First
off, let me tell you that this is a really BIG game—in every
way. If you’re a seasoned veteran who remembers the good old days
when an adventure game dominated a respectable chunk of your life,
you’ll know exactly what I mean. I’d gotten so used to playing
the pared down versions usually presented by today’s market that I’d
forgotten what it was like to have a game take time –and more than
one disk– to install. It was just the first of many ways that Beyond
the Spirit’s Eye reminded me of that Golden Era of
Gaming, but without the complicated gymnastics required to play on
today’s machines.

So what do I mean by a
“big game”? First off, it encompasses a very large environment,
much of which is fully explorable. Houses, shops, a cemetery, a wharf—all
richly detailed, all filled to the brim with objects to inspect. Marcos’
home was so large in and of itself, I regularly got lost within its
walls. The scale of the environment made me extremely happy that I
had a map that allowed me to navigate to select areas by clicking
on them. Had I needed to travel without it, I may have been driven
as mad as poor Marcos himself.

Beyond
the Spirit’s Eye is the second installment of the Last
Half of Darkness series (preceded by Shadows
of the Servants). The BtSE storyline
revolves around Captain Marcos, Dr. Benzor and his daughter Tia, a
mysterious old gypsy woman, and the creepiest eye you’ve ever seen.
Captain Marcos, a world-class explorer, has brought back something
twisted and evil from his last voyage. Based on a tip from an anonymous
stranger, he recovered a jewel called the Eye of Acarous, cursed by
an old pirate and guarded by fiendish, vampiric beings. Marcos was
soon taken over by this mysterious Eye, and Dr. Benzor searched for
a cure for this deadly disease. Benzor grew too close to uncovering
the secret, and the now-mad Marcos killed him to eliminate the threat.
The Eye soon begins to take over the town of Shadowcrest and its inhabitants,
and you (an unnamed Stranger) have been summoned to use your knowledge
of magic and medicine to release the town from this curse.

What makes this game so
incredibly engrossing is the intricate and elegant way the puzzles
are woven into the plot. They make sense AND they’re original. Even
when a tried-and-true slider variation made an appearance, it was
uniquely executed. Plainly put, these were some of the most enjoyable
puzzles I’ve encountered in a long time, and many would have been
entertaining by themselves. There were word games, puzzles involving
levers and dials, and trials of plain old common sense. Most involved
information and items easily gathered in other locations, and none
of them gained their originality by being off-the-wall or nonsensical.
The puzzles have quantity on their side as well as quality; you’ll
truly get the 20 to 30 hours of gaming promised on the box.

At
the beginning of this review, I stated that this game reminds me of
the “old days”, and part of that has to do with the engine
on which it’s built. With its slide-show point and click interface,
it feels a bit like a modern version of the old Quicktime games. Some
movements simply fade from one screen to another, while others involve
full motion panning and cinematics. When your cursor is over a hot
spot, it will both change in appearance and have text above it indicating
your available options and movements. Sometimes this is a simple “forward,”
“back,” or “to the left,” but other times it offers
specifics: “to the entrance hall,” “behind the building,”
“to the elevator.” I did find this occasionally confusing,
especially when backing out of an area or changing directions. The
result was that some locations were slightly more difficult to navigate,
and it was easy to miss hot spots in the dark, candle-lit atmosphere.

And what an atomosphere
it is. WRF Studios obviously put a lot of time and effort into making
this a creepy-crawly, spine-tingling horror game. The sound files
alone must be enormous. Sometimes you’ll work with a background of
moans, groans, drips and scrapes; other times you’re greeted by eerie
silence. None of the locations are what you would call “well
lit.” While this does create a bit of hunting, it also adds to
the haunting that’s such an important aspect of this game. For the
most part, your character will work alone, guided only by the stray
note or journal. You will, however, have occasional aid from Tia–
a ghost with lips sewn shut for reasons I never discovered– and a
creepy old gypsy. The voice-overs are ethereal, but a little heavy
on the reverb for my taste. Fortunately this game doesn’t rely very
heavily on dialogue.

Also
lending to the creepy atmosphere were the high resolution graphics.
They were dark and a bit grainy– perfect for this type of game. Much
care was taken with the environment itself, although character rendering
seemed to take a back seat. I will warn you that there are some gruesome
images here; the developer didn’t shy away from things like blood,
violence, and severed body parts. It truly is a horror game, which
means that you might want to reconsider playing it with children or
sensitive folks.

The game’s interface is
intuitive and easy to use. Inventory is located along the bottom of
your screen and is visible as soon as your cursor passes over it.
Some inventory items can be examined more closely, and a few are manipulated
within that view screen. On the main screen, a red cursor indicates
that you can either perform an action or use one of your inventory
items. If you’ve chosen the right inventory item for the job,
its image will “jiggle” or vibrate as you place it over
the hot spot. I found that whether an object could be placed within
the inventory was rather arbitrary and depended upon the developer’s
intention for that item. For example, I was told that a magnet was
“too large to take with you,” while I could apparently
carry a ladder and a dolly around with no problem. Go figure.

An
icon at the top of the screen allows you to access the main menu,
from which you can save and load games, choose a few basic options,
and exit the program. I liked the fact that I could name my saved
games, especially since there were a limited number of saves available
and I had to recycle slots. All in all, I felt the game was well-executed
and stable, and I encountered no problems, bugs or crashes. As mentioned
before, it did take more time than usual to actually load the game;
the two disks are really packed with files.

So if you’re looking for
a game that challenges your brain AND your courage, I strongly suggest
Last Half of Darkness: Beyond the Spirit’s Eye. The
puzzles are fantastic, the storyline is solid, and I really want to
see WRF Studios continue with more entries in this series.

System Requirements:

• Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP
• Pentium 800 MHz (or
  faster)
• 256 MB RAM
• 3D video card
• 2 GB hard drive space