Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

"Jane Jensen delivers the goods once again"

Finally, Gabriel Knight III is here! After years of waiting the sequel to the sequel of Gabriel Knight has arrived. But has it been worth the wait. Well I can confidently state that it certainly has. Cue scenes of rejoicing of adventure-starved gamers everywhere.

Gabriel Knight III: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (let's just called it GK3 from now on) is a return to your traditional point ‘n' click adventure gaming with a new spinney-rotatey™ 3D graphics engine. Rather than just controlling the character around the screen, you can also control the screen around the character by moving the camera up and down, left and right, in and out, round and around, in fact anywhere you bloody well please! And at first it's all a bit disorientating. But I do say at first! Because after playing around with the camera and playing the game you will find that the camera really lends itself well to the game, because in GK3 you really need to keep your eyes peeled and being able to zoom in on almost everything helps a great deal. Now, I have delved straight into the details of the engine because anyone who goes out and buys (rents, borrows, steals) the game will start up the game and go “what all this?!” - I did! But soon you will be gliding your way around Rennes-Le-Chateau like a pro.

Which seamlessly leads us onto the storyline on the game. No adventure game worth it's salt can claim to be a good one unless it has a strong story to it – be it funny, scary, suspenseful, twisting, complex or intriguing. And GK3 has all of these factors. The game starts you off with Gabriel coming around on the Paris – Couiza train after a blow to the head after tracking two men whom kidnapped Prince James Stewart's son, Charlie, who you were so diligently watching. The pre-intro details are in the graphic novel supplied with the game, which I do suggest you read because you will be scratching your head thinking, “what's going on here?” You end up at the Hotel in the real-life town of Rennes-Le-Chateau, which is the centre of our little mystery, and you will soon release that there is more to this mystery than just a missing baby. With a whole host of characters, all with their own agendas, GK3's storyline is as an involving one as you are likely to find in any game, film, book or any form of entertainment as you'd care to name. With Tim Curry reappearing as the voice of Gabriel, the characters really bring the game to life and the intrigue is immense – it really draws you in. Gabe's voice grates a bit at first if you've never played a GK game before but you soon realise it suits him to the ground.

The game is split into timeblocks, for instance at the start it is Day 1, 10am-12pm. These timeblocks are moved on by completion of certain events, which can range from talking to a certain person, discovering a particular item or a combination of many. During these timeblocks the other characters will perform their own tasks and it is an idea to keep a track of what they are doing so you can actually get an idea of the larger picture of what is happening in this small town.

The gameplay is what you would expect from a point ‘n' click adventure, but it is the balance of the puzzles, which is almost perfect, that gets GK3 above the rest. Although there are some puzzles which has even myself, a seasoned adventure gamer, thinking, “HELP!” but every problem has a solution, if you look close enough.

The involvement of Grace Nakimura, of whom fans of the series will remember with great fondness is a nice twist on things, where you switch from controlling Gabriel to Grace, so your style of play has to switch slightly. Where Gabriel is the more sneaky one and a lot of guile and swagger, whereas Grace is the more pleasant and personable one of whom you will have more success with when trying to prise information out of the other characters. Also, the use of SIDNEY (the Schattenjager Information Database) is great fun, because you can use it to scan photos, store fingerprints, write notes about suspects and search for information relating to the mystery (all in the game) and adds a nice element to the game. Also, using the fingerprint kit to find out what everyone is up to is always very satisfying.

Graphically, GK3 is very nice indeed. The thing that appealed to me most was not only the very beautiful and true-to-life (apparently) but the faces of the characters are very detailed and the lip movement brings the characters to life and make them very believable. The engine also allows you to change the detail levels, and resolution of the game, which is a rarity in an adventure game. But the game ran quite nicely on my PII 233 with 128MB RAM and Voodoo2 but I would recommend a higher spec if you want to run it with the detail levels maxed out. But even with the low detail levels it looks very nice indeed.

Sound in the game is good, if unspectacular. The voice acting is excellent, with Tim Curry doing another impeccable job of bring Gabe to life and in fact I find it hard to fault any of the voice talent, and those of you who watch Star Trek will no doubt recognise the voices of Rene Auberjonois and John De Lancie throwing their talent into the pot. But then again, all of this is irrelevant because in an adventure game you look for a strong storyline and good puzzles, which GK3 has, in abundance.

The only real fault is that I wished it could have gone on for even longer, it took me 5 days to complete, although I must admit a lot of that time was taken into the wee hours.

Well judging my ravings I think that you have realised that I loved GK3 and that any fan of the series will HAVE to buy this now, fans of the genre should buy this now, and anyone with a passing interest in gaming should have it too. It leaves most recent adventure efforts quivering like scared rabbits (aside Grim Fandango and Discworld Noir, which it compares up against very favourably). Classic.

Graphics – 9: Lovely. Brings the entire game to life – especially the characters.

Sound – 8: Great voice acting, some of the most convincing I heard.

Replayability – 7: It's an adventure game so it is debatable about how replayable it is, but with the points system, it will make you want to get every last point available. I completed it with 865 out of 960-odd and I want to see what I missed.

Gameplay - 9: A superb storyline, great puzzles, deep characters – what more could you ask for from an adventure game?

One question Sierra. When's Gabriel Knight 4 coming out?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/02/99, Updated 12/02/99