To be clear, the kinds of object searching both genres are famed for are nonexistent in Tormentum. I mean, I don’t know what else to call it without having to start using the world casual unironically, and I’m far too sober to attempt that. Kind of, anyway, because as a genre, it’s moved away from presenting random screen full of jumble and asking you to pick out three blue telephones and a heron yet has someone still kept its name. And herein starts the unwelcome comparisons to the hidden object genre. There’s rarely a hidden motive for collecting items and everything has a clear purpose, so puzzling comes in to form of, well, puzzles. On the same screen as the broken mirror is a statue with empty sockets for eyes. Explore your cell and excavate a jeweled eye from one of the skeletons. On the next screen over, you find a broken mirror in need of some reflective shards. Exit your cell and you find a shard of mirror. Rarely, if ever, will the items you collect and jam into the infinite confines of your cloak have to be assembled together into some wacky contraption that conveniently bypasses the obstacle of the moment. Though billed as a point and click adventure, Tormemtum has little in common with the genre staples like Broken Sword or Monkey Island. Those of you expecting a series of lateral inventory puzzles at this point are only going to be half right your key to escape is to pluck a small metal plate from the beak of a nearby crow and, eh, undo some screws on your cell door, solve a simple cogwheel puzzle then wander off unchallenged. Fiery comets slam into the barren earth outside his cell while nightmarish knights visit his bars to describe the torture that awaits before he’s left alone with the small collection of skeletons chilling in the bunks. Hanging from the fleshy underbelly of a bizarre zeppelin, he’s ferried off to a jail cell to rot. Such is the fate of your hooded protagonist who has (in a stroke of pure originality) suffered amnesia and finds himself trapped within a cage alongside a large armoured rat. Set against a series of brilliantly gothic backdrops that have seemingly drawn inspiration from the likes of H.R Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, Tormentum is a game presented against hand-painted horror. Let me try to untangle things with roundabout rambling. It’s a confusing state of affairs, all right. It advertises itself as a point and click adventure but shares more aesthetics with hidden object games, then it turns out to be both of the above whilst technically being neither. Tormentum - Dark Sorrow comes from a weird place.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |