[Annacat]

I stayed up really really really late last night (and regretted the lack of sleep in the morning) and finished the game.

Still feeling mixed about it. For pretty much the same reasons I gave initially.

For me, the most effective creepiness is based on normality with a slight twist. In the hotel, everything was twisted and macabre. So I almost felt desensitized to it.

One pair of scissors in Nigel's bed was much more frightening than hundreds stabbed into a bed in Dowerton. Because one conveys vague menace, things left unseen, while a hundred just tips its hand and shows all its cards at once.

There's no imagining something lurking unseen in Lost Souls. It's all seen, and that's to its detriment. Boakes used to be good at using the unknown as a source of fright, but in this title he seems to have forgotten that. None of the scares came from my imagination, and imagination is very powerful-- shame it wasn't engaged more.

The story was hallucinatory and abstract, on purpose, and that's fine. The problem is, in a game like this, there's a fine line between "This is such abstract storytelling" and "This seems to be a puzzle for the sake of a puzzle." Too often, Lost Souls strayed into the latter.

For example, the Sister plotline could have been an interesting part of the mystery. But it was never really fleshed out as a story concept. After it was used in a puzzle (I liked the puzzle, for the record, possibly my favourite in the game) it was just sort of dropped. Nothing about who the sisters were, where they came from, what role they played, or if they were even real.

Spoiler:

So who/what were they? Did Amy just make them up, or were they originally just her dolls? If so, why was there an official-looking book about them? It seemed to be intended to be almost a fairy tale. But if it's an old story, why does it have a girl named Ashley? The use of that name for females (it was originally a surname and then a male name) is fairly recent. Which dates the story to also be fairly recent. Which... brings us back to the original question...

I like the Boakes open-ended storytelling, but Lost Souls seemed more like random storytelling than open-ended storytelling.

*sigh*

I really, really wanted to like this game. And I did, to a degree. It just didn't have that Dark Fall mystique for me. It was entertaining. It wasn't a bad game. Just... from this developer, I guess I expected more.

[yalazy]

I browsed a little in this thread and I an so surprised that there are so many negative comments. For me, I haven't enjoyed an adventure game this much in years. I think Lost Souls is a brilliant game!

I played Dark Fall II (director's cut) just before this one, and thought that one was more of a pain than joy to play. Because of the navigation I kept getting lost and spent a lot of time just finding my way. Also far too much reading journals and listening to dialog that you couldn't cut off. The story was fascinating, but the game difficult, confusing and tedious. I barely finished it with a walkthrough at hand.

Lost souls had the same kind of navigation as the other two Dark Fall games, but the sweeping movements made it feel much better. I usually dislike first person games. This is the first one that got me really hooked. I think it has wonderful atmosphere, and don't mind the horror style. Since I don't want to give anything away I will just say that as a whole I think this game is very well put together, and got me completely immersed. There were a few minor things I didn't like (not able to cut off dialog is one) If only it had ended a little different I would have given it top score

[ukpetd]

Finished the game last night.

Two game stopping bugs in there.

1. Came to operate in the second floor bathroom. Only had two items of the three necessary. Went back to AV's room. The glowing sign on the wall had stopped glowing! No way forward at that point. Photo was the missing item.

2. Gained acess into the 3rd floor. Went looking about to seek inspiration, I guess. Picked up Amy's first invitation. The statues game began again. Won, got the ring, whammo, statues game began again. Trapped in a never ending loop!

Any one else notice the "deliberate" mistakes? The station work roster. The final line has 9 pm instead of am. The cig machine sells "Rappier" cigarettes. Somewhere along the line this became "Rapier".

Other posters have mentioned navigation (the swinging up, down and around was fine by me) but why couldn't I open the station door instead of creeping in through the window the entire game?

Other posters have mentioned gore, syringes etc. I take the view that one syringe may be missed, two make the point, the other million are guilding the lily.

Puzzles, a couple I didn't even recognise as puzzles. Three cheers for a walkthrough. A couple more failed because of a technical problem. Clicked but did not hold and drag.

Did I learn more about the dark fall? No.

Did I enjoy the game? Not much.

[Hamham Chan]

What are the system requirements for Dark Fall: Lost Souls?
Hopefully I wont have problems running the game on my pc.

[Annacat]

Game box says:

Windows XP or Vista
Pentium IV 1.4 GHz or equivalent
512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended for Vista)
128 MB DirectX 9.0c Compatible 3D accelerated video card
4x speed PC DVD-ROM
2.5 GB hard drive space
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Mouse, keyboard, and sound speakers

On a personal note, I ran this game without issues on a four year old mid-range PC. Transitions between scenes (the black screens, not the animated transitions) were slightly slower than I suspect they were intended to be, but nothing unplayable. You don't need a new or state of the art system to play this game. It should be fine on most machines that are reasonably up to date.

[Hamham Chan]

Ok, the game should run just fine on my system.
Thanks for the help.

[terhardp]

I've finished the game yesterday, and I must say: Boakes has done it again! While this game still didn't surpassed "The Lost Crown" in my eyes, it has many elements that I love about TLC. Interesting and unique design, beautifuly mixed sound and ambient music, captivating story, straightfoward yet challenging puzzles, wonderful atmosphere and few more than decent scary moments.

The things that were not so great, besides the fact that the game is FPS-style (I prefer TPS myself), is somewhat difficult navigation. Other than that, I don't have any other objections. But I could comment the ending, because it's bit vague... It reminds me on the closing verse of "Hotel California". But I think that it's still pretty appropriate conclusion for the story.

I haven't played the original "Dark Fall" because it's rough graphic has turned me down. On the other hand, I'm glad that I can get past such "flaw", because I didn't like the graphic of "The Lost Crown" at first! When I've played it last year (still haven't replayed), I remember when I saw the blue sky and gray scenery, followed by Nigel Danvers' duck-walk, I said to myself: nah.. It seems I'll skip this one. Boy, I'm glad that I've saw past this! But when it comes to first "Dark Fall", I just couldn't swallow that one. Not on my new hi-end 22 inch monitor...

I've read several reviews of the original game, and according to some comments, it's atmosphere and story are considering much better than in "Lost Souls". But, though I haven't played the first two DF games (yet), I feel that I don't miss much, and that "Lost Souls" captured the essence of the series spirit, plus it has way better graphic and engine.

Continue the good work Mr. Boakes. Looking foward to the "The Lost Crown II"!

[SamandMax]

What I like about Lost Souls is that it injects a really sinister edge into the Dark Fall series which, in my opinion, was a little on the bland side before. While the first two games had a sense of melancholy about them, Lost Souls is just a nonstop rollercoaster ride of dread. It's a haunted house simulator; you ride around on a guided track, creepy music and sound effects are played and countless ghouls and ghosts jump out at you in predetermined spots and make you leap out of your seat. Is it subtle? Absolutely not. Is it scary? I sure thought so. It didn't get under my skin like The Lost Crown did but I never expected it to, I just wanted a fun game to play late at night in the dark that would do everything in it's power to make me jump and Lost Souls delivered on that. If you're not playing this game alone at midnight with a pair of headphones on, you're not really playing it.

[Melanie68]

Originally Posted by SamandMax

What I like about Lost Souls is that it injects a really sinister edge into the Dark Fall series which, in my opinion, was a little on the bland side before. While the first two games had a sense of melancholy about them, Lost Souls is just a nonstop rollercoaster ride of dread. It's a haunted house simulator; you ride around on a guided track, creepy music and sound effects are played and countless ghouls and ghosts jump out at you in predetermined spots and make you leap out of your seat. Is it subtle? Absolutely not. Is it scary? I sure thought so. It didn't get under my skin like The Lost Crown did but I never expected it to, I just wanted a fun game to play late at night in the dark that would do everything in it's power to make me jump and Lost Souls delivered on that. If you're not playing this game alone at midnight with a pair of headphones on, you're not really playing it.

This game is creeping me the heck out and I don't think I could do that. I'm a wimp.

[SamandMax]

That's when you know a horror game is successful, when it's too scary to play at night.