Shivers II: Harvest of Souls

Let's get the $64,000 question out of the way first. Is Shivers 2 as good as it's predecessor ?

In my opinion, absolutely yes and then some. I actually played this game before Shivers 1, which might lend itself to a certain bias on my part, though in evaluating both games fairly I sincerely think that 2 is better and for a number of reasons I shall expand on further into the review.

Minimum and recommended system requirements.

1) 486 DX66 (Pentium 133 or better)
2) Windows 3.1 – 9x
3) 12 Mb RAM (16 recommended)
4) Double speed CDROM (quad recommended)
5) SVGA, 640 x 280 at 256 colours
6) WIN compatible sound card (DAC required)

You are in the town of cyclone, Arizona in the middle of an arid, unyeilding and desolate dessert. You are looking for your friends, a young struggling band who were on tour, but who have now mysteriously disappeared. A landslide across the only route in and out of the one-horse town means you are not going anywhere in a hurry. So what is your mission brief ? basically to find your friends and get the hell out of town. Arrhh, but if it was only that simple!

Your main problem is that throughout the game you are being stalked. By what though ? is it an evil, ancient indian spirit, or a modern day psychotic. The whole town is one big mystery, a puzzle for you to solve.

To save your friends your main objective is to locate a number of bahos, re-imbue them with their ancient mystical powers and place them in the Kiva, what could be more simple ? What the hell is he talking about I hear you mutter.

Let us start at the beginning…

You arrive in town and check in to the local motel. You are greeted by the surly, friendless, monosyllabic and shot gun toting owner of the hotel and given a room. From then on you have no contact with any one else until the very end of the game. Cyclone is deserted, a ghost town. Literally!

You soon discover that your friends have been taken captive by someone (something?) and in order to save them you have to find a number of ancient native American prayer sticks (or bahos), restore their magical spirit and then place them in the altar in the Kiva, which is an ancient indian "holy' site. The bahos are scattered liberally throughout Cyclone and it's immediate environs (namely the caves, canyon etc.), all you have to do is find them. Unfortunately your tormentor is rarely far from your side, he seems to be shadowing your every move, manipulating your environment, and generally giving you a rough time.

You are free to roam around the town, puzzling away, though not every location is open to you immediately, many locations become available to you only as you progress and/or solve certain puzzles or find particular clues as to what is going on, or perhaps an inventory item you need to gain access.

The story is terrific, it plants you in the heart of small town America, Cyclone, a town with a secret to hide and riven with parochial prejudices, mistrust of strangers, petty rivalries, jealousies and power plays, the story then throws in ancient native American mythology and folklore, adds a dash of horror and mysticism and finally overlays upon this an intriguing mystery.

There are a number of threads, side issues and sub-plots to the story and these all come together seamlessly as the mystery unfolds. Who is your nemesis ? is it one of the towsfolk playing God, have your friends stumbled on to a secret the town would rather keep buried, is it someone with a grudge, looking for revenge, is it a homocidal maniac or have recent archaeological excavations on ancient indian sacred grounds unearthed a sinister curse or a malevolent spirit? Is it local native Americans taking revenge for the desecration of their holy ground ?

These are the questions you will need to resolve if you are to find your friends and escape from Cyclone unscathed.

This is as much as I shall say on the story, as it is one of the strengths of the game and the basis for the adventure.

The graphics are wonderful and create an eerie, moody, haunting and atmospheric environment for your adventure. Movement is via "Point and Click' between locations and panning has now been added to the game from the forerunner, Shivers 1, you also have the option to adjust the size of your panorama and your panning speed. The sound too enhances the moody, chilling atmosphere, from the haunting songs and background music to the spine tingling special effects. There is a soundtrack with the game (obviously, as a musical band is at the core of the story) and depending on your taste you might enjoy the tunes, very hippy-cum-Gratefull Dead though. More importantly the songs form an integral part of the mystery and…… (psuedo-spoiler coming up if you wish to skip to the next paragraph)…………actually give the player vital clues to assist in many of the puzzles.

And what of the puzzles ? Well, all I can say is that in Shivers 2 your puzzle cup fairly runneth over! There are all manner of puzzles taking all conceivable forms and styles. There is inventory management, logical, spatial, mechanical, pure detecting, sliders…the list goes on. If you like your puzzles, you will certainly not be disappointed. Many of the puzzles are laid for you by your nemesis in order for you to gain the bahos, but there are other puzzles in order for you to gain access to some locations, discover some information about the town or a clue as to what is going on, so they will keep you going for quite a while.

There are a number of features of the game which also enhance the gameplay. You have an on/off "hot' cursor, ie. if you don't want any hints and want to find everything yourself then turn it off, or if you want to be alerted to a "hotspot' turn it on.

There is also, oh joy of joys, a map with a "move to quickly' facility ie. if you are in one part of town and need to get all the way across to the other side quickly (and you will, for reasons I shall explain in just a moment) all you have to do is go the map and click on your desired destination and, if you have been there already, you will be zipped there in a heartbeat. This is one facility I think all adventure games should have, I spend so much time in so many games wandering frustratingly between locations, cursing that there isn't a quicker way of doing it.

On many an occasion you will find it necessary to move quickly between locations. The principal reason for this is that you have a health meter which will drain when you are carrying the bahos, so you need to offload them as soon as possible once you have found them. And yes this does mean that you can die in the game, so frequent saving is the order of the day (the bahos are not the only thing that can diminish you health meter either, so be warned!)

There is also a facility to connect to the internet and chat to other Shivers fans and play the game in a group, although I strongly suspect this facility is probably now defunct given the age of the game. I never tried it so cannot give you a definitive answer on this.

Another novel feature of the game is that you can take some of the puzzles as a base design and construct your own puzzles for others to try and solve, this feature went hand in hand with the internet connection and Shivers forum.

I think Shivers 2 surpasses its forerunner in a number of respects and these are namely :–

1) Through the far more involved, well thought-out, intriguing and thought provoking story-line.
2) The enhanced game features, as described above.
3) The improved graphics and the way in which the sound ties into the whole atmosphere of the game.
4) The quality and diversity of the puzzles is greater and the fact that they are so integral to the story as opposed to just being a bunch of puzzles to solve in order to finish.

In conclusion, and if you have not already guessed, this game is one of my all time favourites. I would advise any adventurer that has not played this game to seek it out without delay and throw it in the CD drive as soon as you can, I don't think you will be disappointed.

Rick,

I am glad that you followed up your Shivers review with this one. I also played Shivers 2 before I played Shivers.

I know there are some who didn't like the sequal and many who liked Shivers 1 best - But I really liked the second one better. I loved the music and felt there was more variety to the puzzles and locations. If you use the map feature - the timed aspect of the game isn't really that hard. Once you figure out what you are to do - - with saves and the map - I got it down rather fast. I thought the best part of both games was the spooky atmosphere.

Well - my next question is - when do you sleep?

Laura

Hi.

Another fascinating review <img border="0" title="" alt="[Cool]" src="cool.gif" />

I wasn't too keen on the original Shivers, myself.
Got on much better with the second one

[Even so, I thought the "questing" followed rather a repetative formula ]

Cheers.

Mad

Personally, I enjoyed Shivers One more than I enjoyed the next installment. But, that's probably because it was my very first adventure game ever. However, everyone has their own opinions on each game they play. Nice job, Rick!

To repeat Laura's question:

When do you sleep?

I played Shivers I first....maybe that's why I favorite it. I expected Shivers II to be more like it. I did enjoy Shivers II except the cave puzzle and the music videos. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="tongue.gif" /> Loved the bubblegum.... <img border="0" alt="[winky]" title="" src="graemlins/winky.gif" />

~Dee

Good review! Even though I did really enjoy Shivers 2, IMHO, dont think it can compare to Shivers 1. I think the puzzles in Shivers 1 were
some of the best I've come across.
( for me anyway)

I greatly preferred the first Shivers game. Shivers 1 was the second adventure game I played and Shivers 2 was the third. (Myst was the first).

The main reason I disliked Shivers 2 was because it was the first game I played that had a sneaky bug that resulted in a dead end. The ghost of Nora did not appear when it should have. And without the ghost's appearance, a necessary key would never materialize. Being a gaming newbie at the time I played it, I had no inkling of what was wrong.

I spent hours trying to find the trigger that would allow me to progress in the game - all for nothing. Eventually out of boredom I went back to a previous saved game (quite a ways back) and replayed and this time Nora's ghost appeared as it should have.

When you're a newbie and run into a bug like this, you don't soon forget it. I'd had no idea that this sort of problem could happen in a game. I'd found a walkthrough which advised that certain events were triggered by watching the videos. So I spent hours fruitlessly trying to trigger Nora's appearance by trying to get every single one of those execrable rock videos to appear on every single TV in the game. It was the only thing I could think of to do and it proved to be a prodigious waste of time. ARRGGGHHHH!!!!!

A few others have had the bug where Nora's ghost didn't show up. I don't know what causes this bug - possibly if you perform certain tasks in a certain order you get the problem. Most people don't get the bug.

But I think any review or walkthrough of Shivers 2 would be incomplete unless it mentioned the possibility of this bug.

It colored my entire experience of playing the game. All the game's faults seemed worse because of the time I wasted because of this bug.

Here's a short list of what I didn't like about the game:

1. I didn't like the game's music. I disliked it enough that I turned off the volume while playing. But this has the disadvantage that you miss the audio part of triggered videos like the appearance of a ghost. There are very few games where the music is so bad that I turn off the music. One game was Egypt 1156 and Shivers 2 is the other one. I especially didn't like the rock videos you have to view and listen to (and which I thought I had to view multiple times in multiple locations because of the bug).

2. I didn't like the characters in the game, who seemed stupid or evil or both.

3. I didn't like the timed aspect of the game. Usually I saved my game before entering the cave to find and solve the tangrams before I got zapped too badly. After finding and solving the appropriate tangram I would copy the solution on paper and reload my game and replay so that a minimum of life force was lost. But this was a nuisance I could have done without.

4. I didn't like having to switch to CD2 before the end sequence and then having no way to save the game from CD2 if I wanted to try for another of the 4 possible endings.

Some of the individual puzzles were OK, but on the whole were no better than those in the original Shivers, which lacked many of the annoyances of Shivers 2. How much you enjoy Shivers 2 may depend heavily on
1. your taste/tolerance in game music
2. how adept you are at solving tangrams under time pressure
3. your awareness of the possibility of getting the bug with Nora's ghost and its potential for creating a dead end.

Rick36 has written a very good review and I don't expect everyone to share my opinion. But I think it's good to read differing opinions about a game so I'm adding my post to this thread.

Jenny,

I could not agree more with you. And this is the main reason I think this forum is an excellent medium to evaluate games.

I loved this game but obviouly you had some resevatons (I did not have any glitches or problems while playing but I have had with other games that have not been a problem to other Boomers - go figure!!), others liked it but had a few isues with certain aspects of the game, others felt like myself, and some probably downright hated it.

This has to be the best aspect of this forum that we can illicit opinions across the board about any and all games, and hopefully any one reading the threads can weigh up all the remarks and reach a considered opinion about the game in question.

Shivers was the first adventure/puzzle game i got and i loved it so much, it took me months to finish it loved every minute of it the puzzles were well thought out. anyhows the registration card that comes with the game well i sent that of (this was 95 didnt have inet in the home) well i sent the card of and a few months later i got like the Sierra mag through the post, well i read through that and in the center page there was a big peice about Shivers2 omg i litterly fainted.

bought the game (which came with Phantasmagoria2 thx EB) played it for a good few weeks but i never really completed it. and didnt play it up until now. this is a great review. the setting is nice and the sound track on the 2nd cd is just great.

if anything id really love to see Shivers III but it will never happed thanx Sierra

Rick, I just loved your review, but I didn't much care for the game. No doubt I played it with a bias; I enjoyed Shivers 1 so much and would have liked 2 to have been more like it. In Shivers 1 I felt the atmosphere was fantastically spooky,there was the replayability factor with the changing location of spooks, and the music drew me into the adventure.With the exception of the very interesting caves in 2, I didn't much care for the characters, music, or predictable gameplay.