Daddy, why are you holding that knife? Review

Daddy, why are you holding that knife?

When I’m not playing games, I choose to rot away my remaining intelligence by devouring paperback murder mysteries. In all honesty, the cheesier they are, the more I enjoy them. When one particular avowed video game addict (my editor) pressed D into my hands, I agreed to try it.

And you know what? Despite several glaring problems with the game, it was pretty fun. The game opens with a shot of your character, Laura, standing at the base of a broad cement staircase which rises to the door of a large, dark, and ominously official-looking building. The building turns out to be a hospital and behind those doors, one learns, is a bloody carnage of slaughtered bodies and mutilated corpses. Even worse, the monster who is responsible for this blood bath is your father, an esteemed doctor.

Now, being the smart cookie that you are, you have decided to venture forth into this nightmare without even a flashlight (Note: why are female characters in the mystery genre eternally blundering into potentially lethal situations with only a handful of bobby pins as protection?). Anyway, apparently you are the only one who is genuinely concerned with the mass murder which has taken place at the hospital. You are alone. There are no trigger-happy SWAT teams, no FBI agents practicing hostage negotiation tactics, and no reporters asking if your father has any known odd sexual proclivities. You have determined that you alone are capable of dragging your beloved father back from the clutches of insanity, and the cops outside agree with you (I guess). So in you go.

Your task is relatively simple. You want to locate your father within the dank, cavernous halls of the hospital and . . . and… do what exactly? Apparently, you believe that his love for you is stronger than any nasty old murderous impulse could be. Suddenly, the inside of the hospital becomes a spooky castle, for no apparent reason.

Ok, so there are a few holes in the plot. This is only the first of several problems with the game, but if you bear with me, there are also some good points to D. First of all, most of the puzzles are really too easy. They consist of finding certain objects and then using them in the only other place they might possibly go. For example, find a key, use it in a door, find a book, put it on the bookshelf (I hope I didn’t spoil anything for you).

Another problem is that the navigation sucks. You can only move along predetermined paths that are sometimes placed very illogically. To get from one side of a room to another, you might have to take a zig-zag path that makes no sense. Your freedom of movement is very limited.

Finally, the actor who does the voice of your father is laughably bad. This doctor/mass murderer, whose mind is a labyrinth of puzzles and death, should not sound like a dork talking into an echo box. I suspect that instead of paying someone, Accolade just had the guy who works in the mail room do it.

Don’t worry, there are some good parts to this game also. The graphics look great. All the graphics are pre-rendered on some other machine. The whole game is actually just several CDs worth of computer animated full motion video. But you have tremendous control of that video. The flashback scenes are really entertaining.

One interesting aspect of D is that you have to put aside 2 hours to play it. You cannot save the game and you cannot pause. If you do not solve the game in 2 (real) hours, you fail. While this lends immediacy and suspense to the game, it ruins the replay value. Having to start over at the beginning and re-solve all the puzzles is just tedious. There are multiple endings, but I’m not sure who is going to have the patience to see them all.

The best part of the game is definitely the mood. There is a genuine creepy feeling throughout the game, which makes it not only fun to play, but actually fun to watch as well. Some of the scenes may even make you jump a little. It feels like playing a horror movie. Despite the obvious flaws, this game is both eerie and compelling.