It’s been a long, dry spell for adventure gamers. Have the dog days
of summer got you down? Why not revive those gaming spirits with a real Dog
Day, the adventure game from Impact. Believe me, fellow adventurers, this
game ain’t for the dogs. If you like your adventures played from the first-person
perspective, solving your way through challenging puzzles, then this could be
your Dog Day.

The Plot: The dog day begins with you as a dog
(although you can’t tell this and it isn’t important anyway), locked in a room
at the back of some dark alley. Can’t find the key? Why not try the axe on the
shelf above the bed? Hey, it works. The door is open, and your adventure begins.
The first thing you notice about this dog town is that it is dark. Is it the middle
of the night or just the way life must seem all the time for the inhabitants?
You eventually learn that this oppressed society is run by a corrupt totalitarian
regime under the rule of the leader Chegga. Chegga controls the media so the public
is fed a less-than-objective account of political matters. The only threat to
the regime is the shadowy underground organization known as C.A.T.S. (Coalition
Against Totalitarian Society). Your objective is to somehow contact C.A.T.S. and
provide it with the means to expose the true nature of the government’s activities.
Just how you’re going to accomplish that doesn’t become clear until well into
the game. Your best bet is to travel through this dark, miserable dog town and
see what it has to offer. Need some money? Why not get a job? This is the first
adventure game where you actually do have to get a job (can you say “soup
kitchen”) to earn some spending money. And, depending on your arcade gaming
skills, you may need a lot of money! That’s right. This dog town has an arcade,
and you’re going to need to get the high score on more than one game to win the
prizes you need to advance in your quest.

The town is dark and lonely. This
town needs a hero–a doggie hero. Someone to end the smothering rule of the all-powerful
Chegga. Can you be that hero? Can you find the means to expose the government?
Can you solve all the puzzles along the way? That’s the challenge of Dog Day.
The plot receives a B+.

The Graphics: The graphics are
really what makes Dog Day a dog day. The streets are dark and brooding.
Most of the buildings are inaccessible, with the doors locked, hiding their inhabitants
from the world. As I played Dog Day, the graphics made me feel as if I
were creeping around town in the middle of the night. The atmosphere isn’t scary;
it does, however, make you feel the loneliness that surely all the inhabitants
of this town must feel. If you don’t take your time and enjoy some of the sights
of the city, you may miss some of the subtle humor that the designers put in for
your enjoyment.

One word of caution about the graphics: because the setting
is dark and dreary, if you don’t have a good graphics package on your PC, the
display may be too dark. I first played Dog Day on a low-end PC, and I
couldn’t solve some of the puzzles without help because I was unable to see the
necessary visual clues hidden in the environment. The graphics in Dog Day
receive an A.

Sound, Music, and Voice Acting: While there
are dog characters in the game and you can, and must, interact with them, there
are no conversations. While this may bother some, I prefer my games without conversation.
What are you going to talk to another dog about, anyway? “Hey, Buddy, seen
any good fire hydrants?” Even your jailmate won’t talk to you. Jail?! Yep,
even if you watch your step very carefully, you most likely will end up in jail,
or should I say, the dog pound. It doesn’t matter if he is tight-lipped: he’s
more interested in what he’s reading than escaping anyway. There is some of what
I guess you could call voice acting, and that consists of coughing, giggling,
snoring, and, of course, whining. One of my favorite parts of the game is listening
to my employer cough while I worked to earn some spending money.

The music
in Dog Day complements the gameplay. When you draw nearer to the nightclub,
the music from the club grows appropriately louder, and the music does create
a nightclub atmosphere. At one point in the game, this same music becomes helpful
in getting your bearings when traveling in the sewers beneath the town.

The
sounds in the arcade makes you feel like you’re really in an arcade. The whole
mood of the town is enhance by the sounds and music. The sound, music, and
voice acting all receive an A.

The Puzzles: Ah, my favorite category:
the puzzles. This is where Dog Day howls above the rest. Most of the puzzles
in Dog Day are real world style puzzles; in other words, you are put into
situations where you have to ask yourself, “how would I go about accomplishing
this if I were really in this situation?” Most of the puzzles are hard but
not impossible. That’s the way I like ’em. Keep me challenged, but don’t get me
stuck. The puzzles are always possible to solve with some thinking and reasoning.
You can never die. No matter what happens, there is always a solution. Figuring
out how to escape from jail, and pulling it off, will challenge even the most
seasoned adventurer gamer. The arcade games in Dog Day have received a
lot of attention from other reviews, but the arcade games were actually some of
my least favorites. In addition to the real world puzzles, you get a little of
everything else: a jigsaw-type, a music code, a maze, etc. The puzzles in Dog
Day get an A.

Final Grade: Dog Day has received some negative
reviews from other raters, but I liked Dog Day and I think you will, too.
Great graphics, music, and wonderful puzzles all make for an enjoyable adventure.
There is no greater praise for an adventure game than for the player to finish
only to start the game again, even though he already knows how it ends. Dog
Day is one of the few games that I have played more than once. Dog Day
II is tentatively scheduled for release in the third quarter of 1999. I am
looking forward to my next Dog Day.

So, if you’re looking for something
to fill the days while you wait for the next adventure game release date, why
not make those days Dog Days.

Final Grade: A

System
Requirements:
486 (Pentium recommended)
8 MB RAM
640×480 display

Quad Speed CD-ROM drive
Win 95 compatible sound card and mouse