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Good adventure but hard to play

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game was actually quite entertaining. The scenario was intriguing and it had really wonderful music to go with it; the location and scenery graphics were pretty decent, although the people were slightly stilted which started to annoy. The puzzles were just on the easy side of the right level of difficulty, I thought, but they usually fit well within the story which made them enjoyable. The fact that they did fit the story made them quite linear, which is either a plus or a minus depending on your preference.

So why is my review not so good? Purely navigation. I am not one who is prone to motion sickness of any kind (car sickness? nope. sea sickess? nope. big screen imax? all good.), but I found that I could only play this game for maybe a half an hour at a time because just moving around made me feel extremely ill. The mouse controls the way you look and move, but it is fixed at the center of your view. Most of the time that means that if you want to examine something or turn around you have to swivel your look direction around an awful lot; hence the motion sickness. Lots of games have the option to just move the view around from the edges, but I couldn't find any such option here. If you think this won't bother you, you should be fine. Just, be forewarned.

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.

NOT BAD AT ALL

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 22
Date: October 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

REally good game for the most part - the graphics weren't quite up to par I thought but not too bad. The movement can be a bit stilted but easy to get through. Good puzzles and story line. Not bad at all.

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.

A couple of times EXTREME PATIENCE AND DILIGENCE REQUIRED.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

A couple of times extreme patience and diligence is required. There was one time there was no way I would get to the next level without going aimlessly through every pixel of the entire complex. I did not have the patience and got the walkthrough. Finding it on my own really would not have been that gratifying. There was another time that the puzzle was a little off and required recallling what was said in an animation sequence (which I thought I was paying attention to) as well as outside research. You really have to pay attention to the animation sequence and unfortunately the critical info given was not documented anywhere. Often times excellent clues are given as what to do next. The graphics and music were excellent. But when clues were given it was still challenging enough to be interesting. And unless you enjoy repeating the same sequence after dying a thousand times or spend hours looking for a needle in a haystack then a cheat with a walkthrough for a little hint once or twice is definitely worth it. Otherwise you may get fustrated and annoyed if you want to finish the game in a day or two. And remember to save!

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!!

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!

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.

Not Bad, But ...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

well, too many times I was going to drop this game, and thought that it was a very silly one, but something kept pulling me back, the game puzzles (if they deserve to be called that), are sometimes so easy and simple, and sometimes you dont have no clue what to do, anyway mixing easy with hard was not bad, the only thing that REALLY bothered me was the movement, it was horrible, slow, and very boring, and with limited response, the graphics were not so great.
overall it was not a bad one, i finished it in one day, and by the way it worked with Windows Vista perfectly.

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.

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