Opera Fatal
Quicklist
-
Hybrid
game - plays on Windows or Mac
-
Mouse-controlled, point-and-click (or point-and-drag) interface
-
Snapshot-type movement - no panning
-
Single
CD
-
First
person viewpoint
-
Geared
toward a younger gamer
-
Refreshing lack of action or arcade sequences
-
Can't
die in the game
-
May
need Indeo codecs installed for the Mac version (included on the
game CD)
-
16-bit
version of QuickTime 2.1.2.59 required for Windows (included on the
game CD)
Opera Fatal
is a music-oriented edutainment game published by Heureka-Klett. The
cover of the box is adorned with the picture of an ornate old opera
house set against a stormy night sky. The box looked spooky and
mysterious in the small photos I saw of it on the Net. It wasn't
until I ordered the game and saw the actual box itself that I became
aware of it's slightly cartoonish aspect. I'd been expecting a more
suspenseful game. The title Opera Fatal suggests drama and
danger, doesn't it? Well I thought it did. I know better now. I have
no idea where the Fatal in Opera Fatal comes from.
Maybe someone died while they were making the game.
The box doesn't give
an age range, but it's pretty obvious the game was meant for a
younger gamer than myself. None of the puzzles are really
hard. Nothing is really scary. Much of the opera house is
brightly lit and colorful and the graphics are slightly cartoonish.
The first time you hear footsteps running away just around the
corner or see a shadow flitting across a passageway, you may get a
bit of a thrill. But you always hear the same footsteps in the same
places and see the same shadow flit across the same hallways. So the
surprise element wears off pretty quickly. Instead you find
unexpected bits of humor.
Clicking on things
that are clickable may reward you in unexpected ways. The paintings
of the composers on the wall of the upstairs hall may wink or make a
funny face when you click on them. Cups of tea and coffeepots emit
puffs of steam as if they conceal steam engines from a miniature
choo choo train. There is a small café where two coffeepots with
anthropomorphic features appear to be in the process of having an
argument. Click between them and they will hiss at each other. You
discover things like the forgotten remains of a dinner long past,
hidden away in the drawers of desks. When you use a photocopy
machine, you see a large lump passing through a pipe on the side of
the machine before your paper copy emerges in the copy tray. Click
on a bag you find in a chest and it will make a sound like the horn
of a train. Click on a tube of toothpaste to pick it up and it will
spurt toothpaste instead of going into inventory. The game is full
of little surprises like this.
The edutainment part
is on the light side - provided you've had any form of music lessons
at some point in your life. The musical instruments that are
described are probably instruments you've seen before. The makers of
Opera Fatal didn't include any interesting antique or unusual
types. The descriptions of the different musical periods are very
brief. There are some lists of dates, which you may need to consult
to answer questions or solve puzzles in the game, but which aren't
likely to stick in your mind after you finish. Some of the
interactive parts of the library which deal with musical chords and
keys may be useful for someone who hasn't been exposed to this sort
of thing before. I think 8 years old would not be too young to
understand the material in the game. But the individual would need
to have some interest in learning to read music in order to find it
fun.
Most of the "puzzles"
require the gamer to consult the edutainment resources. Some require
the gamer to listen to musical samples. So if classical music really
turns you off, this game is not for you. I've mentioned before that
the puzzles are not difficult. By that, I mean they are logical.
There is no complicated lateral thinking required. You have to
methodically explore the opera house to search for the pages with
the questions. And you'll probably need to consult the edutainment
resources to find the answers to most of the questions you find. For
some gamers, this may seem a little too much like a take-home test
from school and not enough like an adventure game.
Story
Your
character is the conductor of an orchestra. Someone has stolen the
musical score and you must find it before the premiere of the opera
house the following night. Somehow you know the missing music is to
be found in the opera house so you start your search there. At the
beginning of the game, you can only access a few areas. You find the
thief has left you messages in the form of scraps of paper with
numbered questions on them. For some reason, answering these
questions, by typing the answers into a book on the desk in your
office, allows you admission into new parts of the opera house.
Despite the fact that you are a conductor and no doubt had to pass
numerous college/conservatory courses in order to embark on your
career, you often have to consult various sources of information
within the game in order to find the answers to the questions. Every
time you answer a set of questions you will be able to access
something that will open up new areas for you to explore. For
example, a closet door may come unlocked so you can pick up the key
inside. The game ending was sort of disappointing, sort of corny,
but not wholly unexpected given the character of the rest of the
game.
Edutainment resources
You have several
sources of musical information in the game. The library has books on
music theory and notation. As you page through the books, the
narrator reads them to you (unless you turn him off in the game
options). Each page has a sentence or two and an illustration. You
can page ahead or back by clicking on arrows at the bottom of the
screen. Some of the pages allow you to interact with the
illustration. When interaction is available, you see a little yellow
happy face at the bottom of the screen. You click on it to interact.
The happy face sometimes comments on your actions. If you are asked
to click on the notes of a scale and you click on the wrong ones,
the happy face will shake its head, look sad, and go "mnh-nh." If
you click on the right notes, the happy face will look especially
happy and exclaim "Okay!" On those pages of the book where no
interaction is allowed, the happy face goes all flat and disappears.
Another resource
found in the library is the Music History Display, a sort of
windowshade-type pull-down display with information on the different
music periods covered in the game: Baroque (ca. 1600-1750),
Classical (ca. 1750-1820), Romantic (1820-1880), and Impressionist
(1880-1910). The display includes a very general description of the
historical period, general characteristics of the music from that
period, and a list of a few famous composers from that period. All
twelve of the composers listed for the Romantic period have links
that are accessible for further details. But only three of the nine
Baroque composers listed have links for further information. Only
three composers are listed at all under Classical (Mozart,
Haydn, and Beethoven) and only two under Impressionist (Debussy and
Ravel). I'm sure they could have come up with more names than this
if they'd made an effort. They could at least have listed them. They
way they have it, they make it seem like the Romantic period
produced far more composers than either the Classical or
Impressionist periods. This is sort of a lopsided presentation if
you ask me.
In case anyone is
confused, "classical music" includes music from all the musical
periods mentioned above - and more. In the general sense,
"classical" refers to music generally considered to be of a more
enduring type, in contrast to pop music. But "classical" also refers
to music from a specific time period, lasting roughly from 1750 to
1820. I can remember my 2nd or 3rd grade teacher trying to explain
this to the class. It confused me then and has bothered me ever
since. Why didn't they call it something different instead of trying
to confuse people? Oh well. Back to the review...
The conductor (your
character) has a CD collection in his office which is grouped by
musical period. The composers' names are listed on the back of the
CD's. By clicking on a CD, you have access to a list of two or three
pieces of music (or perhaps one long one) by that composer. You can
read and listen to any of the music samples. Sometimes a single
musical selection will be divided into two or more parts with a
short pause in between. So if you want to hear everything,
allow a little time after you think the selection is finished before
clicking back to the CD Shelf. A single arrow at the left side of
the menu bar will take you back one screen. A double arrow at the
right side of the menu bar will take you back to the CD Shelf, from
which you can either exit or choose another CD to listen to.
There is a poster on
the wall of the music room which can be accessed for information on
the musical instruments that are pictured there. When you click on
an instrument you are taken to a screen where you can find the
dimensions of the instrument, see the parts of the instrument
labelled, listen to it play a sample which gives an idea of its
range, and see a movie of the instrument being rotated so you can
view it from different angles. There is also a picture of a small
stage curtain which you can click on to open the curtain and watch
and listen to a musician playing the instrument on the tiny stage.
This poster also had a bug, described below in the section on
Bugs.
The edutainment
resources are accessible both from within the game and by clicking
on icons in the main menu of the game. So when you're in the
basement and suddenly find you need to know what year Ravel was born
in so you can operate the elevator, you don't need to haul your
tuckus all the way down the hall and up two flights of stairs to the
library in order to look up this necessary information. You can
simply exit to the main menu and access the Music History Display
directly.
Installation
The game plays off
the CD on both Windows and Mac platforms. Only the saves are kept on
the hard drive.
The Windows version
of Opera Fatal requires QuickTime 2.1.2.59 to play, which is
included on the game CD. The game uses the 16-bit version of
QuickTime 2.1.2.59. So if you have the 32-bit version of QuickTime
2.1.2.59 already installed on your computer, but not the 16-bit
version, you'll need to install the 16-bit version from the CD. This
is what happened to me. I had the 32-bit version installed (from
either Amber or Nine) and when I tried to start Opera Fatal I
got a nice black screen until I went back and installed the
QuickTime version that came on the CD (and rebooted). After that the
game worked just fine.
The Mac I tested on,
an old 9500/200 with OS 9.1, already had QuickTime 4 installed.
Since QuickTime is supposed to be backwards compatible on the Mac, I
didn't install any QuickTime from the game CD. Most of the game ran
fine. But I ran into a problem when I tried to access the movies in
the Musical Instrument Poster. The little movies of the people
playing the instruments would not play. So I went back and installed
the codecs that were provided on the game CD. After that the movies
played, but they did have a minor bug (discussed later under Bugs).
Documentation
The manual is quite a
bit larger than most recent game manuals. It is 7½" x 9½" and 18
pages long. It includes black-and-white illustrations and
explanations of the various interfaces you see in the game,
including the main menu, the library Bookshelf, the pull-down Music
History Display, the CD Shelf, and the Musical Instrument Poster.
The information is all laid out pretty clearly. There are no
confusing background images to obfuscate the printed words, so it is
easier to read than a lot of recent game manuals. Unfortunately it
does not include any useful troubleshooting tips.
Graphics
The graphics in
Opera Fatal are a little grainy. According to the manual, the
first edition of Opera Fatal was published in 1996. This
would have been a German version. My English version had most of the
files dated 1996 or 1997 and seems to have been published in 1998.
Colors are bright and cheerful in well-lit areas like the lobby.
Other areas, like the basement, are darker. But most of the game is
bright and the graphics have a whimsical feel. I tried reducing the
brightness on my monitor to make the game seem a little creepier,
but all this did was make it harder to see things in drawers. It
just isn't a spooky game.
Opera Fatal
does not use DirectX to automatically set the game resolution or
color depth. Whatever your desktop is set to is what the game will
run with. Graphics are displayed full screen (except for the narrow
menu bar at the bottom) at 640x480. If you play the game with your
desktop set to higher than 640x480, the game will function but the
image will have a black frame around it. The higher your desktop
resolution, the fatter the black frame.
The manual recommends
running in 256 colors, but states that you can run at any color
depth. With the desktop set to 16-bit color, most of the graphics
will still be only 256 colors in the game. The exception is the
movies of people playing instruments in the Musical Instrument
poster. On the Mac, these movies had very weird colors when my
desktop was set to 256 colors. On the PC they looked more normal,
but still a bit off. They looked normal on both computers when the
desktop was set to 16-bit color.
One problem I
encountered with my desktop set to 16-bit color was a malfunction in
the operation of the pull-down display in the library, which
occurred only on the Mac. More on this under Bugs. This
problem may not appear on all Macs.
Sound Effects,
Voices, and Music
Sound effects are
good, though not outstanding. I assume the footsteps you hear
hurrying away are those of the thief who stole the musical score.
But to me they sounded like the footsteps of a little girl and I
kept imagining this mischievous little girl running around leaving
these messages to tease the nervous old maestro.
When you find an
inventory item, solve a puzzle correctly, or write the correct
answer in the book on the desk, you hear a musical chord or a
fanfare to let you know you did something right. There is also a
characteristic sound that you get when you click on something you
can't interact with yet, but will at some point in the future.
The only character
voice you hear is that of the conductor in the introduction. This
voice sounded too young to be convincing as the voice as an old
white-haired conductor. But you don't have to listen to it much.
There is also the narrator that reads the books in the library and
the descriptions in the Musical Instrument Poster to you. The
narrator spoke clearly and was easy to understand. Except for one
brief section in one of the library books, the narrator was always
male.
The introduction to
the game has dramatic music. But once you start playing the game,
the music comes mostly in short snippets. You enter the main
entrance hall and you hear the entrance hall snippet. You go
downstairs into the basement area and you hear the creepy basement
music snippet. The music often cuts off abruptly if you leave an
area before the clip is finished. This happens a lot if you're
trying to get from one place to another in a hurry. It gave me a
fresh appreciation of games where the music fades out or dissolves
into different music gradually. Maybe I've been spoiled by newer
games, but there are older games than Opera Fatal which
manage to change the music more gracefully. There are some rooms,
such as the room next to the elevator in the basement, where the
music does not stop after the snippet plays, but loops around
instead. As you get farther into the game, the new areas tend to
have music that loops.
Some areas have
background sound instead of music or a musical snippet. My favorite
background sound was found in the boiler room - a combination of a
low, organ-like sound with a somewhat sinister bubbling. When you
enter the basement hall, you hear a dissonant crashing noise, which
might actually seem threatening in a more serious game. The attic
and other backstage areas tend to have background sound or ominous
atonal mood music while the bright, well lit areas have cheerful
music (or snippets). My favorite background music was in the sewing
room. It was reminiscent of one of Satie's Gymnopedias. Satie is an
Impressionist composer the game neglected to honor with a mention.
If you've ever watched old Lassie reruns (the ones without Timmy)
you've heard Satie's piano music.
Most of the music you
hear during the game is lighthearted and playful, as you might
expect in a kid's game. In a couple of rooms, it even resembles
carnival music. Mostly it is tolerable but some of it can get really
annoying, for example the snippets that play every single time you
go through the main or upstairs lobby. Not only were they silly to
start with, but their repetition became increasingly tiresome. After
playing the game for a couple of hours during the day, these
repetitive tunes lingered in my head and followed me around like a
hard-to-digest dinner, generally making life more miserable than it
had to be.
I have to say I
expected a richer soundtrack in a game that's ostensibly about
classical music. Most of the classical music in the game is in the
samples you hear in the edutainment interfaces. I was expecting
something more like Ring or Versailles, where you hear
classical music throughout.
As far as I could
tell, the sound was monaural and not stereo. Not a big deal with
this game, but I wondered if something had gone wrong with my
speakers at first.
Interface
Opera Fatal
is point-and-click and entirely mouse-driven. Every time you start
the game you get the opening video, which you can skip by holding
down the left mouse button (or the one-and-only mouse button on the
Mac). Even if you skip the video, you get the tail end of it, where
the conductor exclaims "I must find the music!" Then you must
click your way into the opera house. Once you're inside, the menu
bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. You will see any
inventory you may collect in the menu bar. You access the main menu
through the switch icon on the right side of the menu bar.
From the main menu
you can save and load a game. Upon starting up the game, it takes a
bit of fussing about to load a saved game. The first thing you will
do is to skip the opening video. Next you must listen to the
conductor do his little speech. Then you click your way into the
opera house, click the switch icon in the menu bar to access the
main menu, click to access the load screen, and finally click
to load your saved game. *whew*
You can't just click
anywhere and expect to move. You must move your cursor to some place
on the screen where a movement arrow appears, and then click.
Movement arrows are fairly self-explanatory. Arrows can indicate
direction. Upward arrows may mean either move forward or zoom in.
Downward arrows mean back away or back out of an interface. Bent
arrows give an approximate idea of where you'll move to, though
exactly how you'll move will depend on where you are. Movement is
snapshot-like with no transitions other than a sort of dissolve
which probably won't be noticeable on faster computers. You aren't
always allowed to turn in all directions. Often you'll find that
when you want to turn around, you can turn in one direction but not
the other. In one hall, I had to move to the end of the hall before
I could turn around. Movement is not that hard to get used to, but
it seemed a little stiff to me.
Inventory collection
and management is easy enough. Just click on an item to pick it up.
If you want to use an item, click on it in inventory and the cursor
will grab the item. Then click the item on whatever it is you want
to use it on. Often a little animation will play - such as a wrench
twisting a nut or a key turning in a lock. After use, the item will
disappear from inventory. Sometimes you need to click-and-drag
objects in the environment instead of just clicking on them. For
example, to move marbles from one place to another you must keep the
mouse button pressed as you move them or they'll drop off the
cursor.
During the course of
the game, you will find the thief has left you pages with numbered
questions on them. To progress in the game, you must type the
answers into the book on the conductor's desk. You can't keep the
pages with the questions on them. You can pick them up and look at
them, but you'll have to write down what they say. Don't forget to
write down the number that goes with the question. Some of the pages
that you find have clues or questions that help you solve puzzles or
access new areas directly rather than being questions you need to
answer in the conductor's book. For example, in order to summon the
elevator to the basement, you will need to enter the year Ravel was
born into the elevator control panel.
The options screen in
the main menu has minimal options. You can adjust the overall volume
of the game, turn off the narrator, turn off transitions
(dissolves), adjust brightness, and access the four reference
sections (listed as Music Examples, Music Theory, Instruments, and
Music History). There are also controls to Save, Load, Return to the
game, or Exit. I suggest you turn off "Transitions" since all they
are is dissolves. Even on an old 200 MHz computer where you can see
the dissolves, they aren't much to look at and only serve to make
the game response seem sluggish. If you choose to reset any of the
game options, you have to do it every time you restart the game
because your preferences aren't saved anywhere.
Opera Fatal
does allow you to rummage in desks and look in closets. In some
cases, you'll have to set the things you look at back the way they
were before you're able to exit the closeup screen and continue the
game. For example, the down arrow to exit the screen may not appear
until you close that drawer you've been searching through. Or the
side arrow to turn away may not appear until you pull back that
curtain you were looking behind. But other times a drawer or
whatever will shut automatically when you back away. So it isn't
100% consistent.
Puzzles
Most of the puzzles
in the game consist of finding the pieces of paper with the
questions on them and typing the answers in the book on the
conductor's desk. But you also collect inventory items. They're
usually fairly straightforward - a key will fit in a lock, a cloth
will wipe something, a wrench will turn a nut, a crank will crank
something that was missing its crank, etc.
There are a few music
puzzles. I think there were three separate occasions when I was
called on to recognize a piece of music. But there was always some
hint given in the question which would narrow down the possibilities
enough so trial and error could get the answer. A trip to the CD
collection and the fact that you only have a limited number of
samples to choose from will further narrow the possibilities. Not
only that, but the book you type the answers in tells you how many
letters the answer has. So you see, trial and error and process of
elimination will stand you in good stead if you have a tin ear.
Other puzzles involve
figuring out how to restore power or set controls. The puzzles I had
the most difficulty with were the ones about music terminology that
required looking up things in the Music Theory books in the Library.
It wasn't the difficulty of knowing which volume to look in so much
as having to page through the sections that got to me. You can skip
the narrations, but you can't skip the animations on those pages
that have animations. This put some strain on my short supply of
patience. I don't like having to wait to turn a page, even if it's
only for a few seconds. By contrast, looking up dates was relatively
easy. Either the Music History Display or the CD Collection or both
would supply dates.
Bugs
The interface of the
Musical Instrument Poster had a couple of bugs. On the Mac computer
I needed to install the Indeo codecs from the game CD in order to
see the little movies of the people playing the instruments. I got
the movies then. But in addition to the moving image in the little
mini-stage, I got a still image on the upper left side of my screen
which was not supposed to be there. It would remain there even after
the movie had finished unless I clicked on the icon for the musical
scale, which got rid of it. Curiously, when I replayed the movie the
unwanted still image would not reappear as long as I did not exit
the screen for that particular instrument. Since I only have this
one Mac to test on, I can't say for sure that all Macs would have
this problem. It may be that the Indeo codecs on the CD weren't
quite compatible with the QuickTime 4 that came with the OS 9.1
installation. Maybe newer codecs would have eliminated the problem.
Considering the relatively benign nature of this bug, it didn't seem
worth the time to troubleshoot.
More distressing was
when the icon to back out of the Musical Instrument Poster did not
appear. I moved the cursor all over the screen looking for it to
appear. It did not. Just by chance (and by clicking madly in
consternation) I discovered that clicking over toward the lower left
part of the screen would back me out of it. So the hotspot was there
even though the backwards arrow cursor did not appear. This
particular problem appeared on both the Mac and the PC.
When running the game
in 16-bit color, I encountered an unfortunate bug in the pull-down
display in the library. This problem only occurred on the Mac. I
would sometimes click on the name of a composer and no text would
appear. The narrator would read something, but there was only a
blank page to look at. And worst of all, there was no way out of
that screen short of the three-fingered salute. Not only was there
no cursor change to indicate a back-out hotspot, but clicking all
over the screen, which had produced such glorious results in the
Musical Instrument Display, was an exercise in futility. After using
the Mac equivalent of a three-fingered salute to close down the game
(alt-clover-escape), I changed to 256 colors and found the problem
did not recur. Repeated testing seemed to indicate that the
pull-down display interface is not entirely reliable when the game
is run at 16-bit color, but seemed to always work at 256 colors.
This bug only occurred on the old Mac I was testing on and not on
the PC, but I suggest you save your game before consulting the
pull-down display just in case.
As noted earlier, the
videos of the people playing instruments in the Musical Instrument
Poster did not look right when played in 256 colors. The manual says
the game will run at any color depth, but "We recommend setting your
monitor to 256 colors. Opera Fatal runs smoothest this way."
Considering how ugly the movies of the people playing the
instruments looked when I ran the game using 256 colors and
considering that the problem with the pull-down display only
appeared on the Mac computer, I'd recommend running the game in
16-bit to start with. Just be sure to save before using the
pull-down display in the library.
Minimum System Specs
Windows:
486/50 or better
4 MB RAM
SVGA-compatible
graphics card
Soundblaster-compatible
sound card
2x CD drive
Windows 95/98/3.1/NT
QuickTime 2.1.2.59
Possibly later
versions of Windows work as well.
Mac:
PowerPC
5 MB RAM free
System 7 (works up
through OS 9.1 and probably in OSX by using Classic)
2X CD drive
Tested Computers
I played the game
from start to finish on the following computers:
PII 266 (266 MHz)
Windows 98SE
Matrox Mystique video
card
Soundblaster AWE 32
sound card
used Daemon-Tools to
create a virtual CD drive
DirectX 7a (which the
game doesn't use anyway)
QuickTime 2.1.2.59
(16-bit version) from the game CD
Mac 9500/200 (200
MHz)
Mac OS 9.1
ATI Mach 64 video
card
onboard sound
8X SCSI CD drive
QuickTime 4
I briefly tested the
game on the following computer:
Pentium 200 (Dell
Optiplex GXPro 200 MHz )
Windows 95b
SiS video card
Onboard sound card
equivalent to an ISA Soundblaster 16
8X CD drive
DirectX 7a
QuickTime 2.1.2.59
(16-bit version) from the game CD
This is one game that
benefits from using a CD emulation program to run it from the hard
drive. Even on much faster computers than the ones listed, there
will be some lag in moving around because there is no install and
all game information is on the CD. So you must wait for the CD to
spin up before you can move - unless you use a CD emulation program.
The game actually ran
better and was more stable on the Windows computers. I didn't have
the problem with the screens in the Music History interface coming
up blank on the PC. And when running in only 256 colors on the PC,
the little movies of the people playing instruments didn't have
quite such weird colors. Also the problem with the extra window
appearing when I activated the little movies of the people playing
instruments only appeared on the Mac. I was surprised that the game
had fewer problems on the PC. I suspect that the PC version had more
extensive testing by the game manufacturers.
My Unsolicited
Opinion
If you know anything
about classical music, even if it's only from the liner notes of
your CD collection, you probably know more than you'll read about in
this game. The information about musical notation seems accurate
enough, though I seem to remember there were three possible minor
scales and not just two. The game is geared toward musical
beginners, but I still think it could have been more interesting and
more informative in its music history section. Dates, lists, and
vague generalizations are so dry - the sort of thing that put me off
history all through school up until college. And I'd much rather
have heard more examples of famous classical music as I was
exploring the opera house instead of those silly tunes they used
instead.
Despite the game's
problems, I mostly enjoyed playing. It was a nice change from games
with difficult puzzles or games where you always have to worry about
timed or action sequences or meeting your doom around every corner.
In Opera Fatal you can take your time. And even if you aren't
particularly interested in the edutainment part, it's sort of fun to
rummage through drawers and explore the various parts of the opera
house. I appreciated the humorous touches and got a good laugh at
the animation they used for the painting of Mendelssohn in the
upstairs hall.
Back in 1996 when the
game first came out, it probably looked pretty good and the limits
on which direction you could turn may have been more commonplace and
seemed less restrictive. As an edutainment game for younger gamers
who are interested in music, it is not bad. But as far as I know,
the English version is only available from Heureka-Klett for 49.90€
+ shipping. I wouldn't recommend anyone pay more than $20 for it
unless they enjoy collecting unusual games and have money to burn. I
also would not recommend it for anyone who doesn't have the
slightest interest in classical music or the details of musical
notation. Unless a person has some interest in the material, too
many of the questions will seem fussy and having to look up things
in the reference sections will be a chore. A lot of the game does
involve finding a page and then looking up the answer in one of the
reference sections.
The idea of an
edutainment game featuring classical music does have some merit.
Many of the best game soundtracks feature classical (or
classical-sounding) music. And an old opera house could be a
suitably spooky and mysterious place to explore, haunted by the
ghosts of old opera characters and full of treacherous stage
machinery. Unfortunately Opera Fatal was made so as not to
scare a 6-year old.
I think edutainment
games are successful if the gamer enjoys the game well enough and
retains some of the information after playing. In this respect,
Opera Fatal could have been a lot better. My mind does not
retain dates. It does not retain musical terminology. If I were a
musician and used musical terms regularly, I would retain them. But
I'm not, so I don't. I think most people don't. What I do remember
is things like stories or amusing anecdotes or the sound of a piece
of music. If the game had used more classical music outside
of the CD Collection interface, I'd have been exposed to a lot more
of it. And if the game identified the composer of the music I was
listening to as I was exploring the opera house, I'd eventually
start to associate that music with that composer. That kind of thing
would stick with me a lot better than a lot of dates. In my opinion,
the game placed too much emphasis on dates and musical terminology
and not enough on simple appreciation of the music.
Recommendations
I think the person
most apt to enjoy this game is a child with a strong curiosity about
classical music and musical instruments - someone who would enjoy
listening to all the music in the CD Collection and reading,
listening to, and interacting with all the books in the library and
all the instruments in the Musical Instrument Poster. Once you've
gone through all this stuff, you have a good idea where to look for
information when you come across a page with a question you can't
quite remember the answer to. Researching the question takes very
little time and then you can get back to exploring.
On the other hand,
someone who only wants to consult the edutainment interfaces when
absolutely necessary is going to find it very tedious locating the
answers to the music terminology questions. I would not recommend
the game to anyone like this.
Overall Grade: B+
design copyright ©
2004
GameBoomers
Group
