INTRODUCTION: Though
flawed, Head Games’ “Inherent Evil” is a lean, mean,
scary good time.

Modesty. Sometimes it’s
a bad thing. Say, if you’re Brad Pitt or Cindy Crawford. But
sometimes it can be a very good thing. The same is true for conformity.

Inherent
Evil: The Haunted Hotel, the first game from Eclipse (and published
by Head Games, a division of Activision), is a textbook example of
when embracing conformity and modesty can be a virtue, and when rejecting
it can be a vice.

In every single area in
which Inherent Evil is traditional and modest, it excels.
And when it tries to innovate, it falls flat on its scary face.

I could spend this entire
review trying to explain how this game came to be released in the
curious form that it is. But I don’t want to talk about how
this game was originally conceived and planned, I want to talk about
the game as it was actually released.

And as actually released,
it’s a pretty darn fun, modest game. Why modest? Well, it’s
got modest ambitions, it’s a modest length, and it’s available
for a very modest price.

I happen to be a big fan
of modest games. Playing Inherent Evil reminded me of other
lean and mean games like Safecracker,
Cracking
the Conspiracy, Connections,
The
Cassandra Galleries and Frankenstein: Through the Eyes
of the Monster.

Like those games, the graphics
have a crisp, clean, attractive look that’s very easy on the
eyes. Like most of those games, what your goals and challenges are
fairly clear through the course of the game.

The
game begins with a sharp, very well-done cutscene in which your character
answers an urgent phone call from his brother. Evidently he’s
being held prisoner in the same hotel in which both of your parents
died years before.

Quicker than you can say
“Please rip off Stephen King’s THE SHINING,” you
are whisked off to the lobby of the very evil Reed Hotel.

Naturally at the start
of the game very little of the hotel is open to you. You have to try
every door, every stairwell, and the elevator in your quest. The more
you explore the more access you gain, and the more the story unfolds.

This is the tried and true
formula of many fun adventure games. The gameplay interface is elegant,
intuitive and unobtrusive. The game is not innovative by any means,
but there’s something comforting in its very familiarity. You
don’t play Inherent Evil to bang your head up against

Black Dahlia-type puzzles. You breeze through it to enjoy
the atmosphere.

There are a few wonderfully
creepy sequences in the game. Exploring the dark second floor with
nothing but a flashlight was wonderfully stressful. And there’s
a wonderful moment late in the game that involves lights snapping
off and a ghostly messenger that’s really delicious.

The
music in the game is fairly cheesy, but effective enough. To be honest,
when it comes to music in horror games, Amber:
Journeys Beyond spoiled me forever with its brilliant use
of ambient-only sounds. Silence is much scarier than a shrill soundtrack
could ever be.

There is one terribly difficult
maze sequence. Yes, you read correctly (I told you this game was modest
and conventional). At least this maze sequence has a couple of ideas
going for it, and it’s visually striking. But dress it up all
you want, it’s still a maze. But at least it’s a really
long, really hard maze.

Also, there are a few places
in the game that have important hotspots so small you practically
need a microscope.

Pixel hunts and mazes are
not the major problems in Inherent Evil, however.

What are the two real stinkers?

First, the acting is shockingly,
unbelievably, unforgivably bad. I’m sorry, but these here adventure
games have been made for lots of years now, and there’s no excuse
whatsoever for this problem. Good actors are NOT hard to find, no
matter where the game developers were working. Frankly, if they had
been stationed at an army weather data Quonset hut in central Antarctica,
they should have been able to come up with better actors than this.
At one particularly excruciating moment, the script calls for a mother
to give frantic instructions to her young sons. The “actress”
delivers the speech with all the color and intensity of a bored housewife
reading aloud from the back of a cereal box.

I’m always baffled
when I see game developers make this mistake. It’s got to be
one of the easiest things in a game to get right. Honestly. Hey game
developers, I’ve got lots of actor friends who’d love
a job, and you could wake up any one of them at 3 in the morning and
get a better instant performance out of them than any of the actors
in Inherent Evil. I’m also disappointed in Head Games/Activision
for not insisting that Eclipse re-shoot the live actor sequences as
a condition of their agreement to publish and distribute the game.
It wouldn’t have cost more than a couple of thousand dollars,
and it would have helped the game immeasurably. This kind of amateur
hour acting is simply unacceptable in a game released by a major company
like Activision.

The
second problem the game has is its already notorious lack of a game
save feature. Yes, you read that correctly. No save feature. The game
is separated into eight sections, and whenever you complete a section,
you get booted out of the game – yes, booted out of the game,
sports fans – and when you restart the game you can then progress
to the next level. I understand this odd structure has something to
do with the developers’ early intention of this game being an
online only adventure game. Whatever. It was released as a single
player standalone game, and it should behave like one. I’ll
repeat my oft-chanted rule: DON’T GET CREATIVE WITH GAME SAVING
AND INTERFACE OPTIONS. Leave them alone. It’s an area where
conformity and lack of imagination are a virtue.

One final quibble I have
is with the name of the game itself. As you play it, the game constantly
refers to itself of “Chapter One: The Hotel.” At first
I was afraid there was something wrong with my installation, then
I realized the entire GAME was “Chapter One.” Well, Chapter
One of WHAT, exactly? I guess this was a way of announcing the developers’
plans for sequels, but it actually comes off as a) confusing and b)
promoting the uneasy feeling that you don’t have the entire
game on your computer. Plus, I’m sorry, but “Inherent
Evil” is awfully generic sounding, don’t you think? A
little too reminiscent of Resident
Evil. I wish the game had a more interesting title.

These criticisms aside,
however, I have a very fun eight hours or so playing this creepy,
atmospheric, comfortingly familiar game. If Eclipse DOES create a
sequel, I’ll jump on it like a duck on a June bug.

PROS:
Traditional point-and-click adventure game virtues, with most excellent
creepiosity.

CONS:
Inexcusably lame acting, indefensibly “creative” non-save
concept.

Final Grade: B

System Requirements:

• Pentium 100
• Windows 95/98
• 16 MB RAM
• 4X CD-ROM
• Soundblaster compatible
  card
• 150 MB available Hard
  Disk Space

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.