Preview Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events™ Developer: Amaze Entertainment Publisher: Activision Release Date: November 2004 Platform: Preview by Randy Sluganski August 12, 2004

Hidden in a dark, foreboding corner of the E3, behind a spooky doorway (seriously!) was an adventure game that we were told by some sinister voice to not recommend, but enough time has passed to allow us to feel more comfortable about speaking aloud of this game.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events™ is based on the best-selling series of books (soon to number eleven) and the 2004 Christmas holiday feature film starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep & Jude Law (the trailer looks great).

The game will be comprised of 17 different missions based on adventures from the first three books (The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window) and the movie as you must explore Count Olaf’s (Jim Carrey) mysterious mansion, navigate Uncle Monty’s intricate hedge maze and escape from Aunt Josephine’s (Meryl Streep) rickety house before it plummets into Lake Lachrymose

The player will follow the three Baudelaire orphans – Violet the inventor, Klaus the brave intellect and Sunny the biting baby - as their luck goes from awfully bad to incredibly worse. Gameplay combines the unique talents of all three orphans - some missions are designed to take advantage of a specific character’s special abilities - to keep them one step ahead of their distant uncle and unscrupulous guardian, the evil Count Olaf – one of the world’s six worst villains – who will employ any means to get his filthy hands on their family fortune.

The orphans will gather items throughout the adventure that can then be used to build inventions for solving puzzles or for fending off Olaf’s creepy cohorts.

While Lemony Snicket would warn you that this is one game you want to stay away from, we’ll gladly put our heads on the chopping block and predict that adventure gamers will find Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events™ to be a pleasant and welcome surprise.

We’ll have a lot more information and screenshots on this game in the upcoming months, but for now we have a few screenshots from an early PS2 version. For now though, learn more about the Lemony Snicket phenomenon at the official site.