For
many of us, adventure games are all about The Story. The puzzles are
nice and the exploration is fun, but it is the story which ultimately
decides whether we want to come back for more.

So when Christopher Brendel
announced that he was going to start publishing “story-centric”
games, I became very excited. Ever since Portal
kept me up until 3:00 in the morning with my C-64 back in 1988 as
I just HAD to find out what happened next, I have been hungering after
The Story. And now here was a company which promised to fulfill my
desires.

Their
first game, Lifestream,
lived up to their claim. The graphics, sound and puzzles were adequate,
but the story was wonderful. It started out as a simple mystery, but
the further you went the more complex it became. It could have become
cliché at any point, but it held together, held my interest
and ended with a delightful twist that kept me thinking for weeks
after.

I wanted more. Chris started
posting teasers and screen shots for his next game which, he said,
would be even better than the first one. The graphics would be improved
and the story would be much longer. It was the story he had wanted
to do for years, but held off because it was so complex. Wow! If Lifestream
was only the warm up exercise, then what would this game be?

Finally,
the waiting was over and I had a copy in my hand to play and review.
From the website:

“Amateur writer Jake
Tobin, in search of material for his latest novel, has moved to the
small, quaint town of Shady Brook with his blind father, Wayne. At
first, the town seems very welcoming. Jake’s new neighbor, Tim Richardson,
seems friendly, and the Ekan family is always willing to lend a helping
hand. But soon, mysterious things start happening in the town. One
of the residents commits suicide, and Jake suspects a cover-up. Could
this town take part in a conspiracy to cover up a murder? As Jake
investigates, he gets more than he bargained for: a town secret so
terrifying that there is no turning back…”

OK,
if this were real life and there was a small town with a dark secret,
then it is most likely A) They have a meth lab in the hills and are
selling drugs wholesale or B) The Preacher with his five wives has
moved his small cult out and away from prying eyes.

If this were a standard
game, then the town has either A) Been taken over by the Aliens as
the first step towards world domination or B) They are all guarding
the Magic Dingus which has the power to start Armageddon.

But this is Unimatrix Productions,
so surely the story will not be anything so cliché. There will
be layers and depth and a devilish twist at the end.

Did
Chris deliver on his promises? Well, yes and no.

The game starts off with
great promise. You are asked up front if you would like all the sex
and violence removed (there is one scene and a few girly pictures
which might give the game an NC-17 rating. There are also a couple
of fight scenes.) You are also asked if you would like to play in
Adventure Only mode, in which case all of the puzzles are removed.
Both of these are nice touches and show great consideration for the
audience.

The
graphics are a little better in some areas. You can see from the screen
shots that Chris tried to put real objects on some shelves. But on
other shelves he kept the same old generic models. He put the effort
in to make some of the characters look more natural, but others still
look like mannequins. The scenery is still rather, uhh…, primitive.

The professional voice
actor, John Bell, provides all the male voices. While I might have
suggested he try a different choice for the hero, they were all distinct
and consistent. You always knew who it was by their voice. And the
acting was spot on. Very professional.

The
background music was very nice.

The puzzles were OK. They
were fairly straight forward, but just a little out of place. There
was a puzzle box which was just a bit too complicated to be real.
There was a suspicious pile of rocks which you weren’t allowed to
examine until you found the clue which proclaimed them to be a suspicious
pile of rocks. There was a cryptogram which was easy enough to solve,
but you didn’t get credit for it until you found the clues for solving
it. To me, the puzzles felt contrived and stuck in as an afterthought.

But
all that stuff is optional. What about the story? And how did it play
out?

Frankly, I was disappointed.

The story had a lot of
potential – a small town of thirteen people out in the boonies
where they could do anything without getting caught. Chris populated
it well with thirteen distinct personalities. But then he never really
did anything with it or them.

Another
nice touch was the inclusion of a journal which always had a list
of things for you to do. For example, buy batteries at the store.
But frequently it was of no help, giving instructions such as “find
out how to open the locked door.” Well, duh.

So what you ended up doing
was repeatedly going around town to talk with everybody just to see
who might have something new to say. Personally, I find that both
boring and frustrating. And then to compound the injury, there was
one puzzle where you had to somehow guess that you were supposed to
keep asking the same question to a certain person until they cracked
and gave a different response. This happened only once. For the rest
of the game, if you asked a question repeatedly the person would give
the same response just like a good little robot. I also hate it when
that happens.

I
kept waiting for all the little subplots to come out for all these
wonderful personalities. But it never happened. The story went straight
as an arrow from start to conclusion, which was “Obvious Ending
3.” At least it wasn’t “O.E.1.”

Now, all this isn’t to
say that it was a bad game. It had its moments which were thoroughly
enjoyable. But there was just so much unused potential.

Final Conclusion:

The
game is inexpensive and, while not a shining example of the genre,
does have its moments. It will keep the Adventure Gamer nicely occupied
while waiting for a better game to come out. And that pretty much
is the definition of a C+.

My recommendation? Be sure
to purchase and play Lifestream, if you
haven’t already. It is wonderful. And then purchase Shady
Brook out respect to the creator and to keep him motivated
to do something better.

Anecdote:

In
June of 1921 my Grandmother, Marion Smith, graduated from Wellesley
College. She and three of her classmates purchased a Ford Dyna and
then drove from Amherst, MA to Seattle, WA and south to San Francisco.
Four young girls, one car, no highways, mostly dirt road in an era
when only the train was thought capable of such a trip. This was her
diary entry for July 1, 1921:

“We passed through
the Great Lakes Training Station… We arrived, six miles later, in
Zion City… Every one had advised us to detour there, but we were
in the midst of it before we realized it. As we entered the village,
large posters proclaimed, that no smoking, no drinking, no physician,
no clubs, no much of anything were allowed within the town. We learned
that it was a community where everyone turned his money into a common
fund (and was probably beautifully swindled). We passed through it
with all possible speed, almost four miles an hour, and were joyous
when we reached very good roads just beyond.”

Deja vu?

Final Grade: C+
(find
out more about our grading system)

System Requirements:

• PC or compatible computer,
• Pentium III 1 GHz,
• Windows 98/2000/XP,
• 512 MB RAM,
• 350 MB Hard Drive space,
• 640×480 resolution,
• 24-Bit Color display,
• DVD-ROM drive,
• and a Windows-compatible
  sound card and mouse.

Please note that some
users have reported problems with the SoundMax brand of sound card,
and as a result that card is currently not supported.
Please also note that this game is available only on DVD.