DarkSeed II is the sequel to the 1993 release, DarkSeed, which was winner of the Software Publishers Association’s 1993 Excellence in Software Award for Best Fantasy Role-Playing/Adventure Game. The main character, Mike Dawson, is living in his mother’s home. He is recuperating from a nervous breakdown he suffered during the first DarkSeed. In DarkSeed II, it seems that one night Mike went to his high school reunion with his high school sweetheart, Rita. The next day, she was found murdered and Mike became the prime suspect. Unfortunately, he cannot remember a thing. There is a lot of talk of the Ancients, the Dark World, and the destruction of mankind. Our job is to help Mike uncover who killed Rita and save the world.
I got interested in DarkSeed II because it uses the artwork of Swiss artist H.R. Giger. I’ve been an admirer of his paintings for years. He designed the sets and the alien in the Alien films and the creatures in the films Poltergeist II and Species. I figured that any software he allowed his artwork to be in couldn’t be that bad. I was wrong. Mike is a loser and this game isn’t to much further ahead.
Psychoanalysis
So just what is wrong with this game? The plot is interesting enough. Admittedly, I never finished the game and when I looked through the Internet newsgroups, I found out what happened at the end of the game and was very surprised. It was quite good. There is a lot to learn and discover as you wade through the game. The still pictures that are used as backdrops are pretty well drawn and pleasing to the eye. The music and sounds are also pretty good. One of the problems is with the main character, Mike Dawson. He is a mess. He drones on forever about, “Rita....”. If this guy were a friend of yours, you’d tell him to get it together and quit whining or else. Anything Mike does say that isn’t concerned with his ex is just ridiculous. What also hurts this game is that there is an abundance of places to go and things to click on that Mike either doesn’t like, doesn’t have time for, can’t use or doesn’t find interesting. In other words, they have nothing to do with the game except give Mike his chance at letting us in on his view of the world. As I said, he’s recovering from a nervous breakdown so you can take a wild guess at how meaningful and interesting his views are. Here are a few examples. In his mother’s house is a bathroom—which is fair enough. Click on the shower, he doesn’t want to wash. Click on the medicine cabinet, he says he already took his medication. I never saw him do it and I’ve been messing around with this guy since morning. Click on the toilet and he says, “Mom hates it when I leave the toilet seat up but it’s my little way of rebelling against the system.” Uh huh. O.K. Mike, calm down. Clicking on a crate in the middle of the employee tent at a carnival, hoping there is something there I can use, Mike says, “I don’t want to touch this crate, I’d probably get a splinter or a spider bite.” Yeah, you better watch out there. In general, there is far too much talk and not enough action.
 
Anamaniacs
Another thing I disliked about DarkSeed II is the animation. What the animators basically did was place an actor, in this example poor Mike, in the middle of a room, photograph him straight on and then every time he turned forty-five degrees. This gives you a picture of Mike from all sides. Now instead of making a film of him walking, electronically cut and paste his legs moving. Instead of filming him speaking, cut and paste his lower jaw going up and down like a ventriloquist’s dummy. You can actually see the whole lower jaw moving vertically up and down, as a block, in a straight line. This is done throughout the game. The result is an unbelievable job of animation that was cutting edge, perhaps five years ago. I could not get into this at all, especially after the game makers say how DarkSeed II, “takes advantage of the latest computer entertainment technology.” It looks like a very badly dubbed foreign movie starring marionettes or puppets. It’s also very choppy looking. You have to wonder why they took this route since they do use film clips to animate the flags flying on top of the carnival. The flags are waving away, nice and smooth.
During the game it seemed there were many times you had to go back to a point you previously, and thoroughly, explored because some conversation you had with a character six screens away made something now appear or change at that location. So even though you might be sure you checked everything at a location you can never be sure that you are done with that spot because things might later change, adding up to a lot of uncertainty and frustration.
To hold a conversation with another character in the game, there are lines of dialog at the bottom of the screen that you can pick for Mike to say. The directions say to reply carefully because what you say could have drastic consequences for the rest of the game. To amuse myself I tried being mean or annoying to everyone I met. It wasn’t possible. No matter how hard I tried the game insisted that I get back to the script by showing me the lines I should choose, until I finally chose them.
Crrrash
Twice the game crashed on me. This occurred just after I saved the game so I had to go back to another previously saved game. What happened in one instance was that Mike was lying on a psychiatrists’ couch talking to his therapist, who was sitting next to him. After the save, Mike disappeared. The doctor was looking at an empty couch and there was nothing that I could do to bring Mike back. The second crash produced similar results in the game.
At a carnival, Mike says, “Carousels are nice to look at but I don’t enjoy riding them, you just go around and around without getting anywhere.” Unfortunately, that is how I feel about DarkSeed II.
Pros
• Good plot.
• Very good sound.
• Very nice still pictures.
• Excellent on line help.
Cons
• Comical animation.
• Too much talk, not enough action.
• Frustrating puzzles.
• Many places to explore and many items to look at that have nothing to do with the game.
