It seems like Digital Integration have managed to round up all the sad and unfortunate programmers in France to develop one of the saddest games I've seen. The French just aren't funny any more. The last game they produced that sticks out in my mind was Psyborg. Although it was a reasonably good game, it had a really bizarre story line.
The story this time is about a new substance that has been developed. Apparently it will revolutionise the world of neuro
As if the compulsory stupid story line isn't enough, we have to put up with the ridiculous French sense of humour, which consists of jokes that aren't even fit for Bob's Full House.
This game is from a genre designed for a special type of person - someone who has an unusual amount of patience. Like Operation Stealth and hundreds of games before it, Fascination is very slow to play.
I like to have things going on, which is why I hate playing flight sims simply because they are a waste of time when played ona slow machine - the playability will be nothing like it should be.
In the first screen of the game there are some really blatant attempts to show off naked women. Pointing and clicking on the shower, for instance, brings you two or three very badly drawn frames of the lady in question showering her naked bod - believe me they don't do it very well at all.
The aim of the game is to get the vial of this fluid to a friend of the man who died on the plane. As you have probably gathered, the gameplay is abysmal. It's a very badly done point-and-
Some of the clues in the game are just plain crap. Old Dolores got the fluid from some old codger who popped his clogs on her plane. Befre he died he said the combination to the brief case was... AAARGH! and promptly snuffed it. No prizes for guessing what the combination is. The clues that aren't crap are just plain tedious, like find the telephone book to find the number, snore, snore and so on.
There's one screen where you are in the pool, while yakking way to old friend (wink, wink) and you need to find a pendant. To find it you have to turn on the pool lights so it glitters - obvious really. Now to turn on the lights you have to click on a single pixel in the corner of the screen. You can see why it gets so irritating.
Graphics-wise the game is quite pleasing, in the places where it's not showing pictures of naked women. There are some effective moody shots of car-parks, dark alley
The single most irritating thing is the bloody awful breaks where Dolores bumps in to one of her old bed partners. They then launch the most tedious predictable conversations you have ever heard. You thought the Eldorado script was bad - this is sodding Shakespeare in comparison.
One thing I look for in a game is a decent soundtrack, but apart from a short dodgy tune at the beginning, Fascination has absolutely none to speak of. I'm just thanking my lucky stars that they didn't digitise the speech of the conversations.
Definitely a game for the sort of people who enjoy drooling over the underwear section of Rackam's catalogues. If you're after a mouse-
Better still sit in a room watching Eldorado with a copy of the Sunday Sport. This month it's an over-sexed air hostess, next month is going to be a raving mad lorry driver.