Cheap Necronomicon (Software) (Windows 98, Windows 95) Price

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Customer Reviews of Necronomicon

Dreadfully obscure and difficult
After playing Dracula, I was interested in seeing what other games Dreamcatcher produced, but after playing Necronomicon, I'm thoroughly disappointed. The game is utterly obscure and complicated, and almost impossible to defeat without the help of a total walkthrough. Combining random herbs and potions to create a mixture would have been impossible had I not been going directly from the walkthrough. The game has 2 filler mazes that simply fill time that the programmers could have made to flesh out the story, which was terribly written. I barely followed it at all. The ending was very disappointing. There is a "good" and a "bad" ending (actually, the bad ending was cooler) because the good ending leaves you feeling like, "that's it?" Although the graphics are fairly well done, the cut scenes can be long and boring. The music is nothing to write home to mom about. I don't recommend this game unless you simply buy it to follow along with the walkthrough and enjoy some of the pretty graphics. Don't waste your time or money.

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Nice graphics
The world of the game offers you the 360 rotation of most modern "shooters." It has a very loosely related H.P. Lovecraft theme but no connection to any story I know. There are some tough "hunt and peck" pixel quests which can become tedious (especially the one in total darkness.) I did enjoy it, but the box says that this is the "first adventure game to be directly indpired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft." This was annoying because there have been much better Lovecraft ports such as the excellent adventure games Shadow of the Comet by Chaosium/Infogames in 1994, and my favorite text based Hound of Shadow 1990 from Eldritch Games, and the Alone in the Dark series from the early 90's.

I didn't personally encounter any serious (lockup) bugs but it did drop out to windows sometimes. The cut scenes and movements played without any choppiness at all but sometimes the voices would stutter. The graphic detail of the towns and building was excellent, especially the fishing village. Riding the little antique motorcycle was fun. As one reviewer noted, the main character sounded unnecessarily like a 12 year old-- good description. However, the people were mispronouncing the guy's name differently for a reason: they were indicating or pretending they didn't know him, of course. This was not a flaw by the game designers.

In sum, the graphics were pretty, but gameplay could have been better. Worth a look in the bargain bin.

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truly full of lovecraftian horror -- but not as intended
You will experience true horror -- at the quality of the acting, programming, and writing. You will encounter many singular and strange -- software bugs. And you will be confronted with the ultimate conundrum of all: how did this game get past QA?

I generally like anything gloomy and dark, no matter how bad it is. Yet even I like to have one candle dimly flickering -- so as not to be the thing that goes "bump" in the night against every corner and chair. (I'm not a bat -- I have eyes) Yet many places in this game the screen is pure black -- you have to literally click on a black screen by trial and error! As much as I like the color black, i'd rather not sit there clicking on it...

The voice-acting is so bad that all you hear are mumbles and whispers -- there is NO way to turn the voice up reletive to the background sound, and there are NO subtitles! And there is no way to escape from a cut-scene or conversation once you started it -- no matter how long and annoying it is.

Puzzles come in two varieties: those that require a knowledge of the occult and obsesive re-readings of the given books and materials as well as some guess work (which happens to be my idea of fun) -- and hard-core pixel hunting (which doesn't!)! I don't mind a few pixel-hunting quests -- but looking through screen-fulls of identical jars just to find the right one is a bit ridiculous! Even Tetris is a better computer game than "look though 100 identical things to find the right one"!

In conclusion, you must be a masochist to enjoy this game! Go re-read a Lovecraft book. If you don't like reading, get Black Mirror -- which, with all it's flaws, is still a much better dark-occult game than Necronomicon.