making throughout the game, both of which practically tell you where to go and what to do next. I would advise experienced gamers to ignore the notebook completely. There's no way of turning off the comments, however.

As you may have guessed from the previous, _Loch Ness_ is extremely easy. Puzzles are generally inventory-based, with some timed arcade-type activities. The one or two mechanical puzzles virtually solved themselves.

The sound and music are pretty good; the voice acting is average. There were some places where the dialog was hard to understand. I was surprised that there was no option for subtitles, which would have been helpful. In fact, I was surprised that _Loch Ness_ didn't offer some of the standard sound and video options, such as an ability to adjust the levels of music and background sounds. There was a real "bare bones" quality to a lot of the game in this respect as you were stuck with whatever settings the programmers came up with. As most games these days offer personalised settings, I wondered why this one didn't.

Aside from the linearity of the game, my major complaint was that _Loch Ness_ didn't seem as fully developed as it could have been. You were only given the bare bones of a story that could have been much more interesting. The NPC's were virtually unneccesary as none of them added anything, really. One in particular appeared from nowhere and had no discernable relationship to anything else. Fleshing out the story instead of relying on numerous cliche's could have helped a great deal and made the game last longer. Even after a slow start, I finished _Loch Ness_ in slightly over ten hours.

Still, I enjoyed _Loch Ness_. I would recommend it for a beginner, or for a more experienced gamer looking to fill in the gaps while waiting for more complex games.

concerned parent

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 17
Date: May 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I do not own this game and only have limited knowledge about it, but I can say that my 8 year old played it for several hours at the grandparents house and has refused to sleep alone for two nights now. She hasn't specifically said what was scary about the game, but I could tell she was scared by it when I went to pick her up. I came on this site to see what the age rating was on this game and was surprised to see 6 and up. I just wanted to warn other parents that maybe the rating should be for older children. Our child hasn't had an episode like this in 4 years!

12 yr old gamer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: June 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

lol this game ROCKS 1st of all my name is cameron and i thought it was a real kick when i saw wht it was called, its prob the 2nt BEST and MOST FUN game i have (1st is age of empires 2 COOLEST GAME EVER MADE)although dont be foold by the cover, its not as scary as it looks ( definatly not as scary as MYST)its more of a mystry then it is a scary game BUT they do cuss a lil bit in it i wouldnt buy this for a 6 yr probably a 8 or 9 yr old mostly cuz of a lil cussin and its hard i had to get codes for it. but over all its a SWEAT game, i think its worth every penny of the 20 bucks, to CD's and all its a prety long game, and hard i love it but once you beat the whole thing im probably not gonna play it anymore. anyways i love the it is a MUST have for people who love MYST if you know what that game is lol. :)

Annoying in some spots

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: June 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The rooms inside the Manor house were spectacular, but limited in what you could do or where you could go. This got annoying after awhile, the snoop inside me wanted to go into that locked room! The notebook was nicely done, and the notes helped me past a few lost and clueless moments. Warning: you CAN die in this game! It's a good game for those who like puzzles, but are scared off by the monster puzzles in Myst and Riven. The detective is a Sam Spade clone, so he's not for the little ones.

great graphics,decent plot

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: July 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

i thought the graphics were great.As far as the plot it is not the best game but still very good.The room on the second floor by the stairs where i heard voices was so tempting to enter.I wish i could have actually gotten inside that room.What is surprising most of all is that there was nothing hidden behind a mounted deerhead.I thought for sure that there would be a hidden chamber behind a mounted sword,moosehead,deerhead.etc.Several rooms i could never enter.I rate the game a 3 but probably at least a 4 if i could have entered every room.Overall a good game.

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