Barrow Hill:
The Dark Path
Bracken
Tor Studios
10 years after the first Barrow
Hill, here we are again, back in ancient Cornish woodlands and 10 years
later as far as the storyline is concerned. It is the Autumn Equinox,
and nothing good ever happens in Cornish woodlands at night on an
equinox.
The car radio is tuned to Emma
Harry of Barrow Hill Radio, who helpfully reminisces about the past
events. Ancient powers and lives lost, a cover up and people wanting
answers, and pretty soon we have further mystery involving cults, a
witch and missing teenagers.
Though we are 10 years on, the
game looks as if it could have been made at the same time as the last
one. Which isn’t a criticism, rather it’s an observation. There is
plenty of detail in the scenes, but there is a “flatness” to them, which
when paired with the generally static nature of the scenes and the
character modelling, spoke to me of something older than it is.
Which to some extent is an odd
thing to say, and doesn’t appropriately reflect the fact that so many
adventure games these days tell their story using older, indeed very
old, visual styles, yet are contemporary in very many ways. Once upon a
time there was an expectation that new games would live up to the most
modern graphic capability of the systems they were played on, but that
is clearly no longer the case. The rise and proliferation of intelligent
and thoughtful indie games is probably more responsible than anything,
but it is probably also true that us adventure players are more than
willing to appreciate so many more things about a game, and shape our
overall impression accordingly. So while we might revel in the graphic
glory of some games, it certainly isn’t the be all and end all by any
means.
Which leads me to reiterate that
my comments on the graphics are an observation/description, not a
criticism.
As you gain more access to the
dilapidated garage, and ramble about the dark woods, you will find
numerous items and read even more numerous notes, and emails, and files,
and books. While the game isn’t hard, it pays to take notes, and there
are more than a couple which require you to pull together and
extrapolate from what you have found out to be able to discern the
solution. In the end, and on reflection, I thought that puzzle
construction was probably the high point.
Navigating the woods, even with
the map, did irritate me a little, and more than once I mumbled bad
things as I didn’t end up where I intended. But they are dark, and
stumbling about and losing your bearings is probably part and parcel of
Cornish woods on the equinox, so perhaps in the end the irritation says
more about me.
By contrast, even in hindsight
and allowing for the fact that we have ghosts and mysterious goings-on,
there were some less than satisfactory triggers and subsequent results.
An example is a room I could access and in which I could ostensibly see
everything, except that things leapt into view, and the computer screen
messaging changed once I got a particular telephone call. A bag with an
item that similarly appeared in a place where it wasn’t before, again
having received a phone call, is another. I acknowledge that The Dark
Path is not alone in these things, but when contrasted with e.g. being
given a reason to search a garbage bin, as opposed to simply looking in
everything, I found these types of results somewhat grating.
Before moving on, let me give
you a heads up. I would have thought this was my very own “doh” moment
except that googling identified others with the same issue. You have a
phone from the start that when it rings sounds like a phone (the old
fashioned sort). Later on, you find another phone that is vibrating when
you find it, in a scene accompanied by a mouth organ type tune. What I
didn’t realise was that the earlier phone in the inventory is swapped
for the latter one, and the mouth organ tune is the phone’s ring tone.
So when I heard it again, and could not do anything at the particular
scene including move, I thought I had a glitch, reloaded, and tried
again. I didn’t realise all I had to do was answer the phone, and things
would move on. Doh!!
The Dark Path is traditional
point and click, everything being done with the mouse. You move from
scene to scene, and what you see is what you get – there is no panning
or free rotating when you arrive at the next scene. However in most you
can turn in almost every direction, and in some a few more, and the
sense of moving around and exploring an environment never feels
compromised.
Icons will indicate things to
do, arrows the directions in which you can move. Move the mouse to the
bottom of the screen to reveal the inventory, and right click items to
examine. I don’t remember combining items in the inventory. Move the
mouse to the top of the screen to access the menu, through which you can
save at will. No dying, no timed events, no mazes.
Voices were a mixed bag, ambient
sound more than adequate, and ditto the musical accompaniment (save for
the little fanfare accompanying finding an inventory item and the ring
tone). The detailed plot is a little silly but did I mention it’s the
Cornish woods, the equinox, and witches? It isn’t horrific, or scary,
maybe occasionally spooky, but it nonetheless delivers eight to ten
hours of solid and devoted adventuring.
I
played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-6700 4GHz
RAM: 32GB GDDR5
Video card: AMD
Radeon RX 470 8192MB
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
November 2016
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