While it seems that the flood of piratey things has slowed since the third installment of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, there will forever be a niche to be filled. Luckily, Disney has said it will continue making PotC films so no worries there. But what about games? Have we had our fill of swashbuckling adventures? What if the official PotC games just didn't fill us up? Is there anywhere else we can turn?
Well, yes and no. Dead Reefs is definitely not going to fill the action game niche. In fact, it barely fills the Pirate niche at all. In fact, its plot is based off of pirate legend but really extends it no further. On top of that, even if the plot did involve more pirates that wouldn't change the fact that the format of the game doesn't really allow for any action-packed moments.
Instead, Dead Reefs opted for a more spine-tingling angle. Dead Reefs presents you, the sleuth, with a crime on a small island that you must solve. Is the murder directly linked to that aforementioned pirate curse? Or is it simply a copy cat crime? Or maybe even purely coincidental?
We'll start off with the good side of the game as once I start on the bad side - I tend to go overboard.
Graphics
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the game's performance visually. The contours and textures are nicely finished. I also reveled in the small amounts of detail given to the characters and how there were very little if any facial duplications to save time. By this I mean every person had their own face - a rather uncommon occurrence these days. Even big budget games like Halo and Ninja Gaiden use the same faces over and over again for the pedestrians in the game. But Dead Reefs gave the extras a little more thought. Granted there really aren't many extras in the game but hey they still get credit. Perhaps my one annoyance with the game was the unforgivable resemblance of the main character to Johnny Depp. Talk about trying to capitalize on someone else's success. I don't respect that they tried to do that, but overall it's a nice looking game.
Voice Acting
In many games this feature gets the axe as the game production moves further on they decide to not waste money on getting decent actors and record the worst possible interpretations of an otherwise well-scripted game. When I start a game with bad character acting - it's almost an immediate turn-off. I'll sit there and contemplate turning off a game within the first five minutes because I can't bear to let the plot progress any further if it means subjecting myself to horrible acting. Dead Reefs pleasantly surprised me here. Once again, Dead Reefs came from a comparatively smaller studio and they could easily have used this as an excuse to record second-rate acting with poor interpretations of the script. Instead, they recorded every line with the necessary nuances to give the dialogue that extra snap, crackle and pop. Don't sue me Kellogg. Although, once again, I must concede, that as a game centered on talking to people and solving puzzles to solve the crime - good voice acting is a must.
Multi-player - N/A
Replay Value -umm, well...not good.
Think about it. Once you know the truth about all that's happened on the island - it just won't be the same a second time around. Sad.
Gameplay
This is where the game suffers the most at the hands of underdevelopment. Let me give you a basic rundown of how computers started off. At first, computers were nothing more than big number crunching machines. Consequently all they really needed was a number pad and an enter key (even though they had full keyboards since the programmers used the full keyboard to write the programming). Then they upgraded to an interface that allowed numbers and words. Imagine that. But you'll never guess what came next! A mouse! Yes, and since the invention of the mouse you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who'd gladly give it up. Granted most of us are keyboard sufficient - but having a mouse sure is nice.
Which brings me to the problem with Dead Reefs. It's a new-fangled three-dimensional adventure game and yet they didn't bother programming mouse support. There is no mouse. Just the keyboard. Excuse me for saying so - but that's hideously annoying for a game in this genre. It's hard - neigh impossible to fully enjoy oneself in an adventure game when they're continuously annoyed at having to use the keyboard to roam the screen in search of things to observe. It's even worse when the things you hope to interact with are moving and the keyboard is simply too clumsy to keep up with it.
What happened here? Were they rushed? Did they themselves not have a mouse? Does their religion forbid them from touching anything that doesn't have "QWERTY" written across its face?
This omission of a mouse for an adventure game is an unforgivable sin. Unless they'd reverted back to the traditional Sierra Text Box adventure system what Dead Reefs hoped to achieve got lost.
This is all a gripe without even taking into account that controlling your person with the directional buttons supplied to you is a true pain in the ass. Turning is a hassle. Selecting actions is even worse. Don't get me started on simply trying to walk straight.
So to sum it all up:
Dead Reefs -
Looks good. Sounds good. Seems good. Until you try to play.
Which you can really only do once.
Because who likes solving the same case twice?
Not even Kojak.
Truly a promising game that went bad as soon as the programmers decided upon an antiquated control system. It only gets worse when you consider they didn't even perfectly fine-tune all the bugs out of the lower-quality controls. Tsk tsk tsk. Such promise. Such disappointment. I'd recommend this game if the company ever releases a patch that involves a mouse add-on. Until then, it's not worth the trouble.
"Dead Reefs" is on sale July 3, 2007 and is rated T. Adventure. Developed by Streko Graphics. Published by The Adventure Company.
