Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion

The Good
The pizza delivery guy is back. Only this time instead of getting through caves finding trophies, he is exploring a haunted house looking for his lost brother Delbert, who was kidnapped behind his back. This game is called Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, the sequel to Dangerous Dave (duh).

To find Delbert, he must get through eight areas of the haunted house shooting its inhabitants such as zombies, spiders, wolves, ghosts, and small slimy things that get on Dave's face. As well, he has to defeat two bosses located on the fourth and last areas, which take about 16 shots to bring them down. All Dave has is his shotgun, which has the ability to fire eight shots at once. When he has run out of ammo, he can stand still to take time to reload his gun. Dave has an infinite supply of ammo, so he doesn't have to pick any up throughout each level. When Dave gets struck down by an enemy, you see how he dies in a window. For example, when Dave gets too close to a ghost, you see it sucking the life out of him, or when a spider drops down on his head, it wraps around his neck and strangles him.

Scattered throughout each level are cabinets, which when opened, contain one item that will boost Dave's score. Dave starts out with four lives, but can get extra lives if he earns 20,000 points or collects the red hearts well hidden throughout some levels. On the screen, all you can see is how much ammo you have in the shotgun, but if you press TAB, you see your score, your high score, and how many lives you have. In between levels, you see where you are in the house.

The graphics are slightly better than the original Dangerous Dave. Sound is great, even though it is through the PC Speaker. The replayability is great also. One word of advice if you're going to play this game is that you should know how each area is structured, and knowing where all the enemies are in each one. Doing so will save your lives until the end, where you can lose some trying to kill the final boss. There can be mistakes when the enemies in each area appear when they shouldn't and this results in you having to lose one or more lives, but once again if you know how each area is structured, you should be able to get two extra lives.

The Bad
While defeating the bosses, I ended up losing all my ammo and having to suffer being killed by bullets or hands. That's way you have to take the time reloading your shotgun and at the same time see what's going on.

At the start of each level, the game records the number of levels you got through so far. When you lose all your lives on another level other than Level 1, you can start from the previous level (from level 6 to level 5, for instance). There is no save feature other than this, so you can't save as you progress through each area. When you lose all your lives in the first area, then it's back to the title screen you go.

It's all right to replay the same level, but do it for too long, and you get sore eyes and possibly get sick of playing it.

The Bottom Line
A good game from the guys at SoftDisk. Platform fans won't be disappointed with it. ***

The Good
It's so cool, it's so stupid and idiotic, and those zombies are just hilarious. The action factor is high, and the game isn't meant to be a horror game although you have to shoot zombies! It's not macabre because all violence is meant for fun and isn't gross.

The Bad
It isn't like Dangerous Dave :-( but hey look on the bright side it's a really stupid and cool platformer anyway!

The Bottom Line
Platform House of The Dead with humor and less violence and gore (after all, the violence in this game is for fun, and it's stupid and not serious). A fun and stupid platformer with humor, action, and adventure. 4 and 3/4 out of 5. Age group 10+ for some gore and violence. B. T. W. the humor is sort of dark.

The Good
Dave 2 is a classic in all respects. While I (for some reason) liked Dangerous Dave, its sequel is damn appealing. Great graphics, excellent programming and innovative gameplay make this non-standard platform game a true classic. It was immensely popular in my home country of Israel, and for a good reason - a lot of people had 286 computers at the time, and this was the perfect game to run on them.

I am still amazed at how Softdisk managed to take the platform genre known from the Commander Keen series of games and transform it into something completely different: not only jump and shoot, but also think and act. This is why Dave 2 is set aside from other platform games - it does it better.

The Bad
Admittedly the bosses are too difficult and the game is a little tedious after the second stage. I also wish they added a "SVGA compatibility mode" like id Software did in Commander Keen.

The Bottom Line
A classic platform game with many followers.