board games

For true Adventure Game afficianados, _The Watchmaker_ is a solid, puzzle- and story-based adventure with overtones of the Gabriel Knight series. The premise is that a group of religious fanatics has gained control of a mysterious pendulum device, which they intend to use to establish themselves as world dominators. You, the player, have been instructed to find the device, wrest control of it from the fanatics, and save the world. All in a day's work, literally.

To accomplish the mission, the gamer is given control of two player characters. Darrell Boone is a researcher in the paranormal; his partner, Victoria Conroy, is a lawyer. Think Gabe and Gracie, or Mulder and Scully. You are given the freedom to switch back and forth between characters at will, or even have them in the same place at the same time so they can work together. I found this immensely cool, as most other multi-player-character games that I have played have been really limited in this respect; either you can only play a given character at a set time, or they don't really work together, or something like that. Most of the puzzles can be solved by either character, but there are a few where choosing the right person for the task is important. Switching back and forth between Darrell and Victoria is really simple, encouraging the player to look at things from numerous points of view. You can also trade off items of inventory, which is helpful in many cases.

The inventory itself is really innovative. You can access it through a simple list, but choosing any item on the list brings up a 3-D representation that can be rotated and viewed from any angle. This makes dealing with inventory an active part of the game, and gives more clues as to how each item can be used. I found that this prevented a lot of the random "try every inventory item until one works" situations from which a lot of games suffer.

The interface is initially complicated, requiring that the player use both keyboard and mouse control to best accomplish many of the tasks. You can look at any scene from either a third person or a first person perspective, and a lot of switching back and forth is necessary to find hidden details. On the plus side, moving the mouse cursor over an "action spot" causes a description of the spot to appear at the bottom of the screen. This eliminates a lot of the "Look at everything until you're blind" problem of some games and also helps the player get a better idea of what's what.

One of the nicest things about _The Watchmaker_ is that it is truly non-linear. Right from the start you can go nearly everywhere -- there are a few locations that are inaccessible until certain puzzles have been solved -- talk to anyone, pick up inventory and get clues as to how to proceed. Although at points this results in the player having about a dozen different puzzles in progress, I found that the non-linearity was freeing rather than confusing. If you got stuck on something, there was always another path to explore.

The puzzles are mostly inventory-based mechanical, with a few arcade sequences towards the end. Although one or two solutions are a bit far-fetched or involve misleading deatails, none is truly illogical and all add to the story. Most are fairly easy to solve once you have all the pieces and the pieces themselves are generally recognizable -- that is, you have a pretty good idea what you need and what you're missing. So there isn't a lot or running around looking for some nebulous "something." This keeps the game from being incoherent despite the non-linearity, as you can manufacture a plan for what you need to do.

There are only two things that keep me from giving _The Watchmaker_a five-star rating. The first is that the initial portion of the game is VERY slow. Nothing much happens as you explore the castle and talk to the non-player-characters, and it took a while to find the first piece to set the clock in motion. I would have liked a simple, somewhat obvious puzzle right at the beginning, just so I had the sense that I was actually accomplishing something; as it was, I got bored. I found it helpful to play short sessions for the first hour or two, as the busy work of the game's beginning didn't keep my interest as well as it could have.

The other problem was that the voice acting was truly dreadful. One NPC sounded as if she were on heavy medication; another was trying so hard to have a funny "character" voice that he was all but incomprehensible. I advise keeping the subtitles on.

The graphics were good but not stunning and the game ran fairly smoothly. I did have some problems with the in-game movies -- they were kind of jerky -- and the game did lock up once or twice, usually when I was trying to do something or go somewhere too fast. I was playing on an older system, however; newer computers may not have this problem.

If you love puzzle based adventure and are looking for one that will keep you playing for an extended period of time, don't miss _The Watchmaker_!

I am an avid X-Files fan as well as an adventure gamer, so the Watchmaker looked like a pretty good bet. Victoria Conroy and Darrell Boone do indeed resemble our courageous FBI team: Like Fox Mulder, Boone is an investigator in the paranormal. And like Dana Scully, Conroy is a young professional woman with a penchant for balance and reason. Boone is a little arrogant, and Conroy is a little perturbed by that, but they manage to work together pretty well. You help them do that-you are able to control either player at any time: in fact, sometimes you must switch off in order to accomplish certain things in the game as well as trade off inventory items. While Boone has been hired by the law firm to assist in the case, the firm has Conroy as their own plant to keep the case on track-this is pure X-Files. Doubtless, the creators of the game were thinking of just that when they drew up the storyline.

The duo is sent to an Austrian castle to retrieve a pendulum device from a group of religious fanatics. The castle inhabitants are a fully developed group of characters: you learn about them through extensive conversation. The puzzles are very logical. Once I solved a puzzle, or found a hint online, I always felt like a big dummy for not figuring it out sooner-it was either fairly obvious or pretty sensible given enough brain time. The graphics are in my opinion very well done and very satisfying: sunset over Austria is quite beautiful. You can also switch from first to third person points of view to examine things closely or broadly. For an outstanding review of the details of the game, see the review below by "wysewomon," entitled "Solid Adventure."

It is not immediately obvious, but this game is a lot like Syberia. The protagonists in both games go to a European setting and deal with the interaction between the old world (Europe) and the new world (multinational corporations). So, while more than just a few adventure games take place in castles, The Watchmaker keeps it fresh by playing with the interaction between history and the future.

This game requires a lot of video memory and system memory. I can thank this game for prompting a video card upgrade and eventually a system memory upgrade. The recommendations on the box are woefully inadequate: while the publishers suggest a minimum of 8 mb of video memory and a recommended 16 mb of video memory, I would say that 32 mb is the absolute minimum video you should have in order to play this game. 64 mb is even better. Their recommended 128 mb of system memory is about right. You may have no problems with the game; nearly every system configuration is different. But I did try this game on two different computers and had essentially the same problems with it on each one.

Ultimately, I was unable to complete the game because of repeated game freezes. In the game's favor, I can say that I was terribly disappointed not to have been able to complete the game because of technical problems-the game is quite fun and very engaging. On the other hand, I was a bit frustrated to have to reinstall my operating system (admittedly, Windows Me is a weak operating system to begin with) after countless bad restarts. Moreover, the Trecision Watchmaker website is not very helpful.

The voice acting in this game is by far the worst I have ever experienced, a painful and embarrassing exercise in torture. Fortunately, Victoria and Darrell's voices are tolerable enough for the majority of the game; but there is enough character interaction to make this component of the game extremely agonizing. What were they thinking of when they chose the voice actress for the wife? Help us. But to the game's credit, the ambience created by the music is really very lovely. The grounds theme is very melodic and soothing, and it often played in my head long after I was away from the computer.

I read the reviews on this game for a long time before I bought it. I hesitated because of the overwhelming opinion that the voice acting was not only bad but nauseatingly intolerable. But finally, though, I decided to go for it because the storyline seemed too intriguing, too much of what I was looking for in an adventure game. Both of these perceptions turned out to be unproblematically true: the voice acting is utterly abysmal and the storyline is excellent.

And even though I had what were finally irresoluble technical problems with the game, to the degree that my system became unstable, I am not sorry I played it, and I might try to play it again on my new Windows XP system. Not everyone will have the technical problems I had-in fact, if my searches online are any indication, few people had such problems. The voice acting is something I got used to-but if you think you might not be able to tolerate entirely unengaging voice acting, I would not recommend this game.

Because of the wonderful graphic and musical ambience, the engaging storyline and setting, character development, and unique interface, I would like to give it 5 stars, and it pains me not to be able to do so. Sadly, because of the technical difficulties and poor voice acting, I cannot give this game more than 3 stars.

Good stuff: fairly neat story, acceptable graphics, good ambient sound
Bad stuff: everything else...but specifically...
1)click-mapping: Terrible. If you're outside, you're probably pointing at a tree. It doesn't matter where you click, you'll end up looking at a tree. Often, clicking in front of your character spins the camera and has you running in the opposite direction.
2)camera angles: Everything's hidden or around an unnecessarily awkward corner. Camera often sweeps and spins in a rather nauseating manner.
3)doorways: You will get stuck in doorways in the latter half of the game (also a wall or two). Best advice, zoom in and hope you have a specific item to click on in the next room. A couple of times, I had to switch characters, move and warp the stuck character to a different location (you'll understand if you play it)
4)voice "acting": aka reading a line written on a page and not really giving a damn either way.
5)two characters: No need. But the woman is the lesser of two evils.
6)others...just don't buy it. Okay game, but frustrating and lazy programming and acting destroy it.