Vampire Saga 3: Break Out
Publisher: Alawar Entertainment
Developer: Alawar Entertainment
Genre: Adventure
Release Date: 03/08/2012
Still recovering from the death of his daughter, Dr. Crow has been asked to come back to Hill Lock in order to take a look into a few odd deaths, though he isn’t given a lot of information. He arrives to find that Hill Lock Hospital is under quarantine until further notice. After making his way into the compound, he meets the sheriff, who is having problems of his own and leaves you to get into the closed down hospital. Dr. Crow quickly realizes that there’s a lot more going on than a few dead bodies and a possible epidemic.
Vampire Saga 3 does a decent job of setting up the atmosphere. The backgrounds are fairly detailed and the characters that fade in and out of the screen could probably surprise people on occasion. The music also serves the purpose of setting up how creepy the game is supposed to be. Unfortunately, that’s about where it ends. Regardless of whether you choose “casual” or “expert” mode, the majority of the game is spent doing asinine puzzles rather than actually doing any research into what’s going on in the town, and collecting the pieces for these puzzles drives the game more than the actual story does.
The worst part about this is that the puzzles often make a lot less sense than they should, making the actual gameplay cumbersome. This is a game where you’re going to find a relatively large key in candles and will have to find a ring in order to cut stained glass. The selection areas for most items are not big enough, making it annoying to pick up certain items, especially smaller ones. On the other hand, the “I Spy” type portions of the game were done pretty well, and were the most enjoyable part of the game for me.
The story itself is your standard, “My kid is dead but sending me messages from beyond the grave,” story, and while thin, is not bad. It’s just not particularly interesting, especially since they don’t actually go into the story and flesh it out. Still, Alice is a cute character, does offer a break from the running around you have to do, and has decent, if limited, dialogue. However, the number of typos and other text-based issues are annoying. At the gas station vending machine, if you click on the money return button, you get, “That’s forgetting your money back if you change your mind.” Also, when you’re in the mine and check the manometer, clicking on certain sections gives you messages like, “[MsgBubble]manometer_in_04_text_01.” It’s difficult to become immersed in the game when bits of code are showing.
Vampire Saga 3 will take most people less than two hours to complete, regardless of difficulty level. If you’re a fan of the other Vampire Saga games, this may be worth picking up for you, but those who aren’t familiar with the series are better off playing other adventure games. With the thin storyline and frustrating puzzles, along with errors within the game, I’m not sure this is the best pick even if you are a fan of the series.
Short Attention Span Summary
Vampire Saga 3: Break Out is a roughly two-hour long adventure game that, while not terrible, left me bored with the storyline and often annoyed with typos and other errors. The game does a decent job of setting up the atmosphere, its inane puzzles with often illogical steps and outcomes make the game more frustrating than it should be. That said, the game is still not difficult, regardless of whether you choose “casual” or “expert” mode. I would not recommend this game for anyone who is not already familiar with and a fan of the series.
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