Delaware St. John Volume 3: The Seacliff Tragedy is the third game in the long-running series of Mystery-Thriller games by developer, Big Time Games.  The game pays homage to the small developers out there but this just doesn’t seem to have a place amongst the big-boys of Gaming as the game just feels chunky and for the most part boring.

Delaware St. John follows the character of the same name as he travels around from case to case, using his psychic powers as a premise for helping solve the mysteries at hand.  For people who are not familiar with the series, you follow the young American Paranormal Investigator as he aims to crack the mysteries to many different, yet, odd occurrences which plague the areas he visits.  Delaware has psychic powers, allowing him to see the dead, hear previous conversations that would have taken place and for him to see clues which normal people wouldn’t be able to pick up on.  He often has visions of important scenarios that help piece together the clues he needs to find the final conclusion to the strange goings-on around him.

When playing this game, you may end up thinking of such famous iconic people and media such as Sherlock Holmes, the Sixth Sense and Scooby-Doo.  Also, for people who have played Broken Sword (the original), you’ll be able to gather a decent synopsis of the style the game rolls with.  Delaware travels with the help of his friends, Kelly from the bookshop and Simon, the English Researcher.

On beginning the game, you have to choose a story but it seemed that the second one was locked to me until I finished the first so for the purpose of reviewing the game, I decided to let the first story be my deciding factor.  You start off with a short cut scene in which Delaware is talking about his real parents and how he wants to find them, yet himself and the rest of the team have found no clues to their identities.  He also explains how his visions hadn’t been as frequent, which he found very strange.  Then, all of a sudden while on his way to buying Coffee for the team, he has a flashback of an old Amusement Park, which eventually becomes a re-occurring vision that he felt he must check out.  Kelly’s research reveals that due to a mistake in surveying the ground of the Amusement Park, the rollercoaster sub-sides along with around half of the area into the sea, wiping out 100 or so of the park’s visitors.  Due to this catastrophe, the park had been closed down and has since been lying in ruins.  As always, Delaware’s not slow to act on such a story, so he heads to the park in the dead of night to solve the case brought on by his visions.

The game plays out as a sort of point-and-click game, where you direct Delaware using arrows on the screen, interact with objects by clicking on them and using various items (while clicking) to solve riddles and puzzles.  The game takes this whole point-and-click system to its limit as the screen - for the most part - stay’s totally static throughout, leaving you with no real sense of direction and sometimes an awkward way of managing your play style.  Sometimes, you just feel totally lost, waving your mouse pointer around the screen and wondering why the game isn’t easier to understand from a natural point-of-view.

The game doesn’t do much to help when it comes to the control scheme and it just feels odd and dated at times.  The game’s sort of your post-modern take on current PC games, which is all fine and dandy for people with rubbish PC’s but in today’s society, PC’s are quite advanced so I think this game could have looked so much better than it actually is.

This games biggest challenge is the puzzles, not because they’re hard but because they’re largely damaged due to a bad control style.  Once again the controlling using the mouse is causing issues widely as the game is hard enough to see at times, so you miss all sorts.  There are no highlighters over objects and at this point, the game just feels like a drag to play.  On saying that, the puzzles are mostly based on simple things like open a door by finding the key but even then, this far into the series, you’d expect a bit of variety within the gameplay.

At certain points, this game seems to just be pointless.  Back-tracking is a huge issue in this game as its hard enough to map where you’ve actually been already and basic directions seem to get muddled up.  Overall, the system just feels clunky and at times rather un-responsive to what you want to do.  The first two games suffer from these issues, and it’s ashame to see the franchise be brought down due to Developer’s seemingly not paying attention to the games development-cycle.

The most interesting feature in the game (as it has been in the last two also) is the Voice Imagery Communicator (VIC), which acts as the lower HUD on the screen.  It acts as a means of collecting data - like images and audio - for Simon to analyze.  It also acts as Delaware’s inventory system as a sort of easy pickup-and-use style Interface.  The only issue with this is it stays on-screen at all times but is only used in a very particular set of sequences.  The feature hasn’t been used to its full capacity.

Now, not to rain on Delaware’s parade, but the game is way too linear for anyone’s liking.  There’s no open-plan system here like in Broken Sword, the game just seems to drag you along on the exact same route every time you play it which sort of leaves it as a game which wouldn’t be easily re-played for quite some time, or at all.  While many Adventure games allow the player to freely look around to get used to their surroundings, Delaware St. John just sort of ruins that notion.  I’d say the best thing about the game is that after having unlocked a new area, the game does become fun again for around 10 minutes before the boredom once again kicks in.  As always though, this is caused by the insane amount of back-tracking that must take place throughout the game.

This outing of Delaware doesn’t leave much good for itself.  The graphics are horribly dated which ruins the gameplay overall, personally I think this game would have done better on the PS1 or PS2, at least then it could have been justified for it’s lazy attempt at looking good.  The static scenes really ruin the game as they’re just boring.  A Nintendo DS game could handle the static content within the game which says much for the development of the game as a whole.  The music in the game is fine for the most part; it actually fits the game style, leaving quite a good feel during play as music is a big factor in Adventure game playing.

Overall, this game will appeal to a minor sect of people who’s PC’s aren’t all that great.  Others will look and wonder why this franchise exists at all.  With the chunky graphics, frustrating control system and linear style this game is out-right beaten by nearly every other game of its sort.  This doesn’t seem to be the last we’ll hear of Delaware and I can only hope that the next game brings a huge change in style, graphics and management.