Keepsake
by Dreamcatcher Interactive
|
List Price: Our Price: $14.99 You Save: $15.00 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $7.99 (click here) Category: Video Games See more product details |
|---|
Video Game Reviews of Keepsake
Customer Review: Keepsake is a throw-away
Summary: 2 Stars
My impressions:
Watching Lydia run is hilarious (I'm guessing the animator was in a hurry). The regular in-game backgrounds are detailed and well rendered. The animations are *not*: lo-res and blurry. Plus when you teleport from place to place, you are forced to watch the "fly-through" animations over and over, with no way to skip them (including the interminably scrolling credits at the end which I only avoided by turning off the computer).
Some of the puzzles are quite good. Some are extremely tedious, because you are forced to try something, run somewhere else to check or adjust something, run back to the puzzle and try something else. Who thought *that* would be fun? At least when you get tired of it, the game will just solve the puzzle for you.
And, yes, the voice acting is without a doubt the *worst* ever, with the actors, dialog writers, and voice director all equally to blame! Lydia is constantly stressing the wrong words, Zak sounds like a surfer dude ("No way! That's awesome!"), Nathaniel sounds bored with the whole thing, and Mustavio's accent just makes your skin crawl. The miscellaneous characters are just as bad.
Finally, the "story line" doesn't do much to drive the action. Lydia has to find her missing friend Celeste because, well, she's missing. And her visions about how Celeste's daddy doesn't seem to love her anymore are gag-inducing.
If you must play this, wait to get it from the bargain bin in a few months (or borrow it from a friend, like I did.)
Customer Review: Fun Game Though a Short One
Summary: 4 Stars
Pros:
~The characters are pretty fun, though there are not many
~The built in hint system is helpful if you find yourself stuck on a puzzle
~The graphics are nice
Cons:
~There is little interaction with other characters so if you like being able to converse with a lot of different people then that's a bit of a downfall
~The built in hint system - Now you're probably wondering how that can be both a pro & a con - The hints are nice but having them there can also be bad because you might start to depend on them instead of figuring things out for yourself, which is much more fun
~The length of the game - It was shorter than I had originally anticipated. The game comes with 3 cds but after installation only the first is used to actually play the game
~The actual story - The story was cute. Cute is nice, but that's pretty much all it was. I was personally hoping for a bit more
All in all I enjoyed playing the game, but it's not something that I would really care to play again and again.
Customer Review: A wonderful game!
Summary: 5 Stars
I play adventure games on a regular basis and I really enjoyed this game for the following reasons:
1) The storyline is well put together and made sense
2) The scenery can be quite breathtaking
3) The puzzles range from quite easy to extremely difficult, but there is always the chance to get hints or (if you spent way too much time on the puzzle and its time to move on) you can get the solution
4) The main character interacted with others on a regular basis. I'm so tired of never encountering another person in adventure games!
5) I initially thought the characters were going to be quite shallow and predictable, but things change!
Great job on this one!! It's certainly one of my all-time favorites!
Customer Review: Pretty Much Fantastic
Summary: 4 Stars
Best friends, Lydia and Celeste were separated eight years ago when, after the death of her mother, Celeste's father became a director of the far-off Dragonvale Academy. Now Lydia is about to start her first day as a student of magic at Dragonvale and looks forward to being reunited with her friend. But when she arrives, she finds the academy deserted except for one odd character: a wolf who claims to be a dragon. Where is everybody? What's going on here? Can this wolf really be trusted? These are just some of the questions you must answer as you explore the school.
Keepsake, the first game from the Canadian Wicked Studios, is a lovely 3D point and click adventure in the tradition of Syberia. And I mean "lovely" literally: the first thing to strike you is the beauty of the environments. The castle is ornate with knotwork motifs and colour themes, making exploration a pleasure. There isn't a lot of animation, but what there is is well done; the water effect was especially nice. Characters are slightly less well-realised, but still quite good.
The sound is also quite good. The music is beautiful, with a different haunting motif for each character and section of the castle. The f/x are somewhat limited and a bit repetetive: lots of footsteps and bird calls, fire and water sounds, etc. However, they fit well with the design of the rest of the game, so I can't complain. I'm very surprised to see so many complaints here about the dialog. I really saw nothing wrong with it or the voice acting. Rather, conversation is used to explain points that are not necessarily elucidated by the action (the philosophy of the magical system, for example) as well as to develop the characters and their relationships. I considered that good writing, not the opposite.
The game starts with a cute little tutorial, in which one of the other game characters leads you through the controls. I kind of liked that, as I dislike reading manuals and it obviated the need for the kind of introductory sequence you find in a lot of games of this type; you coul just jump right in. The puzzles are quite a mix: several straight "games," a couple mechanical, including one that's quite involved, some riddle-type, some inventory, a kind of slider, and a huge maze (not counting the castle itself, that is). There are no timed puzzles and you can't die. I liked the way the inventory worked: once you had acquired the requisite item, it was automatically used in the relevant spot. So you didn't have to keep opening your inventory, picking up the item, clicking it on the hotspot, etc. As for the rest, they were fairly straightforward...EXCEPT for the riddle-type. The clues provided were so obscure that I can't believe anyone but the designers could possibly make sense of them. Fortunately, the game includes a hint feature, which give three hints for each puzzle, after which it offers to solve the puzzle for you. I had to use the "solve" feature once, when even having the clues explained didn't do much to enlighten me. But when you use the "solve" feature, you don't actually get to see the solution, just the result of it. So I still don't know what that puzzle was about!
The hint feature also will tell you if you don't have the prerequisistes necessary to continue a puzzle. If you use it when you're not in puzzle-view, it will clarify your next objective. I found both these aspects very helpful.
I did experience one bizarre glitch with the game: at intervals, without reason or warning, the sound would suddenly start to stutter and echo in a most annoying way. Adjusting game settings had no effect. I eventually discovered that I could correct the problem by exiting the game and rebooting my computer. This seemed to be necessary once every couple hours.
I completed Keepsake in about 25 hours--possibly a little more. I was deligthed that it kept me busy so long as most adventure games these days barely provide 10 hours of play. Some of the second part of the game did get a little draggy, with a lot of toiling back and forth through the castle. However, Keepsake is a good choice for gamers who like straight adventure in a fantasy context. But for the glitch and a couple illogical puzzles, I would have given it five stars. I eagerly look forward to Wicked Studios' next effort!
Customer Review: Basically a good game
Summary: 4 Stars
No, this game isn't perfect - you'll be annoyed by the dialogue (luckily you can fast forward through it) and the cut scenes (unfortunately you CAN'T fast forward through those). BUT it's filled with tons of things to solve, and if you get stuck, you can have the game solve it for you. This game will keep you busy for a while...but fair warning, it's CORNY!