Aside from figuring out what the title means there's some impressive C.G.I graphics that look great in-spite of it's....
Platform: PSOne, Saturn, 3D0
Developer: WARP
Publisher: Acclaim
Genre: Horror
Age Rating: 15-17 ELSPA
Release Date: 1996
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Game Score: 4.0/10
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Summery:
Aside from figuring out what the title means there's some impressive C.G.I graphics that look great in-spite of it's short length and it's cheap scares.
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Before playing the game you take a look at the title which is sure puzzling. What does the title really mean, does it mean darkness, despair or perhaps Dracula (Not to be confused with the Dracula films).
With that aside D is a puzzle Horror game where the main protagonist Laura Harris who travels to the Hospital where her Father a renowned Doctor has gone insane, upon entering she later gets taken by a portal into a dark castle. Determined to find out she must solve puzzles in order to find the answers.
When you start playing you'll notice that the game has very little in terms of it, you'll spend the majority of it watching some impressively rendered cut-scenes which show off the potential of the CD quality but some of scary moments in the game like a portrait smiling while music playing or a room where it has spiked corpses and a mirror which a hands comes out of it are often cheap and predicable.
You explore every inch of the castle to uncover different items which are used to unlock hidden parts of the castle, many puzzles include placing a paper inside a bowl, revealing a hidden passageway and so on. There isn't anyway you ever die in the game but the only event that uses quick time events is when you go up against a Knight and you have to press the right button at the right time to dodge the attack. If you fail that then you'll need to climb up and try again. The only way you can lose is that the time has a Time Limit, the thing with that is that the time is ticking in real time so you'll need to explore every inch of the environment and solve each puzzle as quickly as possible before Time runs out.
Now comes to issues with the controls, although selecting items to use isn't a problem but the movement control is awkward, you character moves so slow and your movement is limited so you can only move in a limited angle which is ridiculous. If the controls weren't bad enough selecting which part to look in is also annoying and takes time to learn. Instead of having the OK and cancel buttons like most video games you got to hold down one button and then highlight whatever you wish with the D-Pad then quickly release the button and press the button again to select it. All I can say is at least for a game that has limited control it's still in excusable that the controls don't work to well. Through a game that easily spans through 3 disks the game will take roughly around 45 minutes of Playtime if you at least know how to do all the puzzles but to anyone else it will take about nearly 2 to 3 hours to figure out all the clues and for it's Gameplay length it's surely a short game and difficult to recommend at full price.
D is all about the cinema C.G.I quality that the makes the game shine but it's one of those games where you can't see the picture too well because it's too dark. When playing you might want to close the curtains in your bedroom and turn up your brightness, other then that the cut-scenes are pretty good for the first time looking along with solid the voice acting.
There really isn't a whole lot of Gameplay to be found in D. Aside from figuring out what the title means there's some impressive C.G.I graphics that look great in-spite of it's short length and it's cheap scares.
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The Pros:
1. C.G.I rendering details which look really impressive for the first look
The Bads:
1. Plenty of cheap and predictable scares
2. There's not very much in terms of Gameplay and Length
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (BlaZer91)
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