Lost Souls (10): Proceeding!

[First published July 11, 2010]
Progress! And anticipation.

I have examined each and every node that appears to be possible in the hotel. I did find one new thing: I hadn't viewed all of the TV interview between the inspector and Mr. Bones. Their shadows are different. By clicking on the shadows you get more dialogue. Not from the inspector, but Mr. Bones gives more information about where Amy went at her own choosing. She called her "angels" by a dark light, and her angels now live in the hallways.

Nice! However, that new discovery did not advance me any further in the game, at first.

I found the scissors by looking through the keyhole in room 1B, but can't get into the room at all.

Trying to get up to the top floor keeps getting me killed.

To sustain suspense, I'll write today about my impressions so far. First, the graphics are spectacular. My only quibble is that they don't follow the decor of the first game very well. Yes, the layout is mostly the same, but the pictures on the walls are different. The dining room is now a buffet, and that does appear to have a different layout. The door into the kitchen is gone. The reception area is very nicely done and does look like the old one, but where's the restroom at the end of that hallway?

And what, pray tell, are these freakin' mannequins doing here?

Still, the graphics are completely creepy and the building is such a mess that I worry about the state of Mr. Boake's mind. The wall decorations, absent the pictures, really make the difference in turning the decor from creepy into something really frightening.

And of course the sound will scare the casual gamer if the artwork doesn't. Boakes has always done background sounds better than anyone else. The music is enough to keep you permanently on edge--just the right attitude for this game.

Also, I found an old interview with Boakes during my time off the game in which he talked of the attention he pays to camera angles. As a professional photographer with some experience in TV, he knows about such things. I never before realized it, but those camera angles indeed make his games much more interesting. These don't seem like just static shots in what still essentially is a slideshow presentation even if the transitions are smoother than the old-style slideshow in the first game. You just don't notice, really, that it's still a node-to-node slideshow because of the interest the camera angles lends to the scenes. Pretty impressive work. I especially like the shot from the top of the first flight of stairs looking down to the reception area.

And, are these hallways sometimes tilted? The camera angles often make the atmosphere even more uneasy.

Also, I must add that I indeed did find a clue that should have led me to the solution to the can n' bones puzzle. There is a graphic drawn into a book in Amy's overhead cache in the dining room that almost spells it out. Yes, I found that graphic and even copied it down, but I didn't tumble to what it was telling me.

So that's my own fault. I must remember that Boakes plays fair. Next time I'm stuck on a puzzle I must remember to look around. Somewhere there will be a clue.

Still, without consulting the WT I wouldn't have found the coin that I'd missed. I was right to look that up. Otherwise finding that coin would have been pure tedium, and that's not what we play games to experience.

So, back to the present:

There I was, stuck again.

At first, I thought the next step would be to retrace all my steps outside in the hope that I missed something else. Tedious. However, then I thought that I might still be missing something in the video. Went back to that and . . .

BLASTED A FREAKIN' HUGE HOLE IN THE FREAKIN' WALL!

So I can proceed.

But not tonight, because I didn't have enough time. Had cleaning to do, had to cook Dad's Sunday (very nice) dinner, and his friend, who visits us most nights, arrived early.

Ergo, I will have to wait until tomorrow to find out what terrors await me through the hole in the wall.

Doom must wait.

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