The Dagger of Amon Ra

The Good
The Dagger of Amon Ra is a superior sequel to The Colonel's Bequest. As sequels go it features superior graphics, better music, and far simpler control mechanics. This game succeeds both as a sequel and as its own game.

The game is set in the 1920s and stars Laura Bow. Ms. Bow is an idealistic, plucky young reporter who has relocated to the big city, from her quaint rural hometown. Can Ms. Bow succeed in the big city?

Success requires you to explore the city, interact with its many citizens, collect items and solve puzzles. The big puzzle in the game is a high profile murder mystery that can make you famous or dead.

True to the tenor of the times, this game features many of the historical elements of the 1920s. This was the era of the flapper, fabulous gender nonconformity, free love, underground speakeasies and widespread love for Egyptology.

The Bad
While the gameplay mechanics are much improved from the first game, it is still a bit of a headache asking questions. I never got comfortable using the notebook to select various topics to ask people about. The sequel is miles above its predecessor, but it's still a bit of a pain.

Beyond the slight gameplay headaches, some of the voice acting in the game is probably a tad bit, "politically incorrect". I am talking about the police officer with the thick Irish accent or the Chinese laundryman who does not speak English terribly well. I will leave it to the player to decide for himself or herself whether or not this is a problem.

This game was published prior to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), but I would personally suggest that the game is suitable for players 13+. Some of the death sequences can be pretty brutal to watch, and this game has a fair share of mild sexual innuendos to giggle at.

The Bottom Line
The Dagger of Amon Ra is a wonderful adventure game from the early 1990s. Fans of adventure games, or a good murder mystery, should give this game a try.

The Good
I love the cast of colorful characters. Everyone is a suspect, and it's up to you to find out who's killing everybody and why. The death scenes are very cool. As the character's get bumped off one by one, your list narrows and you become a little more afraid that you might be next. Full of mystery, intrigue, and suspense, it is a wonderful game that can stand the test of time. Perhaps not graphically, but in substance and plot. Very few games coming out nowadays can even hold a candle to it.

The Bad
The only complaint I had was in the version with speech, some of the acting left something to be desired, particularly with Laura herself. As I played the first version of the game, I had an idea with what all the characters would probably sound like, and in my mind, Steve Dorian was not a bass. Either way, the end is tough, particularly if you didn't collect all of the evidence or get all of the points. When the coroner asked me who did what and why, I had to play the game a couple of times through again just to get most of them right.

The Bottom Line
If you love mystery games, this one is for you! I put a personal guarantee that you will enjoy it, and be immersed in the story. As a matter of fact, if you have a free day, I'd be willing to bet that one could sit and just play it from beginning to end without stopping. A wonderful game, well worth the purchase if you can find it anywhere.

The Good
This was the very first PC game I played when I got a computer at home, so I'm somewhat biased towads it.

This is another in Sierra's long line of fine adventure games, and it doesn't fail to please. You get the chance to play a brainy, but inexperienced, reporter/detective trying to solve a string of murders in 1920's New York. Surprise surprise though, the character is female. At the time of this games release, a strong female lead character was almost unheard of. Kudo's to Sierra for choosing to take this risky path.

The plot includes all the best ingredients from classic murder-mysteries, with a dash of the egyptian thrown in for spice. Graphically, the game delivers Sierra's usual sumptious hand-painted backgrounds, combined with their trademark less-than sumptious rotoscoped characters. The game has almost no bugs in it's initial release, a rarity among Sierra's fare at the time.

One final point I should make are the "extra's" packed in with the game. Included with the requisite disks and manual are a small pamphlet giving directions to the fictional Leyendecker Museum portayed in the game as well as a longer pamphlet describing all the latest displays at the museum. These are professionally designed and are great keepsakes that really enhance the games atmosphere. I only wish more games these days came with these types of cool extra's.

The Bad
While as stated before, there are few bugs in the game, but the ones present are game stopping, of the variety "oops, you did something we didn't expect, now the game has to crash". Save often is all I can say.

The only other bad point I can find with the game is the ending. Your asked several questions about all the murders, alliances, and conspiracies that took place during the game. But at no point during the game or manual is it mentioned that you should take notes while playing. Trust me, the questions asked are tough enough even if you do take notes, and your sunk if you didn't take any. Keep a pad and pen handy while playing and write down everything "significant" that a reporter would about the mysteries.

The Bottom Line
Overall a superb game that I wished continued in a few sequels. Be sure to check out the first game in the Laura Bow series, "The Colonel's Bequest".

The Good
Way back in the early Eighties, Sierra On-Line was quite new to the computer industry. There were only two people running the company: Ken and Roberta Williams. Both of them created the first graphic adventure game ever. Titled Mystery House, the game saw the player trapped in a Victorian mansion along with nine other people. They must find who is killing them off before they themselves are the next victim. It was the best-selling computer game of all time.

Nine years later, Roberta herself created her second detective game called The Colonel's Bequest, a game starring a university student named Laura Bow going around doing what real-life detectives do best: asking questions, searching for clues, and investigating murders. The game uses a real-time feature where events take place at certain times. It also features multiple endings, and the game encourages the player to try it again in case they missed any clues the first time around.

Now, we get to The Dagger of Amon Ra, the sequel to TCB released in 1992. If you brought the game back, you probably notice that the text above the title mentions Roberta's name. Ironically, Roberta wasn't even involved with the project due to time constraints. So she handed the reigns over to Bruce Balfour. However, she still worked as creative consultant, so she made sure that the quality of the game was on par with the first one.

After graduating from university, Laura lands a job in New York as a newspaper reporter. Her assignment: write a newspaper article about the theft of the infamous Dagger. Her boss gives her permission to attend a charity fundraiser being held at the Leyendecker Museum. There, the museum is in lockdown due to some suspicious activity that occurred that night, and everyone, including Laura herself, is a suspect. The characters are easy to warm up to, with Wolf Heimlich being the amusing one of the lot.

The Dagger of Amon Ra delivers a point-and-click interface, which makes things easier. When talking to characters, you use Laura's notebook to ask them about other characters; and not only that, but you can also ask them about places Laura visited, things that she picked up, and any miscellaneous stuff. And you don't even have to type anything in. It is rather interesting to hear what characters think of others.

The gameplay mechanics are the same as TCB, but Dagger is more involved. You have to search through people's offices and gather evidence. You also have to draw your own conclusions based on conversations and the evidence you gather, and use that at the end of the game, where you have to face up to the coroner.

The game focuses heavily on Egyptology, and it is obvious that Sierra did a lot of research. Click the eye cursor on almost any object in the room, such as the Rosetta Stones in the Egyptian exhibit, and you'll get the history of that object. It is much easier if the history was read out to you in the CD-ROM version, instead of just having it read. There are also hieroglyphics in some rooms, and at one point, you need to translate some of the hieroglyphs to solve a puzzle near the end of the game.

The graphics reflect the Egyptian setting quite well, and there are some smooth animations, like Rex the talking dinosaur with his mouth moving. The murders are a lot gorier than the first game, with more than one instance of blood pouring out the victim. Some of the victim's faces are horrifying, especially Ziggy's and the Countess'. You also get to see some of Laura's gruesome deaths. Seeing the bad ending to the game was confronting the first time I watched it.

The music in the game also reflects the Egyptian theme quite well, and it sounds more realistic when it is coming from the Roland MT-32 sound module. The CD-ROM version delivers speech, with most of the characters voiced by Sierra employees. The narrator has a bit of an attitude when you do inappropriate things with the bodies, such as touching Yvette Delacroix's breasts or trying to pull down Dr. Carter's tuxedo pants. I am not sure whether that the Archeologist song was present in the disk version. It's been a while since I've played it.

What I enjoyed about the game is that chase scene in Act Five. The music keeps you on edge as you make your way through the museum, trying to escape the killer. One wrong move, and you may be killed. Also, I enjoyed playing through the second act, eavesdropping on group conversations. The funny thing about this is that Laura is acting conspicuously.

The Bad
Sometimes, right from the beginning of the game, the game refuses to let you restore from a previously saved game. You get this message “You did something we weren't expecting” and the game just terminates, even if you're playing on a slower machine. It seems to be location-based, so the only way I can get by this problem is by saving the game at different locations.

More often than not, I found the control panel disabled so I could not even save the game (when you can take control of Laura) when I want to. I would have liked to save just before I found a body or when it's time to attend an important meeting.

There aren't any patches to fix these problems, either.

The Bottom Line
Dagger of Amon Ra is the sequel to TCB; and while the gameplay is similar, there is a lot more involved, particular when you get near the end of the game. Everything in the game, including the sound and graphics, reflect those in the 1920's era. The game could be a precursor to Sierra's horror game Phantasmagoria since the murders are bloodier. Finally, there may not have been a third Laura Bow game, but that would stop Roberta from doing a remake of this game. After all, Jane Jensen and Al Lowe both did remakes of their previous works. Come on, Roberta, get out of retirement and make it happen.

The Good
The graphics were a huge improvement over the original. Laura looked really good in this game! The Art Deco-ish look to the game was very appropriate for the era, I thought. It took a great deal of observation and cleverness to get through some of the problems. The setting was absolutely ideal for the game, although not as creepy as the old house in the first game. There is quite a bit that can be done in a museum, and the creators certainly did that. The way that the people were murdered in the game were...creative. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, but it made death fun in this regard. Well, I never did say I was normal. :) There was a nice pre-museum section to the game that let you get a handle on the games interface, but also let you know that the museum wasn't as isolated as the mansion in the first game.

The Bad
I can't remember why no one could get out of the museum. It seems kind of ridiculous for so many people to get murdered there if they could all just leave. Maybe this is something I just can't remember--if a character lost their keys or something. Laura's personality seems to have undergone a bit of a change--at the party, she's making an absolute nusiance of herself by being an obvious snoop. She also doesn't quite appear to have the same level of intelligence she did in the first game--somehow I don't think the Laura in the first game would have allowed her suitcase to be stolen from her the way it was in the opening scenes. I thought Laura was much more street-savvy in the first game. The ending was sappy--I don't think of Laura as a girl that needs to be put with a boyfriend, and yet in this game the creators absolutely pushed for it, and not for the betterment of the game.

The Bottom Line
While this game will put you to the test trying to figure out who did it, I would have to say the changes made to Laura's character and the fact that her romance with Steve was pushed too much lessened my enjoyment of it.

The Good
I will never forget the fear I had when I first saw the killer walk in to take laura's life. Or the fact that I never could solve the corners questions. To this day I have never completed this game.

The Bad
Not much. As far as I can remember the only thing was that I could never solve the last puzzle.

The Bottom Line
Murder, Girl, Good Story

The Good
The Colonel's Bequest (1989) is an underappreciated classic, graphic adventure game created by Roberta Williams and published by Sierra. In it, spunky student Laura Bow visits her flapper friend and her eccentric family on their posh estate. Naturally, this weekend getaway quickly descends into a murder mystery. The Dagger of Amon Ra is the second and, sadly, final entry in the series. Having graduated from college, Laura Bow is now a reporter for a big city newspaper where she investigates a new murder mystery involving a new cast of eccentric characters, with their own secrets, and, as the title suggests, Egyptology. The sequel features improved graphics and sound, along with an engaging storyline that weaves in a 1920s society that is both realistic history and glamorized Hollywood. Gone is the pesky requirement that all commands must be typed, with a new, more, user friendly, point n’ click interface. The CD-ROM version also adds some fine voice acting to the mix.

The Bad
As is typical of many classic Sierra adventure games, Laura Bow will die often and face certain puzzles that are difficult only because they are too abstract or illogical. The point n’ click interface beats having to type in commands, but having to repeatedly flip through the Laura Bow notebook for a noun is a cumbersome method of asking other people questions. In terms of the story, The Dagger of Amon Ra is not sure if it wants to depict the 1920’s accordingly to history or Hollywood. Case in point; the game does an excellent job addressing the sexism that Laura Bow, as a woman, would face. Yet, when it comes to depicting the 1920s in terms of race, class and sexual orientation, the game seems to be returning to a sanitized Hollywood where celluloid innuendos and gentlemen’s agreements ruled the day.

The Bottom Line
The Dagger of Amon Ra is an enjoyable point n’ click, graphic adventure game. The graphics and sound do their job well, but will probably not win any awards. Likewise the voice acting is good, but not above some cheesy dialogue and stereotypical accents. It stands out for its heroine, in an industry where damsels in distress are far more common, and its period storyline that, while not always historically accurate, does create an engaging murder-mystery atmosphere.