Born Into Darkness

This brand new HOG (Hidden Object Game), or rather FOG (Fractured Object Game) comes from Energames and it is undoubtedly a truly silly game.  Whether the script writers, the voice actors and the sound engineers got together with the programmers for a mass nervous breakdown before producing this piffle may be debatable, what's disturbing is that it looks like they very well did.

After an awkward and quite frankly embarrassing intro scene, you discover Amber, a museum curator and apparently a vampire, has been blackmailed by Nathan, a fellow museum employee to help him find an ancient shroud that has mystical powers. This involves flying all over the world looking for broken pieces of keys, statues, weapons and other objects, which ultimately leads them to a showdown with the chief vampire, in his rather natty apartment.  So this should be a pretty safe piece of software to create then.  Do a bunch of hidden object scenes, a couple of mini games and hey presto! It’s done.

Well, as mentioned before, the whole development team then seemed to have either gotten very drunk, or were in fact replaced by monkeys.

Amber’s character is at least comparatively sensible, and the dialogue given to her is reasonably “scientisty”, but the voice actor has decided that vampires talk with a bizarre accent, and the occasionly broad Scot’s “Aye!” now and again. 

Nathan however is quite frankly a different kettle of fish.  He ranges from being a world authority on snail flaps and other such things that only a true genius would know about, to being a fully paid up member of the Imbecile Society – (In a control room) - “Look at all the televisions!” Yes Nathan, go and have a biscuit.  Just imagine yourself in a tricky situation, think of what you would NEVER ever say, and bingo, Nathan pops up and says it, whilst grinning like a moron.

Here’s a thing, while the music is fine and atmospheric, the sound effects are ridiculous.  Now obviously Nathan popping up on-screen at just about every opportunity imaginable, to talk gibberish at you would get annoying, wouldn't it?  Then imagine this.  Get a garden cane and flick it quickly in the air.  Hear that “woosh” sound? You get it every time he pops up on the screen and forces you to click through his dumb dialogue before you can get back to playing the game.  Not annoying at all.

The game is riddled with highly unlikely situations, even for a computer game.  At one point your progress is blocked by a vampire.  You then collect and assemble an elaborate magical dagger.  You use it on the vampire.  You expect the vampire to die, or at least disappear in a child friendly puff of smoke.  You don’t expect him to basically say “Wow! That’s cool, thanks very much, I’m off now!” and wander away with his new toy... That happens.

The whole game is about finding pieces of things, assembling them, going to the next scene, and so on, which is repetitive but acceptable in this type of game.  It’s also very easy, as you have unlimited hints due to the fact you can earn a clue at any time by playing one of two ridiculous sub-games – match the spinny Latin words, or spot the ghost with the hat. 

In fact there’s nothing more to say.  If you want to spend £20 on a game with a 'spot the ghost in a hat mini-game' then this is just for you.  For everyone else, either avoid it completely, or download the free demo, have a right old chortle, then delete it again.