Catfish_girl's Profile
Stat Summary
- Average Rating:5
- Helpful Votes:72
- Reviews Submitted:1
- First Review:December 31, 2011
- Most Recent Review:December 31, 2011
- Featured reviews0
Catfish_girl's Review History
Help Sam rescue his love Anna in Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome, an incredible Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game!
Overall rating
5
/
5
72 of 81 found this review helpful
Amazing game, an absolute winner!
PostedDecember 31, 2011
Catfish_girl
fromNetherlands
Skill Level:Expert
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Large File, Puzzle
Fun Factor
5
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
5
/
5
Level of Challenge
5
/
5
I just finished Brink of Consciousness: The Dorian Gray Syndrome and it is a absolute winner! To me this is the best game of 2011, too bad it can't compete for that title, because of its release date
The game bears no resemblance to the novel by Oscar Wilde other then the reference of the villains name and the name of the reporter. The game is about a psychiatric syndrome (although not recognized as a DSM diagnostic criteria) called the Dorian Gray Syndrome. The syndrome always involves a person with strong narcissistic traits who wants to preserve beauty and stop aging. The person suffering from this syndrome will go extremely far to accomplish this.
Sam Wilde is a reporter who wrote a newspaper article about a serial killer. This article caught the attention of our villain and serial killer Oscar who kidnaps Sam's girlfriend and uses this to entrap Sam in a huge mansion. Sam is there to free his girlfriend and thus gets entrapped in a dark psychological cat and mouse play with our villain.
The game, at start, suggests to play with sound for the best experience. Whenever something scary happens we hear it in Sam's breathing and heartbeat, which adds to the suspense. Sam's constant coughing was a little too much for me, as if a little bit of rain will do that. :suspicious: There are large spoken sections over the intercom as our villain comments on the progress Sam makes in the mansion. This might be rather lengthy and tedious for some, but I loved the spoken comments which attributed to the psychological game ambiance and experience.
There is a lot of exploring to do in this game and a lot of back tracking. Fortunately there is a map, although it is not interactive (you can't jump to another location) to keep track of interesting places.
The game has a lot of interesting puzzles, some harder than others but all manageable. There is a skip button for the puzzles. I personally love puzzles and since this game really has a lot of them this was one more reason to love the game.
H0 scenes are decent and most objects can be found without too much trouble. I used the hint button several times on the H0 scenes, but that's just because I am not a H0 lover. All H0 scenes have interactive parts in it, which makes it more interesting.
A lot of items you need in the game have to be picked up, so you really have to pay close attention to the surroundings. If you miss an item you either have to do a lot of backtracking or use the SG, cause for me at one point I got totally stuck because of missing one item.
The hint button charges rather fast but is not always very useful, it sometimes just point to something you know is there but you know you still need some item you don’t have at that point to use there.
The SE ending is satisfying enough for those who are on a budget or don’t want to cough up the extra cash for the CE. Bonus material and bonus chapter however are very well worth the CE price.
I would highly recommend this game and I would rate it with 5 stars on all aspects: game play, atmosphere and ambiance, storyline, graphics and whatever else there is to rate: This game is an absolute winner!
I recommend this game!