Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death Collector's Edition Reviews

[h1]It's more like a neutral verdict, but it IS better than the Gold Bug[/h1] It's another dodgy entry in the Edgar Allan Poe games, and I once again find myself wholly uninterested in a bonus chapter. Unlike the last one I played by Big Fish, this title seems more stable as I managed to get through it without any crashes. Animations remain subpar though - entirely cringeworthy, lame and uninteresting. The story itself and the idea of being able to choose who you think is 'more' guilty is pretty good though. By choosing one over the other, you aren't saying the other is innocent though... to be fair they should all go to jail. While the game may actually run correctly compared to Gold Bug (that crashes every half hour), it does have other problems. During search scenes it can be hit-and-miss when clicking on items - not good when the whole genre revolves around such scenes. In addition to this, some areas have points of interest that are unexpected, such as chandeliers. I played on casual because I just wanted to finish this backlog game faster, and to my surprise I found myself using the hint button a lot. Even on casual there are no obvious clues as to what to do, and some deductions made little sense. The easiest example of this is a pile of rubble somehow needing a (crappily made) broom to sweep it, despite rubble usually being so heavy a broom wouldn't do much to it. When you finally use the broom, it breaks straight away. It would have been faster to clear it with your hands, but the game doesn't let you. There are just so many instances of this (poor deductions and poor reasoning) that it is no wonder I had to keep using the hint button. Most HOGs have this problem to various degrees, and you learn to gloss over them and keep playing, but I just found it particularly bad here. Not all HOGs are created equal, and this game is a good example of that. Even with in-game achievements and things like photos to collect, I struggle to really recommend this game. Either get it heavily discounted or not at all.