The Black Mirror

The Good
Have you ever played a game that you liked so much that you couldn't stop playing ... depriving yourself of sleep just to play a few minutes more? The Black Mirror is that type of game - at least it was for me.

The story is deeply "immersive" and creative. You can tell when Samuel first arrives that his family has had a long and prosperous history. The Gordons have lived in the beautiful "manor", Black Mirror Castle, for centuries. Servants take care of the mundane tasks around the lavishly decorated manor and its grounds. The Gordon home hides many secrets in the main living quarters and in those parts that are unknown (there are "secret" areas, of course!). The discovery of an early family feud between twin brothers and the curse one put upon the other is only the beginning of the intrigue. This tale kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time.

The Black Mirror has all of the components that make an adventure great. Besides the wonderful story, it is easy to install and use, and the graphics are utterly beautiful. 3D effects were carried out wonderfully! Babbling brooks, horses bobbing their heads in the stable .. even moths fluttering around a lamp at night.

Try wearing your headphones while playing it! You'll be amazed at the sound effects and the mood-enhancing music. Double the experience by playing in a dark room! Everything from the lovely sounds of birds in spring to the pitter-patter of rain was authentic sounding. The lightning made me jump out of my skin! The actors and actresses did a marvelous job portraying the parts, their speech laden with natural inflections, tones and accents.

The puzzles are so well integrated into the plot that they feel like mere "problems" to be solved. But, not all of them are easy - quite a few are downright hard.

The Bad
There's a misprint on the box and in the manual. Try installing this on a Pentium 2 and you'll be sorely disappointed. The "Read Me" file corrects the specs - it needs a Pentium 3 400 minimum.

I don't blame companies for wanting to copy protect their software, but I didn't particularly like the brand of software they chose for this one.

Several puzzles had me digging into the dictionary and encyclopedia to find the answers since none were provided in the game.

I didn't particularly like the ending. I was really anticipating a huge confrontation with the forces of evil. What I got was ... well, a bit disappointing. Although I must admit that what happened naturally concluded the "family curse" dilemma.

The Bottom Line
I loved The Black Mirror! Other than the few things I listed above, I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I can see why they released it just before Halloween. This is a really good, haunting story with all the suspense of a detective mystery .. with a twist. It played flawlessly throughout ... not a glimmer of a problem anywhere. There's quite a lot of dialogue between characters, and just a bit of reading. Plenty of save slots too. Wonderfully designed and a game I won't easily forget. My rating 5/5!

The Good
I loved the gameplay system. If you're a big fan of 3d person point and click adventures, you will want to check this game out. Even though the sprites are 3d, they are not that ugly like they are in older games like Grim Fandango. The backgrounds are beautiful, and the weather effects are great.

I did like the puzzles in the game, they were not overly complicated and very logical. You will have to backtrack in this game in order to pick up certain items or converse about certain subjects, but I liked that because it is very structured and logical.

I did not think the story was 100% original. A man returns to a dark castle to investigate his family's past. But the game does incorporate a lot of horror and mystery elements. You won't just dive into corpses and blood and eyeballs; the game makes very nice transitions.

The sound was nice. It helped elucidate the mood and feelings of the particular scene.

Using your inventory was quite simple. I like how the programmers set the game up like a wide-screen movie and put the inventory in the bottom black bar.

The Bad
The voice acting was not good at all. Almost every character had no intonation or detectable changes of attitude. The script was not too bad, but the voice acting could have been better.

At certain points in the game, you will have to wait actual time before you can proceed. You may visit other locations, talk to other people, and just explore, but you will still have to wait for an event to pass before you can continue your "adventure." Sometimes I would return to a character to see if he was done researching a fact for me and each time he would say "Not yet. Come back later." for at least 10 minutes. It may have been realistic, but I did not enjoy that.

Though I did like the story, the ending was sort of a letdown. There was no climax, no fight, no epic battle, and hardly what I would call a resolution. Perhaps the writers ran out of ideas, but honestly, I could have written a better ending. And although I do like using logic, the ending could have been a bit more surprising and a bit less contrived.

The Bottom Line
If you find it for 10 US dollars like I did and you are a fan of adventures, especially 3rd person horror/mystery adventures, you should pick it up. More of an action or RPG fan? Probably not the game for you. But if you're in the mood for a decent mystery/horror game, you should probably pick it up. It will provide a few hours of entertainment.

The Good
The backgrounds were well rendered and sound effects were OK.

The Bad
Where to start? Other than the ending (which requires special mention) this is a state of the art game......for 1995! The characters were stiff and almost like South Park cut outs. The dialogue could have been phoned in and probably was. But the ending was absolutely insane. What happened? Did they run out of space, or time? I kept saying there will be more on the second disk...but it was never used! This may be a "heavy" ending for our Wild and Swinging East European guys but for the rest of the world it was simply STUPID!

The Bottom Line
Don't waste your time. If you ever feel like buying this dog, lie down till the feeling goes away ( or just go jump off a tall building!).