I like games to be a bit of a challenge, but not so that I have to rely on walkthroughs to finish the game. The screen shots look very interesting. I am thinking of ordering Barrow Hill in the very near future. Thanks.

I would say that for me it was "medium" as far as challenging goes

A nice spooky adventure

Hi, musicgirl

I would say that it is not that challenging, but it is very scary...It made me jump several times in the game...

But if your looking for a hard puzzle type game...This would not be the game..

My Opinion:

Thanks much for your reply! It does sound very interesting.

Thanks much! I do like scary; the kind of game that can be played in the dark. I like scary as long as it's not the gory kind. *G*

No gore. None at all.

It is atmospherically scary! I thought it was challenging but then I am not what you would call an experienced gamer yet.

I believe it was well worth the money

What is challenging to one person is not to another so it's actually rather difficult to say how challenging anyone might find anything

I thought it was a good game and am waiting for the next one from that developer to come out! It is a game where you really have to examine things...and also have good sense of direction!

This was probably the dullest 1st person point and click I ever played. It was relatively easy and kind of a let down. It was compelling just enough to want to finish it, but didn't really satisfy.

As I recall you thought the same about The Lost Crown drachehexe. Perhaps English countryside ghost stories just aren't your cup of tea.

Ana

I don't know if Barrow Hill is challenging, but it sure was fun to play.

June

Well, I can't FINISH The Lost Crown for starters. And it wasn't The Lost Crown's story, it's the bad monotone voice acting and the horribly stiff character animation that turned me off.

I sure the story is fine, but since I tried 4 different walkthroughs and get stuck at the same place each time because a conversation that is supposed to initialize doesn't then, well, I can't comment on the story.

But bad voices and animations of supposed real people who look more like ventriloquist dummies...I take that back, ventriloquist dummies are better animated, that I can say is just plain crappy.

But Barrow Hill, looked nice, I like the look and feel. It just felt too empty and cramped. My biggest peeve was

It seems to me that when people make this oft made complaint regarding this game that what they really mean is that they don't like English voices. Now, you may be English for all i know but generally speaking i do read a lot of comments from American gamers and reviewers saying how bad they think the voice acting is: personally, i find it very good. Voices like Bob Tawney's, Lucy Reubans and Nanny Noah (who actually sounds just like my gran) sound very authentic and natural. These are BRITISH voices folks. If we're monotone then so be it One of the things i love about playing Darkling Room and Shadow Tor games is hearing authentic English voices, instead of bad American imitations of English voices.

I LOVE the voice acting of Boakes, clark and Harry and i sincerely hope that they continue to uitlize it. I woudl take Nigel Danvers 'dull monotone' over some overly dramatic cliched New York cop any day.

Sure, there's one or two poorly voiced characters in their games but frankly from my experience this is a curse of the entire genre. I've yet to play an adventure game with universally brilliant voice acting. Barrow Hill, Lost Crown and co come closer than most.

The only monotone was Jon Boakes' character Nigel, and that was deliberate. If Jon Boakes had used his natural speaking voice instead of trying to imitate the slowed speech in old horror movies (or Sapphire and Steel episodes), I don't think there would have been nearly as many complaints about the voice acting. The trouble is, Nigel's is the voice you hear the most, throughout the game, and it didn't achieve the intended effect at all.

Most of the other voices in Lost Crown were very good, and Nanny Noah was particularly good. But what those reviewers are remembering is Nigel, and somehow one bad voice becomes "bad voices" in general in their reviews.


I like the English voices in these games too. It's one of their best features.

Well I'm English and I certainly don't speak in the way some of the characters do when portrayed as English people in computer games - and nor do any English people speak like that as far as I'm aware.
I've certainly never met any !!

Samuel in The Black Mirror and Nigel in The Lost Crown were two totally unrealistic Englishmen in the way they spoke but the games otherwise were so good that I didn't let it bother me

And it doesn't just happen with English voices either.

I can remember loads of Americans complaining at the time about the voice of the narrator in Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers and some actually turning her voice off because it annoyed them so much !!

Glad to hear that Mad!

Ana

Sounds like to me, Bondola_Bates, that you don't like Americans. How you feel like you've been personally insulted by me not liking the voice acting in Lost crown is beyond me.

Okay, so whatever. I am done with this board. Tired of getting [blip] thrown at me but you [blip] just because I don't like a game you all worship just because it's [blip] british no matter how bad it is.

I don't get that meaning from the previous post, drachehexe.

I also didn't notice anything untowards directed at you.
You made a comment, the others voiced their opinions also. Their comment might not agree with yours.

Sorry you feel that way.

Our apology, musicgirl for the way your thread veered.

I'm sorry you took my post that way. It wasn't meant to offend you or anybody else. I was just offering a differing viewpoint. The last thing i want to do as a new poster here is to upset people.

I'm not 'anti-American', it's just that it's nice to play a game with voices from my own country in it for a change, especially as it is set there, as the majority don't have that. I'm sure you would feel the same way if the overwhelming majority of the games you played didn't feature any American voices, or just bad parodies of them.

My intent was to point out that I feel that many of the reviews of these games seem to unfairly single out the voice acting, which i personally find very authentic (mostly: there's the odd poorly voiced character here and there of course but that's true of pretty much every game i've ever played). Generally i feel this is because the voices are not to their taste or are not what they expect from a game, rather than an objective summation of their merits. Certainly, i didn't intend to single you out in this; it's simply that it was your comments that started my train of thought. I apologize if it seemed like a personal comment directed at you.

I hope you will also appreciate that as a new poster I am not aware of any prior incidents of '[blip] being thrown at you' and so i also apologize if you feel as though i was compounding any sort of ongoing negativity towards you. I'm here to tak about games, not stir up ill feeling.

Not even characters like Emma Harry in Barrow Hill or Nanny Noah in Lost Crown? I thought they sounded like authentic English people.
???

These are Games....not Movies.

"Not even characters like Emma Harry in Barrow Hill or Nanny Noah in Lost Crown? I thought they sounded like authentic English people.
???"

Hi Jenny100

Oh, those two were fine.
[I didn't say the speech of all English characters was bad ]

But the speech of the two gentlemen I named definitely was !!

Cheers.

Mad

The discussion about voices in this thread made me laugh, but only because I was reminded of something I read online by a guy who goes by the name Zarf who wrote the cleverest review about the Lost Crown.
He says, in part and I quote...



I found both games to be interesting, challenging, delightful and spooky!