Not played Black Mirror 1, eh? Yeah, it passed me by too but it’s earned a sequel and you should totally get excited about it (if you like point-and-click adventures with great artwork and a splash of gory horror, that is).
Biddeford – just enough life in the place for a murder.
The story opens in 1993 and sunny Biddeford, Maine; a cheerily deserted seaside town with our shaggy student hero Darren working for a tyrannical letch in a small photography store. What begins with some (actually mundane but refreshingly engaging) errands and dramas, soon turns into a sinister story of murder and mystery appearing to emanate from murky old England and the titular Black Mirror Mansion. It was actually a bit of a shock when the real story kicked off, with gruesome events that turn Biddeford from a hokey little town into a sinister Innsmouth-alike, demonstrating that the game is blessed with something of an original approach to storytelling, with things getting all the darker when you eventually visit England.
A hotel – it wouldn’t be a point-and-click without some room key thievery!
Still, Black Mirror 2 is a very conventional point-and-click adventure but it manages all the fundamentals pretty well. The artwork is very good on the whole: in ’2.5D’, it has moving skyscapes in the background and an impressive level of detail in the fore, with 3D characters that don’t stand out from the prerendered scenes like a glowing thumb. There’s a nice use of weather to change the atmosphere of otherwise familiar scenes, too. Also, rather than annoying trawls to each location, a quick travel function is cannily implemented and hitting space highlights interactive objects which averts annoying pixel hunting.
“That’s the laxative in the soda bottle” – It wouldn’t be a point-and-click without a little light poisoning!
Development has shifted to German devs Cranberry for BM2 but they’ve remained true to the original in terms of puzzle design with ‘common sense’ being the watchwords, fans will be relieved to hear. Items can be found in expected places and the puzzles I played through all adhered to a satisfying real-world logic which perhaps made them a little easy (for me at least, but of course, when it comes to sheer powers of logic I am second only to Vulcans /sarcasm). One early puzzle involved developing photographs using ye olde filme, developing fluid and lamps, which required experimentation with exposure times and fixing fluids to produce a decent result, as it would in real life if you weren’t entirely sure how to go about it. It’ll be interesting to see if BM2 manages to maintain realistic principles and increase the difficulty in later chapters.
Black Mirror 2 has some genuinely impressive artwork
Major criticisms of Black Mirror were aimed squarely at the voice acting and unfortunately there are signs that this may be a problem for DM2 as well. Darren, an American, sounds like he’s being voiced by a German doing an accent (which may be a placeholder, but I’m pretty sure isn’t) and I was right to dread the inevitable trip to England: gor bloo’y blibey guvnur, and so on. They aren’t universally bad however and a gripping story should be enough for most to see and hear beyond the crappy acting. I should also mention that there’s insto-death which may prove divisive; it doesn’t seem to happen often and the danger isn’t always obvious, but the game autosaves just before anyway, so it’s no major setback just a little bit of an immersion breaker perhaps.
It wouldn’t be a point-and-click without a bit of glamour photography! Wait… what?
BM2 is an exciting prospect for point-and-click fans providing a game that has a dark story and real-world settings with art and sound that occasionally reaches the heights of the mighty Broken Sword series – I actually enjoyed my time with BM2 more than The Angel of Death, as it happens. And with a cunning use of cutscenes, it’s also the only point-and-click I can remember that’s actually made me jump, so there.
Black Mirror 2 should be out late April, published by DTP Entertainment.
The backgrounds look genuinely gorgeous. I’ve been unimpressed by recent 3d adventures, particularly in the writing department, but I’ll keep an eye on this.