The Cameron Files: The Secret at Loch Ness

"A mediocre 'point-and-click' creation"

The Cameron Files: Secret At Loch Ness joins the ranks of point-and-click style adventure games everywhere, and makes another offering from Dreamcatcher, the only label that seems to (thankfully) care about this genre anymore. of course, along with the good, comes the bad, as well as titles that are sort of inbetween. Loch Ness is an inbetween game, really, and it's hard to really peg it as truly ''bad'' or ''good.'' Although the game seems like a mystical exploration of Loch Ness, it's actually a story themed around private detective Alan Cameron, who you play in the game. You are requested to investigate some mysterious goings on at Devil's Ridge Manor which is located on the shore of Loch Ness. Once you get there, you discover that Lord MacFarley, the man who hired you, has gone missing. This set up serves as a good opening to what eventually becomes a small, unravelling mystery about the Devil's Ridge area and its inhabitants. Of course, this is all in first person (with rotatable, 360-degree functionality), and involves finding objects, figuring out how to use them, and a few logic puzzles. This gameplay will surprise no one who likes these games and, if you played any of Dreamcatcher's other titles that use this engine, you'll be right at home. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with Loch Ness is not that its puzzles are frustratingly difficult or that it's technically inept, but that it is filled with strange ideas and concepts that, in my opinion, fail to deliver a compelling gaming experience. The graphics, while not mind-blowing, are perfectly suited to the game, and the ambient sound, while it could have been better, also functions well. The main problem comes with the totally illogical way in which the game's progression is handled. In most adventure games, when you cannot progress somewhere, it's usually made pretty clear. For example, you try to open a door, you find it's locked. Later in the game, you'll find a key. It might work with that locked door. Makes sense, right? In Loch Ness, there's a frustrating amount of guesswork and backtracking involved. If you come upon a door that can't be opened, you won't be able to interact with it AT ALL. This means, you have no idea if it's locked, or if you simply can't enter because it's not that time yet in the story, which is fairly dumb to begin with. FOr example, when you begin the game, your priority is to explore the Manor. Except, many things are confusingly off limits to you for no reason at all. There's one room where you can clearly see an open drawer which might hold something important. You can't open it. Why? Because the game says so. Later on, you discover that the reason you can't open is the drawer is simply that you weren't supposed to have that item yet. There are several things like that throughout Loch Ness that made me want to give up. I got tired of the endless searching for the one pixel that MIGHT have changed since the last plot point. It gets MUCH better from about the middle of the game onward, but it's still a problem. A few of the ''puzzles'' are a bit senseless as well, thanks mainly to the fact that there's limitations to what can be observed. In one puzzle, the developers failed to actually include the graphics that would have made the puzzle make sense. In other words, when you use an item to interact with the scenery, nothing happens visually. One instance in the game that blew my mind was a part in which you come across a set of items which are needed to progress to a certain area. When you find these items, your character says something to the effect of needing something to ''Carry them all'' around in. Guess what? You can pick up all of these items and carry them ANYWHERE. You simply can't progress where you need to until you locate the ''thing'' that helps you ''carry'' them back to that point. Perhaps I'm spoiled having recently played Myst III (a superb point-and-click game), but Loch Ness lacks the feels of its designers actually wanting to make much of a game. The sassy plot, handled in a very smart-alecy way by the central character, ruins the charm and mystery of the location. This isn't a game about delving into the enigma of Loch Ness, it's a private dick story, similar to the Raymond Chandler epics. On that note, it should also be mentioned that the setting doesn't look REMOTELY like the real Loch Ness. For a game set on the shores of the famous lake, it looks nothing the area at all. While it may sound like I'm bashing Loch Ness to pieces, there are some good aspects. It is a good game for point-and-click beginners because it has no true ''puzzles'' that require a lot of thinking or deconstructing, plus the ''Gallic'' engine makes it so that when you can interact with something, you know whether or not you have the item on you. Unfortunately, a few areas (namely one in which you must find your way through a very non-descript ''maze'' or sorts) may frustrate people, but on the grand scale of adventure games, this one is pretty easy. The only ''inspired'' parts are the timed sections which show a tad bit of creativity. Players may die many deaths, but it spices up an otherwise mildly bland adventure. The game's claim of ''30-40 hours'' of gameplay is complete nonsense, but it will provide a casual gamer with a nicely compact adventure if he/she doesn't have much free time over the course of a week or so. In the end, though, I will say that Wanadoo (the developer) needs to seriously do MUCH more work to their next Cameron Files adventure (scheduled for mid 2002 release) to make it challenge the better class of point-and-clicker.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/02, Updated 06/13/02