The latest Delaware St. John installment is here and… it kicks paranormal butt. After a long hiatus, Delaware St. John is back doing what he does best in The Seacliff Tragedy.

For those not familiar with the DSJ series, Delaware St. John is a paranormal investigator who explores haunted locations freeing the restless spirits that lurk there. While not a steeped in horror, I find these games to be very comparable to the Nancy Drew series by Her Interactive, but where Nancy solves mysteries, Delaware investigates paranormal activities. These games can best be described as ‘safe’ for young teens to adults.

This time around, Delaware must investigate a haunted amusement park steeped in tragedy while trying to avoid the dreaded shadow people. Once again Delaware has his trusty VIC with him that can record sounds, ask for help, and take pictures to be uploaded and analyzed.

Split Personalities

Fans of the DSJ series will appreciate one big change with his current outing.  No longer do you only play Delaware, but his faithful helper Kelly is along for the ride as well. Getting to play Kelly was a nice treat and a change of pace for the series. We get a chance to know her better and get hint about her and Delaware’s working relationship with each other.

Seeing her reactions to certain situations really expanded her character beyond the previous voice over the VIC we had been used to. She also added a nice change of pace to the game by breaking things up so that we aren’t just playing Delaware throughout the entire lengthy game.

Size Matters

Unlike Delaware’s previous two games which are relatively short - DSJ1 can be played in 2-3 hours as can be DSJ2 – The Seacliff Tragedy provides more playing time than those previous two combined.  I clocked in at between 8-10 hours for this one. And it was a very enjoyable time at that.

Also, unlike the previous two games, the location you play in is large with many areas to explore. Carnival games, funhouses, and rides – they are all in there. No longer are you greeted with locked doors that you can never open which really took away from the previous games. In DSJ3 I think there were only two doors that I never went through.

A Strange Thing Happened

I am not a fan of mazes in adventure games and I was not looking forward to not only one, but TWO that I had read were in The Seacliffe Tragedy. Well, yes they were in there and I let out a sigh when I encountered them, but a strange thing happened – they were very logical and I found myself obsessing with following the clues and mapping my way through them.

For those of you put off by mazes, don’t let that influence your decision to give DSJ3 a try. I think you will find yourself pleasantly surprised.  Big Time Games – pat yourselves on the back for a job VERY well done with how you handled these.

Some Differences

In addition to being able to play Kelly there are a few other differences that need to be mentioned for those familiar with the DSJ series.

One thing that popped out at me was that the format of “find a ghost, free the ghost” is gone. Yes, you still have a few ghosts to free, but it is no longer your primary mission, which in a game of this length can become a bit redundant. While the game is indeed broken up into two parts like the previous DSJ games, these are more or less combined into one big story.

The other thing that became apparent was that there were a lot more animations and cutscenes in DSJ3 than there were in the previous games.  For such a small development team, I was very impressed with the amount of work that was put into animations and the game as a whole.

It’s Dark in Here

The Seacliff Tragedy is a dark game. Not so much in terms of the theme, but definitely in the literal sense. You explore the amusement park at night with only a flashlight (torch to you folks in the UK) to light your way. This puts off some people, but I think it really works well to set the mood.  There were no pixel hunts in the dark – everything that needed to be found could easily be seen in the light Delaware is carrying.  A word of advice though, you’ll want to play this one at night with the lights out. ;)

Graphically the scenes were very well put together and it all looked like what people would expect an amusement park at night to look like – creepy, very creepy…

Overall

While the game was very well put together and designed, there were just a few areas that I think could have been better.  These are minor things that didn’t take away from the game but might brought it to the next level.

The VIC. You don’t really seem to take advantage of what this device is capable of. As in the previous games, it’s primary use seems to be that of a cell phone. You might take 1 or 2 pictures with it and well as a sound recording, but for the most part it is only used as a communications device.

Ambient sounds. There aren’t very many ambient sounds in the game. So where you might imagine that you would hear the wind or waves, you instead hear the creepy background music. I imagine this is probably more of a style preference than anything else and the music does work well in the game. It’s just that after 8 hours of playing, those tracks might start to get a little old.

There are also quite a few triggers in the game that at times came be a little frustrating. For example, you might encounter an area on the screen that has no hotspot at one point in the game, but after triggering an event, that same area might allow you to look closer. For the most part it was logical, in others you would assume you couldn’t go in a certain direction because the game wouldn’t allow you to go there earlier which makes you scratch that area off as a possibility.

This by far the best Delaware St. John game to date. I can easily recommend it to fans of the series and even those who might not have enjoyed the first two games. If you are a Nancy Drew fan or have never checked out the DSJ games, you should really give DSJ3 a try – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

That Scoring Thing

Anyone looking at the previous scores of the DSJ games will quickly come to the conclusion that the score for this title is lower than the previous two – yet this is the best of the current three that have been released. I can only say that I respectfully disagree with the previous reviewers scores. I saw DSJ1 as a C, with DSJ2 being a B-. The Seacliff Tragedy is definitely a much better gaming experience and I have to give it a high B.

While it is a solid gaming experience, there is still some room for improvement. Each game seems to be better than the last, which makes their next game, Inherent Evil 2, something to really look forward to.

System Requirements:

• Pentium 600 or better
• 256MB Memory
• 16x CD ROM
• SVGA Graphics Card
• Sound Card
• DirectX 9