With two reviews fighting to win the twenty-third round of Articles of Excellence, Dark Moor took it out with her review of the point-and-click adventure, The Whispered World. Scoring it a shameful 1.7/5, her low score reflects the poor puzzle-solving and voice acting with less than minimal effort.

So our main hero, Sadwick, has recurring nightmares of the apocalypse that he causes... I suppose thoughts of the world ending stem from the fact that he's a down and out circus clown that's one step away from pulling to trigger and ending it all. Coincidently, there's a prophecy stating that Sadwick will end the world. Come on, the lad is clearly depressed. Don't make him feel worse about himself! But I suppose whatever motivates him to actually save the world will do. Oh, and he has to save the king from an illness by finding the Whispered Stone, lest the realm be taken over by Asgil, the kingdom's opposing race... What gives the story its legs are the characters and the writing. The writing can be pretty witty, although sometimes annoying due to Sadwick's extremely pessimistic outlook on like (his dialogue can get tiresome after a while, let's just say), and also due to an imperfect German-to-English translation; what could be a gutbuster ends up being amusing, as the dialogue can feel stilted and often fairly awkward, but then there are some very well written moments to balance that out. Overall, the story - at least, if it was presented as a book - ends up very compelling, if a bit on the crappy side due to mistranslation.

Dark Arcanine via blogs.neoseeker.com »