Review:
The Commodore 64 (C64) emulator, VICE is used in this review. The game is a commercial product for sale. No legal loops to deal with, if anyone is concerned.
A cold dark night.
Critical Points
- Appealing pixelated graphics of the C64 era, with reds and blues colour tones. With some minor graphical glitches.
- There isn't much in terms of music, they're more ambient-style. There are sound effects; gunfire and interaction with items and puzzles and the storm and rain.
- There is a plot: you hear of bad things happening in Hawkshill: the cult kidnapped the villagers and used them as sacrifice for the Old One namely Cthulhu. I found the plot forgettable (ironically I forgot about it).
- Gameplay is mostly shooting at enemies with some puzzle solving, in the form of finding pieces or keys to a door to progress.
- There are three types of guns; pistol, shotgun and machine gun. Just stick with a shotgun after finding it. The machine gun is wasted, just a rapid firing pistol.
- The game is very generous with ammo pouches, specifically the 999 pouch, you don't need it, 500 is more than enough.
- Enemies respawn after moving away from a scene (I believe it's space apart from 2 or 3 scenes) can leave you in a tight spot with low ammunition.
- The boss battle was ok. It's more of a puzzle and very easy, in my opinion.
- Strange controls as someone who haven't played on a C64 it was a bit of a learning curve. Would like to point out C64 controller is a joystick with single button. Switching held-item is by pressing down and the fire button.
- Shooting is weird, just being off is a hit and you can angle it as well.
Conclusion
While finding this game very good, there isn't much drive for it (there is a hidden secret after collecting ten statues). The plot is forgettable, there is too much backtracking (see the same scene more than three times). It is one of those games you are going to play once start-to-finish and let it collect dust.
3/5
Thank you for reading!