Black Mirror I Reviews

Still one of the best. It really defined a genre. 11/10 recommendation.

Black Mirror is a gothic horror adventure that unravels a dark family mystery filled with suspense, puzzles, and a chilling sense of inevitability. A must-play in my opinion. I remember watching my brother play this game alongside others, but something about Black Mirror stuck with me. It became one of those core memories from childhood. Lingering in the back of my mind. Playing it myself years later it only strengthened my fascination. The eerie atmosphere, gripping story and classic point-and-click mechanics made me fall in love with the genre from the very start.

I was recommended this game by a friend, but I have no idea why. I think this is good if you have some kind of nostalgic feeling about it, but if you don't it's pretty bad. Pros: The atmosphere is pretty good The ambience is spot on Cons: [list] [*] Voice acting is terrible. The protagonist is incredibly rigid and devoid of emotion [*] The game is adamant that you click specific items in a certain order to "unlock" the next part [*] Left and Right mouse button do different things, I still have no clue about when to use right mouse button and it seems to randomly have value. [*] Some items you need to interact with repeatedly and it is rarely obvious which items you need to to this with. [*] Puzzles are tedious. One of them was a 16-piece "slide" puzzle. That is not difficult but mind-numbingly boring to slide all pieces into place - additionally, and this is the worst part, it required esoteric knowledge. You needed to know the order of zodiac signs. I had to google this to figure it out. This was not the only puzzle to require this. [*] Protagonist cannot run or fast transition between scenes. Which is doubly bad because of the vast amount of backtracking the game has. [*] It's a really slow-burn game, I've played for ~11 hours and I am nowhere near the end. I am also not going to finish it. [*] Apparently the protagonist is a mega douche. We get insight into his thoughts [i]sometimes[/i]. at one point he offered [spoiler] RIchard to help get an Oxidant. Evidently by "help" he meant, I will mix water with ink and fake a label on the bottle. However, this trick was not shared explicitly by Samuel so it was not at all evident that the player shouldn't get the actual Oxidant, but make a fake one [/spoiler] [/list] TLDR; Get it if you feel nostalgic, otherwise looks elsewhere for your point and click adventure game needs.

I think the Black Mirror trilogy might be my favorite adventure game series of all times, and I've played all of them multiple times. This first one is undeniably getting a bit old and clunky, and for newcomers to the series I would recommend perhaps playing it with a walkthrough for the occasional reference. It suffers a bit from having many cases where you have to do something very specific to continue the plot - something the newer games in the series has largely fixed. I still recommend playing it for the lore and background, and it does contain some enjoyable puzzles as well.