The second chapter in the Gabriel Knight series by Sierra has some promise. Expanding on the first game, in which Gabriel Knight, a simple bookstore owner, finds out he is the last in a long line of Shadow Hunters, GK2 gives his assistant Grace a much larger role in the adventure. In fact, for half the game, you guide Grace -- a tough and very smart researcher -- rather than Gabriel.
The plot is interesting, involving a series of mutilation murders in and around Munich, which are blamed on escaped wolves from a local zoo. Of course, if that’s all it was, this would be a pretty boring adventure, wouldn’t it?
Bad Moon Rising
Obviously, something more sinister is afoot in GK2. The townspeople of Rittersburg, Knight’s ancestral home, believe werewolves have returned to their midst. It is your job to guide Gabriel and Grace through the mystery.
GK2 uses the standard “hot-spot” interface. You run the cursor over the screen. If you can manipulate or take an object or talk to a person, the cursor turns into a dagger. If there is an exit, the cursor turns into a small exit sign. Cinematic cut scenes show the action actually taking place.
Clicking on the “face” icon in the lower left hand corner allows you to save a game -- a good idea for several reasons -- load a game, or adjust your preferences.
In the lower right-hand corner are three icons that allow you to see your inventory, playback important films or review interview tapes (Gabriel) or notes (Grace). Moving from location to location is similarly easy. When you exit one location, you are presented with a map. Places you can visit on the map are highlighted. Simply click on you’re on your way.
The bark. . .
The actors are definitely B Grade. A little above the par of high school drama classes, these actors won’t be gracing anything larger than a 20” monitor any time in the near future. Gabriel’s voice takes on an annoyingly casual drawl, while Grace can be just a little too forceful in her delivery.
The puzzles run toward the deductive. You have to learn to link things like a paw print in muddy ground with a bag of cement in a storage shed. Do it right, and you end up with a cast of the print that could come in quite handy.
For the most part, though, you are a pretty passive observer, and your options are fairly limited. When you get a chance to talk to someone, you usually just go through the available topics until they are exhausted. From what I could tell, it makes no difference at all what order you ask the questions in. The game play mainly comes down to figuring out where to go and when.
 
. . . and the bite
The main problem I had with GK2 had nothing to do with plot, gameplay or acting. Instead, the most difficult part is gettting the game to work reliably. At first, I had terrible problems -- even with fairly minimal extensions. The sound skipped and repeated, and the video was jerky. I thought perhaps the problem was my double-speed CD-ROM drive. And, while it wasn’t pleasant, it was possible to follow along. But then the game kept locking up -- in a really bad way. Not even a three-finger salute would unlock it.
I found tech support on Sierra’s Web site (www.sierra.com) and sent in a message. A couple of days later, I received a very helpful and friendly reply. The gist was to go to absolute minimal extensions -- Sound, QuickTime, and CD-ROM. The tech also recommended taking the disk cache down to 32k.
I did all of this, and the result was immediately noticeable. Sound was completely fixed. The video was still slightly erratic, but light years better than before. No more lock-ups. It was a whole new game.
I played through the rest of the first chapter without incident. But in the second chapter, I keep coming across an unimplemented trap error and random lock-ups. I haven’t had time to check back with tech support. Hopefully, this too can be fixed. But a game shouldn’t take so much effort to work right on a fairly common system (a 6100/66 w/16 megs of RAM).
The verdict
Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within is, at best, an average game. It breaks no new ground in technology, gaming or story telling. But it would be a pleasant enough diversion if not for the numerous glitches and restarts. Those seriously detract from the game-playing experience.
