"The Last Door:
Season Two" continues the story begun in Season One of "The Last Door."
But where you played the game as Jeremiah Dewitt in the first season,
you play as his psychiatrist and friend, Dr. John Wakefield, in Season
Two. Jeremiah has gone missing (if you played through Season One, you
know how this came about), and Dr. Wakefield is determined to find out
what happened to Dewitt and help him, if possible. For much of the game,
Dr. Wakefield is assisted in his search for Dewitt by his colleague, Dr.
Johan Kaufmann.
Among the places you visit are a madhouse, an opium
den, a burned-out church, and a walled-up apartment. You visit the home
of a former scientist, once considered brilliant, whose mind has
apparently deteriorated as a result of his investigations into forbidden
subject matter. You also visit a mostly deserted coastal town where
people claim to have seen strange monsters, and you delve into the
mythology of an island where the strange customs of the inhabitants are
based on fear. In the final episode, you explore the world beyond "The
Veil," still searching for Dewitt.
Season Two consists of a brief Interlude and four
episodes:
Interlude: "The Mask With No Eyes" / "The Eyeless Mask"
Episode
One: "The Playwright"
Episode
Two: "My Dearest Visitor"
Episode
Three: "The Reunion"
Episode
Four: "Beyond the Curtain"
Although there is a brief recap of what took place
in Season One at the beginning of Season Two, the developers recommend
playing Season One before playing Season Two. Without playing Season
One, you have less of a feel for the kind of person Jeremiah Dewitt is
(or was). At the end of Season Two, you, as Dr. Wakefield, are given a
choice of whether or not to save Dewitt, and the end of the game will
have less impact if you've never played as Dewitt.
Graphics are the same pixellated style as in the
first Season, in the same bright yet haunting colors. The original
music, by Carlos Viola, is very well done, ranging from orchestral to
somber piano music to ominous ambient music. It adds greatly to the
overall mood of the game.
Controls in "The Last Door: Season Two" are simple
point-and-click. The inventory bar is always visible at the bottom of
the screen. Clicking a magnifying glass icon at the left end of the
inventory bar before clicking another inventory item will provide you
with a text description of the second item, or occasionally a close-up
view of that item. While in game, use the Escape key to access Continue,
Options, and Exit to Main Menu.
Options include Language (a choice of English or
Spanish in my game), Fullscreen or Windowed, separate volume controls
for Effects and Music, and Options for Closed Captions and
Dyslexia-friendly fonts. The Dyslexia-friendly fonts are not pixellated,
so if you have trouble reading the default pixellated text, you might
choose the Dyslexia-friendly font even if you're not dyslexic.
The "Closed Captions" option describes sound
effects. Since the game has no voice acting, there is always text on
screen during conversations, whether you use "Closed Captions" or not.
The text does not progress until you left-click it -- a vast improvement
over games that move on to the next text before you are finished reading
(or make you sit there waiting long after you've finished reading).
The first time I ran the game, the default
resolution was set to 1024x768. A dropdown box offered a choice of
either full screen or widescreen and resolutions up to 1920x1200. The
game was apparently designed for widescreen, because when I checked the
"Extras" menu with options set to 1620x1200, the right side of the
candelabra was chopped off. "Extras" included in my preview copy of the
Collector's Edition were the interlude "The Mask With No Eyes,"
Achievements, and Credits.
The game automatically saves when you exit. There
is no option for multiple saves within an episode, but you can choose
which of the four episodes you want to play, and the game seems to
remember your last exit point (save) in a particular episode. So, for
example, you could go back and replay Episode 1 without losing your
place in Episode 3.
Some people have reported getting headaches looking
at The Last Door because of the size of the pixels, including people who
never had a problem playing Sierra's old "Quest" games from the 1980's
(which had smaller "pixels" than The Last Door). So if you've never
played Season One, you might want to try the free Season One Pilot
Episode, either online (in your web browser) or as a download from
The Last Door website here to make sure the pixels won't give you a
headache.
If you enjoyed The Last Door: Season One (or the
individual episodes), you'll enjoy Season Two, which completes the
story.
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
May 2016
design copyright© 2016
GameBoomers
Group
