The Dark Eye Chains of Satinav
The Dark Eye Chains of Satinav Adventure gaming's been going strong in 2012, so when The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinavshowed up with a blend of old-school point-and-click adventure, beautiful graphics, and mature storytelling, I was really intrigued. Under a number of technical glitches and poor voice acting there's a genuinely interesting story here -- though when it flirts with the prospect of choice, only to remind me that it never mattered, my overall enjoyment took a kick to the groin. This is a much better game during the parts where it sticks to what it's good at.
Fantasy Odd Couple
Based in the fantasy Dark Eye pen & paper universe (one that I'm not that familiar with, but familiarity isn't a requirement) Satinav revolves around two primary characters: Geron and Nuri. Geron is a down-on-his-luck citizen in the kingdom of Andergast, and Nuri is a displaced fairy (who does her best to channel Darryl Hanah from Splash). It's this dynamic between to the two characters -- one jaded with the world around him, and her with the doe-eyed innocence of a child -- that does a good job of not only introducing the world of The Dark Eye to newcomers, but also giving us two believable characters in this fantasy realm. There are also some heartbreaking moments later in the story that use themes of trust, ignorance, and arrogance to ultimately seal the fate of our two heroes, and it was kind of astonishing to see the story evolve from such bright beginnings to an unflinchingly dark path. But I applaud this kind of direction, and the fact that Satinav's ending doesn't really pull any punches.
So why did you give me the option to tell the truth in the first place?
The frustrating parts, however, were a number of times where Satinav teased me with the prospect of choice. Why present me with an ethical choice, only to have both choices lead to the same inevitable conclusion? Particularly near the end, when I was given a dialog choice to either tell the truth -- which was subsequently cast aside as the "wrong" reply -- or lie, I was forced to pick lie to continue, it was irritating. That false choice felt like a very sloppy misstep to an otherwise well-told story.
After I turned the voice volume to nil my enjoyment started to build exponentially.
Another poor choice was in the voice actor casting department, many of whom (including the heroes) are just not very good. After I turned the voice volume to nil my enjoyment started to build exponentially, since the removal of that distraction allowed me to better appreciate Satinav's beautiful hand-drawn art style. It's like seeing the art on the pack of Magic cards come to life. But the characters aren't animated all that well and they look really jilted when moving through the world, unless they're performing a pre-rendered action like opening a chest or working through a puzzle solution.
Mr. Broke It & Ms. Fix It
The unique thing to some of Satinav's puzzles, which wisely isn't overused, is that both Geron and Nuri have limited magical powers that help with puzzle solutions. Geron can break some objects with the power of his mind, and Nuri is able to fix them -- provided that all of the broken pieces are present and accounted for. So if Geron needs a long pole in order to reach something far away, he'll need to collect the pieces for Nuri to magically assemble it.
Quick, turn down your speakers. You're about to hear another terrible voice actor.
Even though their powers lend to some interesting puzzles I haven't seen before, the majority of Satinav follows the click-and-pick-up-everything rules of any basic adventure game, and that's fine with me. So don't question how you can keep a lit candle in your pocket. You justcan, okay? Most of the puzzles weren't overly difficult, and nearly all of them had logical solutions that involved some form of item combination to figure out. For example, putting an object inside a wooden box so it would float in the water for me to retrieve later.
Don't question how you can keep a lit candle in your pocket. You just can, okay?
The only time I really got stuck was at a point late in the story. It took a decent amount of elbow grease to figure out because (without spoiling anything) this area followed its own set of rules. That's when I turned to the purely optional hint system which, instead of simply spelling out the solution, displays a bright star over interactive areas to remove the pixel-hunting hassle from the equation and nudging you in the right direction.
Pause and Effect
But I did run into a consistent glitch in Satinav that really grates my nerves: each time I entered a new area, there would be a brief pause as the zone continued to load with my character frozen in place on the screen. It got to the point where I actually had to take a long break because it was so damn frustrating -- it's not like this is a graphically intense game.
The hint system makes sure you get to hear every piece of grating dialog.
Not counting those pauses and time spent scratching my head about obvious puzzles, The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav clocks in at around six to seven hours, which makes me balk a little at its $30 price. Comparatively, Walking Dead is $25 for the season of five two-hour episodes, and Resonance is $10 -- two adventure games you really should play this year. Satinav, on the other hand, carries with it a number of disclaimers that you need to be aware of before jumping into this fantasy adventure game.
The Dark Eye Chains of Satinav Video Trailer
[youtube]http://youtu.be/_ZmF7zifGvs[/youtube]
The Dark Eye Chains of Satinav PC Requirements
OS: Windows® XP SP 2 (32-64 bits) / Windows Vista® (32-64 bits) / Windows 7® (32-64 bits)CPU 2.5 GHz Single-Core-Processor or 2 GHz Dual-Core-Processor Memory: 2 GB RAM (2 GB on Windows Vista or Windows 7) Video Memory: OpenGL2.0-compatible Graphic Card with 512 MB RAM (Shared-Memory is not recommended) HDD: 5 GB of free Hard Drive Space
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