Dark Fall 3: Lost
Souls (DF3) is a classic. In fact, it is
a double classic. It is both a classic adventure game and a classic
ghost story.

You
might think, because this is Dark Fall 3, that the
story is the third part of a series. But that is not the case. All
three stories are quite independent and can be played in any order.
This story takes place in an abandoned hotel/train station in England.
This is the same station which was in DF1, but several years have
passed. The facility was closed down in 1945 after six people, including
the hotel owners, mysteriously vanished in a single night. In the
first game, which takes place at the turn of the century, the hotel
is like a time capsule with many of the rooms perfectly preserved
after 50 years.

But now it is 2009, about
ten years later, and the squatters have moved in. There is vandalism,
litter and graffiti everywhere. In DF1
you had to re-capture the Dark Fall in order to save your brother
and the six spirits trapped with him. In DF3 you
are a different character, an inspector, who is obsessed with finding
a missing girl. Some of the ghosts may be the same, but you and the
story are different.

I
said that this game is presented as a classic ghost story. There will
be some people who won’t like that. We live in the age of CSI and
The Discovery Channel. We like to know how things work. This is only
a resent phenomenon. Throughout most of history ghost stories were
told just to be scary. You might never learn who or what the ghost
was, where it came from or how it got its power. It was enough just
to be scared. So don’t expect any great revelations, the Dark Fall
is not here to teach you.

That being said, the story
is wonderful. It has all the elements you need – an obsessed
protagonist haunted by his past, a missing girl with a dark fascination
for the occult and an abandoned building housing a horror from the
past. The story plays out very well with new information doled out
at regular intervals and several subplots to keep your interest up.
I never felt like the story was just an excuse for the game; the game
and the story were one.

So
what about the game? As I said, it is classic Adventure – you
explore, collect objects, solve puzzles (both inventory and logical)
and interact with NP Characters. There are no clever gimmicks or innovations
to the genre; just good, honest adventure gaming.

The play is fairly linear,
which I prefer. I personally like a good idea of what I need to do
next. Oh, you are free to explore to your hearts content, but the
story will only advance as you work on the problem at hand. There
were only a couple of times when I finished a challenge and was not
sure what to do next, but simply moving about a little provided me
with the directions to the next challenge. I found it very satisfying.

The
graphics are outstanding and what we have come to expect from Johnathan
Boakes.. Although you may notice that in the past Jonathan’s style
has been creepy and spooky while in this game he gets a bit more horrific.
That is not to say that knife wielding hockey masks are leaping out
and dismembering people. Rather, the decor has become a bit more moist
with pulsating organs, unnatural creatures and the characters have
more personal issues. The overall effect allows for easy immersion.
But this is not a place I would have the courage to explore alone.
I chose to play with the lights on.

DF3 is
apparently using a new game engine which improves the graphics a bit.
Dust specs now dance in the moonbeams and your breath fogs in the
chilly night air. It also allows you to look up and down a bit; which
is both a blessing and a cursing. It is a blessing in that you get
to see a bit more and find a few more hidden objects. It is a cursing
in that you must click both for up and down and you don’t get that
much for the effort. It is as if you had a stiff neck and could move
your eyes, but not your head. This causes exploration to become a
tedious “look north, up, down, down, up, east, up, down, down,
up, south…” And you cannot forgo the exercise or you will
miss important stuff. 3D panoramic viewing would have been much easier
on the player.

Puzzles
are again classic and fair. Most of them are inventory based, but
there are a few logical ones thrown in. The usual advice to Look Everywhere
applies. My only complaint was that several of the logical puzzles
had time constraints – if you didn’t finish them in time the
ghost would kick you out of the room and you would have to start over.
You have infinite retries and since the challenge is one of intellect
and not dexterity, I failed to see the point. I would have preferred
an uninterrupted contemplation of the challenge. Still, they were
all good puzzles and fit well into the story line. I never felt that
a puzzle was thrown in just to lengthen the game.

After playing so many mediocre
games from the big publishers, DF3 was a welcome
treat. Even with the slight annoyances I’ve mentioned, I grant
this game an A-. If you like adventure games, you
must get this one. And while you are at it, get DF1/DF2 Director’s
Cut. DF2
has been improved to the point where it is a very good Sci-Fi adventure
game in the guise of a ghost story. We need to give Jonathan all the
encouragement we can to write another.

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows® 7/Vista™/XP
  (SP2/SP3)
• CPU: Intel® Pentium®
  IV or equivalent AMD®
• RAM: 512 MB RAM (1 GB
  Recommended for Windows® Vista™)
• Graphics Card &
  Monitor: 128 MB DirectX® 9.0C Compatible 3D accelerated video
  card, supporting 32bit (true color) color depth at 1024×768
• Sound: 16-bit DirectX®
  9.0C Sound Card
• Additional: Mouse, Speakers,
  DVD-ROM Drive