It’s a little-known fact that young red-headed ingénues who step off a train into a busy metropolis like New York are bound to be knee-deep in murders at some point. Laura’s second adventure from Roberta Williams and (this time) Bruce Balfour is more ambitious than the previous adventure. Giving you a whole city to explore, ‘The Dagger of Amon Ra’ encapsulates the feel of a good ol’ murder mystery. Quite humorous and fairly intriguing, Laura’s assignment to cover an Egyptian exhibit and then solve a series of midnight murders is a fun romp. Another mystery is why Sierra has never developed this property further. * Gameplay: Classic adventure game behavior. Keeping track of clues, suspects, items and info is handled perfectly with one obvious device: a notebook. Asking people questions about relevant facts is a simple matter of opening the book and clicking an item while engaged in conversation. Dialogue is witty and convincing, portraying character attitudes in a charming manner. Humor and hijinks are everywhere, and the last act chase scenes are worthy of applause. Solving the mystery at the end, however, was an effort in total memory recall. * Graphics: Quaint and colorful for a 256 color game. Great use of perspective and lighting. I could swear that motion capture equipment was used for some animations. * Sound: Excellent music portraying the Roaring Twenties. I especially enjoyed the chase theme from the last act. No real sound effects, only music cues when certain events happened. * Value: There are multiple endings (but only one happy one), and if you think you missed any of the clever dialogue it’s worth a return trip through just to catch all the hints and innuendo rampant in the plot. * Tilt: Lured by the “Raider-esque” statue of Amon-Ra on the cover, I purchased this mystery game without playing the first one and only a handful of King’s Quest games. I loved it! Young girls and parents of young girls should pick this up.
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