Before jumping into conclusions, let me tell you what this game is not about first. First thing – it’s not about the TV Show Dark Shadows that aired from 1966 to 1971 so there’s no werewolves, zombies and the like. Yet I gathered you probably never heard of that TV show. Ok, this game, even though it looks like the Longest Journey basing on those screenshots and the looks of the main character, it doesn’t have the depth or complexity of the Longest Journey. Again, you probably never heard of that too. Ok, it doesn’t have a strong character development like Kate Walker…ah forget it. What Legacy: Dark Shadows is about, it’s a point and click adventure game that tries to be like those above mentioned adventure game greats however falls down in a lot of areas – not too deeply yet can be off-putting to the purest.
The first cessation is the backstory – there’s not much to tell from the offset other than reading from the back of the game’s box. The plot is that you play a private investigator, Ren Silver, who’s after a slightly confusing start, investigating a missing person case who happens to be one of her co-workers. Moving back to the slightly confusing start, this wasn’t explained very well during the first half hour or so as you play out a World War 2 scene then fast forward into the 22nd Century, playing Ren on holidays on Mars. It would be better if the backstory was more fleshed out as there also was no game’s manual to refer to either.
And this comes to the second breakdown – there’s no manual. Granted that the game plays out as your typical point and click adventure however it would be nice if the game explains itself as there was a feature that normally don’t appear in other adventure games – that is the middle mouse button. Why this was important is because if you pick up, say a map / PDA, there’s no way you can enlarge it other than, you guessed it, by pressing the middle mouse button. How I located this was via a walkthrough for which I hugely digress, however I was quite peeved off trying to figure out how to read those PDAs, thus the walkthrough.
The third breakdown are the graphical glitches and the bugs. Given that most games do have the occasional bugs, this game is a little more than that however, and thankfully though, not game breaking. Locked at 1024 x 768, make a note that every scene or roughly every fifteen minutes, save your game as there will be times when loading the next screen, the game crashes to the desktop. Also, being a typical adventure game, most items do have a corresponding text to explain what it is however there a few that don’t. What this means you will be spending more time pixel hunting than progressing. Yet to alleviate this, when the cursor becomes brighter means that item can be further investigated.
About those graphical glitches, the entire layout seems to be slightly off – meaning that if, for instance, to interact with the world, you get three options (i.e. talk / grab / see), you need to click them slightly away from those icons otherwise they simply won’t register at all. It can be a real pain especially when you are unable to speak to a certain character as the trigger event hasn’t happened yet, yet you feverishly trying to click around that ‘bubble’ seeing what out of the three options you do have. Also the main menu has that issue as when you save your game, the saved images are aligned to the right of the outlined box – meaning it looks like the developers didn’t quite aligned the saved image to the static background. And to make matters worse, to move to the next nine saves (as you cannot override any of them), you need to move the cursor near the bottom of the ‘black spot’ to find the left / right arrow keys.
At this stage, you probably wonder is there anything good about this game. Well actually there are as for starters, you do get to explore a wide range of locations otherwise it can be terribly repetitive. It does provide a decent representation of the future however why is it that the future is always raining and dark? Moving aside from that, the game pacing is quite decent as one of my gripes about adventure games is the length of spoken words as some games, you really want to tell the game to shut up. However, with this game, the spoken words are an acceptable length and gets to the point straight away without being too abrupt. It’s pretty astute considering English is not their first language.
That said, all the spoken words definitely not native English as they all have heavy accents. Ren partially has a cute accent however when she has a conversation with another person, it seems she doing a Stephen Hawking impersonation as it really sounds robotic. I’m not sure what the heck happened there however when she talks to herself, it’s a lot better. Yet the other characters in this game don’t have this issue oddly enough. The backgrounds sounds are convincing enough like steam hissing from the vents or the occasional metallic sounds from the machines are acceptable. However what I do like a lot are the musical scores as different scenarios will have its own score. Also the song in the final credits (for which you’ll hear every time when you exit the game), even though it’s a cheesy rap song, the lyrics are from the game itself in form of that song – very clever; but then it crashes to the desktop every time without fail.
What’s an adventure game without puzzles and this game is no exception. There are those inventory management type where, at times, you need to combine two items to make a third however, and thankfully so, there’s no red herrings. There are, to memory, four actual puzzles however they are not difficult at all to solve. This may shun the ‘elitist’ however, looking at the brighter side of things, speeds up the pace thus making it a nice flowing adventure along with the condensed spoken words. That said, the game can be completed around the ten to twelve hours mark (unless you want to hear those lovely musical tunes). There is not reply value as once it ends, it ends and sadly though, it ended pretty abruptly.
With all those downsides, it makes anyone wonder why play it? Given that the game is made by an indie developer Razbor and with the price tag at the time of release was $30, it’s a little too steep for my liking. However if it was, say $15 upon release date, then I would recommend it. Why is that is because the game is genuinely fun to play – the pacing is decent and the subtle jokes has a nice touch, especially the in game joke about Ren’s fixation about barrels and the amusing HAL references. All of this did place a smile in my face however if they cleaned it up, they may have gotten the attention it needed via word of mouth thus making a sequel, or another adventure game as I can see potential with this studio – but I don’t think that won’t be the case.
5.5 / 10