The Black Mirror

"Could have been excellent, but the voice acting and plot holes bring it down"

Introduction - Black Mirror is from the adventure game point-and-click genre. It's part murder mystery, part horror with a bit of the supernatural thrown in. It's set in England and has a decent storyline.

Gameplay - Like most of this genre these days, Black Mirror is controlled through the point-and-click mouse meets hot-spot approach. It's easy to use and easy to understand. The game involves moving the main character (Samuel) around both within and between locations. His interactions are a mixture of speaking with other characters and the usual items-and-hot-spots routine. So far, so good.

The game is also fun to play. I would have said it was difficult to find new puzzles so long after the genre was first established, but Black Mirror genuinely manages to avoid most of the cliches and its designers have produced a nice range of puzzles and quests. Additionally, the puzzles usually don't require too much moving around and often will limit the character to one place or room so you're rarely in the “needle-in-a-haystack” situation with hot-spots.

In terms of flaws, there are two main ones. The first is that some pieces of information are required from NPCs wanting the main character to "come back later" and actually meaning this (ie. for a certain amount of time to pass). In several places (I counted three) this was very annoying, because the main character has nothing else to do, so is just wandering for ten minutes. The second is that the main character can die. In my opinion, every last one of those possible deaths is unnecessary (and one was irreversible with a bad save)

There is also one minor flaw - it takes a little while (the first chapter, really) to get going.

Story - The story is pretty decent in general and has a good plot twist. Parts are genuinely scary (it's a horror adventure game). Up until the last chapter I would have rated it extremely highly. However, having finished it, I only rate it highly as there were a few too many plot holes/inconsistencies that just do not get explained. Most annoyingly, the in-game information implies that the Bad (TM) has the equivalent of an alibi for at least one of the murders.

Graphics/Sound - On the visual side, the locations are nicely realised with good graphics. Everything looks appropriate and there are some nice touches with the ongoing atmosphere (eg. The weather getting worse with every chapter).

The sound, on the other hand, lets the game down. The voice acting is very poor. Being more of a subtitles person myself, it didn't spoil it for me; but it might make a bigger difference to someone more sensitive to it. That said, the background music is fine and so are the various effects.

Play Time/Replayability - It's a fairly long game and took me a couple of weeks (evenings and weekends only). Being an adventure game, there is not much to be gained from a replay (there are no sub-quests as far as I am aware).

Final Recommendation - If you can get the game cheaply (and some places are selling it for bargain prices), then I would suggest buying it new. Otherwise, it's a good game to rent due to being a once-through; although I would recommend setting aside a certain amount of time to be sure of finishing it!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/06