Perseverance and patience are godsends when it comes to finding The Lost Crown
Story:
The story itself is a good one and there are a lot of things going on that slowly reveal themselves during the game. When the game starts, you find out that the protagonist, Nigel Danvers, is on the run from his former employers having hacked into their secure computer systems and stolen evidence of the experiments they are conducting. This evidence consists of a report written by one of the employees who is now chasing Nigel and two photographs showing some sort of chasm into another dimension or world with strange forms residing within it. In trying to get away from them, NIgel gets on a train in London and winds up at Sedgemarsh station near the town of Saxton with no option of returning to London. The thing is, the train is a steam engine, and everything about the town immediately tells you that you have travelled back in time somehow. But, there is at least one other character, Lucy, and possibly others, who appear to be from the "future" too. Another character tells Nigel that "We've always been here" and that "We've been expecting you for quite some time now Mr. Davners". Clearly, there is something not quite right about Saxton and there are legends that the last anglo saxon crown, the only one that still exists, is hidden somewhere around the town. The townsfolk are strange people too. Most make Nigel feel most unwelcome like they have something to hide from prying eyes. Think of the film "The Wicker Man" and you'll have the right idea about the locals and the isolation NIgel suffers although there are some that do help Nigel along.
All this sounds great from a story telling perspective. Unfortunately, the execution of the story lets it down tremendously. My biggest complaint with The Lost Crown is the acting or should I say, the lack of it. With decent acting, this game would have been an 8.5 rather than a 7. Yes, the acting IS that bad as to knock off a whole 1.5 marks! In fact, I nearly didn't play the game any further than getting off the train at Sedgemarsh because the first conversation you have with the station master is delivered in a way that reminded me of 10 year olds reading a play in which they have little interest during a very late afternoon English class. Make no mistake, everything about it is wrong. The rythm is wrong, the tone of voice is wrong and the station masters accent is forced. The actual script itself doesn't do it any favours either, I could never imagine two people having this conversation in this way even it was acted a little better. Terrible, terrible, terrible! This is because Mr. Boakes decided to write the script and act the main part himself and use close friends for the other parts. In fact, I belive the model for NIgel is even based on what Johnathan looks like as well. This is probably why all the other characters refer to him as "Young man" and "youth"... Wishful thinking maybe?!
Anyway, the acting is not great. I know Darkling Rooms' money pot is not exactly overflowing so I can forgive it slightly but not enough to give it a higher mark. Besides that, after this awful opening scene, things seemed to get better. Whether this is because the story becomes more important than the acting or whether the "actors" just got more into their roles I am unsure. Just trust me, if you persevere with it, it becomes less destracting.
Gameplay:
Pretty much standard point and click gameplay for the most part. You click at the edges of each scene to walk in the indicated direction to the next scene and click on various hotspots within each scene to take a closer look at something of interest or interact with it. Your inventory is shown along the bottom of the screen and you can select an item from it and click it on a hotspot within the scene to use it. It is nice that the hotspots have large enough activation areas that you can get them by a quick cursory swoop of your moust pointer over each scene unlike games like Sherlock Holmes the Awakened that had such minute activation areas that you litterlly had to pixel hunt every scene.
The unique thing about the gameplay is the ghost hunting gadgets. You have at your disposal, a night-vision camcorder, a motion tracking digital polaroid camera, an analogue dictaphone, an electro-magnetic fluctuation (EMF) meter for detecting, funnily enough, disturbances in the electro-magnetic field within the atmosphere, usually the first sign of a ghostly presence. Nigel's former employer also sends him a very complex computer system that links audio-visual equipment with five EMF sensors that can be placed on the ground to give NIgel complete coverage of ghostly activity at any location. What is interesting about this is that these methods are the exact same methods that real ghost hunters use when investigating possible hauntings. In fact, Johnathan himself investigated a pub, "The Hare and Crow" (referenced in the game by two character names) and another location to do research for the game and included a lot of the things he found during these investigations into the game itself. So you can be assured that the ghost hunting aspect of this game is authentic. And, might I add, it's rather spooky too, especially if you play with the lights turned down late at night.
Other than that, puzzles are rather conventional point and click affairs and deserve no special mention and there is no maze-like environment where it is a requirement to map it out by hand just to find your way back "home".
Graphics:
Mr. Boakes should be congratulated on taking the well known modern film technique of using black and white film with splashes of colour to highlight certain areas (the buds of flowers, lamp shades etc.) and applying it to his adventure game. Sometimes the colour aspects are used to highlight areas of interest
and other times used just for artistic flair. I personally think it suits the atmosphere of his spooky ghost hunting adventure particularly well. At one point, you visit a church in both the daytime and at night and, trust me, it just wouldn't have been as scary in colour. All the black and white scenes are actual photographs with the colour added afterwards and as such, create great immersion. This is because the town of Saxton, is a real English town and, as you will see if you play this game, ideally suited for a ghost story.
However, for all the artistic genius of the art direction, the character animation lets down the graphics aspect of the game. This is probably a minor frustration in comparison to the acting complaint. Still, it is strange that, having gone to such painstaking lengths as doing actual ghost hunting work and meticulously photographing every part of a town and its surrounding countryside in a planned sequence, this bit of the game wasn't done with anywhere near the same kind of love and attention to detail. As other reviewers have mentioned, Nigel moves with the pace of an 80 year old cripple. Waiting for him to simply turn his head so you can get a closer look at an item of interest becomes rather tedious after a few hours of gameplay. It also takes an age for Nigel to walk, or should I say glide as this is what it resembles (maybe we'll find that Nigel is himself a ghost at some point in the plot!), from one side of each scene to the other. As you'll be doing a lot of walking from one side of town to the next, it can be challenging sometimes to keep your eyes open long enough to reach your destination. Thankfully, most of the time, you can double click a direction to quickly skip to the next scene, but not all the time. I rahter think that a quick travel feature could have been implemented. You get an in game map of the main town which could have been used to do this although, even then, you would still be left to travel the surrounding coutryside the "slow way".
Sound:
Amazing! That is all I can say. The sound in this game did a great job of spooking me out right from the off and is as significant, possibly even more significant than the black and white styled graphics in creating the atmosphere. But then, anyone who has played either of the Darkfall games from Johnathan will know that sound is one thing that is always done well in his games.
There are many dark environments where you will hear wrappings, scratching and scraping together with faint whispering voices you can barely make out: "you there, help usssss! You can help ussss...." - You get the picture.
All in all the graphics and sound combine to create a great atmosphere.
Summary:
A great story with a thick spooky atmosphere combining challenging puzzles and a unique, entertaining and sometimes scary ghost hunting aspect.
If the acting and animation had been on par with the rest of the game I would have recommended this to almost anybody as an entertaining way to fill their time. Sadly, as it is, I can only recommend it to hardcore adventure gamers with a wish to spook themselves out. Anybody else won't have the patience to solve the games puzzles whilst having to put up the with the horrendous dialogue and ludicrously slow pace due, in no small part, to the ridiculous animation.
In summary, good if you are into adventure gaming, extremely bad if you are not.