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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 
Sat 15th Oct 2011
By Lumin - See all my reviews

This game. This freaking game. While I’m glad Jubell’s going to get his free copy of Adrift and all, he really should have saved it for the Summer Comp...unregistered limitations and all, I think it still would’ve given some of us more experienced Drifters a run for our money. I loved everything about this. Well, okay, I admit thought the whole ’Soul Scythe’ things sounded like something out of a cheesy action game, but everything else--the intro and the writing, the genuinely creepy rooms and mindscrew plot, and of course the amazing art and music, just blew me away. I even loved that I still had no idea what was going on at the end. Usually that’s something that would annoy me a little, but here it’s a strength...I was SO glad it didn’t all wrap up neatly with a pat ’but it was alllll in his head’ or whatever ending.

The limitations of the unregistered version did show up in a few cases, (mostly when I was getting drawn into a trippy room description but not being able to examine something that seemed prominent) so I’m really hoping that in addition to a sequel, the author might be able to go back and flesh this one out a little once they’ve got their shiny new full version. And though this one’s more a matter of personal taste, it also seemed like there was a lot of plot railroading, long cutscenes and such popping up every couple of minutes. Though once again, even though it’s something I don’t always care for, in this case I might call it a good thing because it allowed so much plot and content to be crammed in despite the limits and made the game seem a lot larger than it actually is. (I noticed you made good use of conversation topics as well, which is also a good trick in this kind of situation.)

The one and only thing I would have to say I definitely didn’t care for were the combat aspects - the fact is I simply hate hate hate Adrift’s default combat system and have never seen it used in a good way. I found it yanked me out of the story here too, and finally after being killed half a dozen times in the first fight (my own hits never seeming to do any damage) I got frustrated and changed the opponent’s stats in the generator, which let me move past that part but may or may not have caused a bigger problem later.

For the second fight, I got the message saying I was being attacked, but nothing happened (I was alone in the room) and since I couldn’t trigger the end of the fight I wasn’t able to progress any further after that. I can’t say with any kind of confidence that it was a bug, because there’s a good chance I broke something with my meddling earlier, but even if it was, the game up until that point was amazing enough to more than make up for it. Happily I was able to sort of experience the last few scenes by following along with the walkthrough and the generator anyway, and the ending did not disappoint. Really, really, REALLY looking forward to whatever this author decides to write next.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 
Sat 15th Oct 2011
By - See all my reviews

Wes Garden's Halting Nightmare is an interesting game with, if I recall, some surrealistic neo-pagan themes on identity, and its own "eye candy" graphical style (although it is clearly not AIF). Might not be everyone's cup o' Joe. Some of the interaction in the game is a little difficult or obscure at points, but for a first game I thought it was a stellar effort.

Perhaps I'm a little biased, as I did provide some assistance in beta-testing.