Sanitarium

ASC

Originally written ~1997-8

Warning!  While I endeavor not to, there may be some minor spoilers in the review.  Proceed at your own risk.

Introduction

Imagine yourself waking up with amnesia in an insane asylum where all the patients have gotten loose.  If you aren't sure that you are in an asylum, the guy beating his head against the wall until the wall drips with blood should clue you in.  This is where you begin in Sanitarium, a wonderful adventure game that is disturbing, fun, engrossing, and game-lock inducing.  The story unfolds as you attempt to discover who you are, what is going on, and determing reality from fantasy.  While I think it is a bit too easy (and thus, too short) I give it my enthusiastic endorsement.

Review

During the game you will become one of four characters - yourself, a young girl, a cyclops, or an Aztec war god.  Each has their own strengths and weaknesses and exists in an environment particular to them.

There are three basic facets to gameplay: the standard adventure "get object X to give to use on person Y or object Z", action sequences, and logic/classic puzzles.  I prefered the adventure ("XYZ") part of the game, but found the action sequences to be a nice break as were the logic puzzles.  Unlike the Lucas Arts/Sierra action sequences, "losing" here simply meant a quick and easy do-over with the added bonus that anything you had acomplished remains accomplished (no more "two steps from the end, mess up, do all over again" sequences).  The logic puzzles fit nicely into the story for the most part.  Most were quite logical (that's from the department of redundancy department) and quite simple once you understood what was going on.  The only two I had a problem with were the "shut down the reactor" puzzle and the "electric field piano keys" one.  The former because it took me 20 minutes to find the 3 small buttons on the insect's back and the latter because... well, I just didn't see the pattern (pure trial and error here).

Graphics are suitably twisted and detailed - I loved the Red Herring building.  Game environments range from various parts of the Sanitarium to a small town to a circus to an Aztec village and more.  My only complaint here is that it is sometimes too difficult to see an object on screen;  I had a devil of a time noticing the shovel in Chapter 2. 

Sounds are spooky and voice acting is well done (I especially like the voice in the game menu).  However, sometimes conversations appear out of nowhere - I would have the opportunity to pursue a clue that I had not heard before, or would suddenly be aware of information that had not yet been revealed to me.

Conclusion

I want to give a hearty round of applause for the developers at ASC for such an engrossing game.  In particular, I would like to commend the director, as the way the story is revealed through flashbacks and very interesting video sequences is excellent for any medium (even the big screen) and particularly outstanding in the computer games genre.