Fascination

The Good
The "Bath Scene"! ;-)

The Bad
Please take a couple of minutes and read my review below.

The Bottom Line
In this adventure we walk on the high heels of a sexy pilot named Doralice. During her flight from Paris to Miami a passenger dies under mysterious circumstances. He leaves his last breath in Doralice’s arms entrusting her with his briefcase. Inside it, there is a vial that contains a top-secret chemical combination. The story begins when our protagonist arrives at her hotel and tries to straighten things out.

We watch the action through Doralice’s seductive eyes. The graphics are stylish and exotic-feeling. They mostly include still depictions of the areas we visit. Most of the animation is in the introduction, where a small sequence with digitized actors starts to unfold the plot. As for sound, apart from the initial theme, another one can be periodically heard during playing along with some sound effects.

The game attempts to establish an erotic atmosphere with its nudity containing graphics and suggestive lines. The result is pathetic and very close to those cheap, in every aspect, soft-porn films with the thriller disguise.

Miserable environment is not this game’s main weakness, poor gameplay is. “Fascination” defines the term ‘pixel hunting’. Although there are a few clever puzzles, the vast majority of them is based on painful observation of every graphical detail. Insufficient visual performance will lead the player to dead-end situations, as he will not have the necessary items and information to continue. This is because revisiting areas is not possible after their primary puzzles are solved, as the scenario moves on in a new place. So it is imperative to thoroughly inspect all locations before proceeding to others by slowly passing the cursor over every spot, in order to avoid reloading the game in previous points.

The above combined with the badly designed interface, the low-quality production, the blunt sense of humor and a couple of outrageous puzzles make the small playing length frustrating and difficult to tolerate. Suitable only for mature audiences, “Fascination” is not suitable for anyone who has not ran out of good adventure games to play.

The Good
Fascination is an adventure title from those crazy folks down at Coktel Vision, as it becomes quickly evident once you confirm it's rather controversial and unique content. Staged in an early 90's Miami, you play flight attendant Doralice, who had the misfortune of becoming entangled in a weird murder conspiracy to get a Viagra-like sex drug and must now get to the bottom of the murders before somebody offs her... yeah, you read that right.

Anyway, one thing that must be admitted about Fascination is that it has a very cohesive design based on the 80's Miami, complete with moody synth music, stylish and bright neon colors and a visual design that makes every screen outlined and laid out as if you were seeing it through some silhouette cutout (check out the box cover to see what I mean). This, coupled with a storyline filled with sexual innuendo that takes you to nightclubs, deluxe hotels and wealthy mansions, gives you a thoroughly cohesive 80's vibe that permeates every aspect of the game, and whether you like it or not (I do) you have to admire it's rock-solid feel. Kind of like a Bruckheimer movie from the 80's, complete with blond dudes with full tans, gigantic shades, gigantic hair, fast cars and fast women.

As for the game itself it uses a comfortable mouse-driven interface that pops up the inventory and options whenever you need it over the screen (which 90% of the time is a first person view of a your surroundings) without cluttering the screen (a striking development from such an early game). The gameplay is completely linear, and while the levels of the puzzles are mostly easy, they earn points for following a detective-esque logic and keeping the story on track. Only at a couple of moments you get some far-out puzzles that involve opening a secret doors and stuff like that with the obligatory over-complicated puzzles common for the genre that have you asking yourself "-Does the bad guy always have to do all of this crap whenever he wants to enter his secret hideout??".

The Bad
A completely ridiculous storyline which takes every chance it gets to throw some sexual innuendo your way, but which never rises to the height of full sexual escapades of a say... Larry game, does NOT spell fun for me. I guess the fact that you are playing a female character adds a little to it, but Doralice acts way too slutty to be taken seriously. And the ending is absolutely awful, the kind of "gee that was all a dream!" crap that makes you want to punch the monitor, hunt down the developers and decapitate them.

The graphics are surprisingly uneven, with some really well made stuff mixed with some really amateurish crap (specially when it comes to the characters). Soundwise the title is pretty weak, but it does have a pretty good music score. Problem is as stated elsewhere, the music only plays for about 5 seconds or so and then loops, as if they couldn't make the music last longer.

Oh, and it's not only easy but extremely short. I would be surprised if you can make this one last more than 2 hours.

The Bottom Line
A little sexy game with not much of a story or gameplay, but since it's easily digested and disposed of, it doesn't hurt much. Uneven graphic and sound quality doesn't help matters much, as you don't get to appreciate the quality art that made other Coktel Vision games so amazing so... your call. This is game is flawed, but not to the point I would call it a bad game. It's just not a good game.