Review for Relics: Dark Hours
A supernatural mystery with full-motion video and live action actors sounds too good to be true in this day and age, right? Bryan Wiegele doesn’t think so. A longtime indie horror developer whose previous works include Inherent Evil and the Deleware St. John series, Wiegele’s latest creation is a collaboration with Subdued Games called Relics: Dark Hours. Unfortunately, though it does some nice things with its film integration, this game is a far cry from the best FMV adventures of old, and can really only be recommended to those who are big fans of the format.
In Relics, players control Matt Hunter, a young man on a mission to recover cursed artifacts that his grandfather once stole and his father foolishly sold away. These artifacts originally bring happiness and good fortune to those who possess them (for a price), but death soon follows. The curse has already claimed all of Matt’s family, and he is determined to stop anyone else from suffering the same fate. A school teacher’s death and several disappearances first lead Matt to Ridgecrest High School, where this adventure begins.
Exploring the school after hours under the guise of being the new janitor, Matt tries to figure out which cursed object is wreaking havoc in Ridgecrest. He meets Eddie, the janitor who just enjoyed a remarkable health recovery; Nate, the sarcastic and heartbroken math teacher who was engaged to the dead woman; and Jason, the security guard with a recent streak of good luck. All three have experienced strange occurrences recently that could pinpoint who currently owns the cursed artifact, and it’s up to Matt to figure out which one has the item. Besides the three living staff members, Matt can also see his dead father, who is trying to make trouble, and the ghost of Rachel, who tries to guide him in silence.
With FMV adventures, the acting can either make or break the game. Thankfully, the acting here is mostly solid, although it can get pretty corny. That wouldn’t be too big a deal, except the cheesiness comes out in the most dramatic scenes near the end. And although the acting may be decent, the characters in Relics tend to be pretty bland, so it’s hard to really feel for any of them, or care much about what happens to them.
An optional tutorial at the beginning explains the basics, and three other tools on the bottom-right of the screen offer help throughout the game. There is a map function that shows the school layout and Matt’s location, although it is not interactive. The “think” option reveals Matt’s thoughts at anytime during the game. This is not a hint system that helps with hard-to-find hotspots or assist in solving puzzles, merely a reminder of your current tasks. Matt will mention the next place he should investigate, however, which is really helpful if you are not sure where you are supposed to go. Often new destinations are not intuitive, so this prevents you from wandering around looking for what event has been secretly triggered. The “note” feature displays news articles about the recent disappearances, records any clues lying around the school that can help with future puzzles, and allows Matt to write down important facts. The game alerts you when a note has been added, though most are obvious reiterations of what has been said.
All of the dialogue in Relics is non-interactive, so players have no control over what Matt says. Whole cutscenes can be skipped by right-clicking, but you can’t fast-forward through dialogue subtitles line-by-line. Matt offers various comments when looking around the school, but these lines can’t be skipped. There is no limit to how much Matt can hold in his inventory at the bottom-left of the screen, but there is no label to help you determine what an object actually is once there. Strangely, at the very beginning of the game there is already something in inventory that you’ll have no clue about unless you read the notes section.
Although some cutscenes are triggered by solving a puzzle, there are also many others triggered by Matt simply moving to different places. During one point of the game, Matt’s “think” option tells him to go to the library, even though he was just there and saw that it was locked, having no key to open it. The only reason to go there again is to trigger yet another new cinematic to move the story along.
The school has more than three floors and can seem overwhelming with so many locations, but the game realistically cuts certain segments off through locked doors and gates that can be found in any school after hours. However, there are many hotspots for opening doors that are very small. You have to look at the door only at a certain angle, and can only click a small part of the door to enter. This can be very frustrating when you think a door is locked and in need of a key, when in fact it is an open location and the hotspot is simply too tiny.
Puzzles alternate between inventory obstacles and codes for keypads, and all are fairly easy. Most of the inventory puzzles make sense, although why three keys are needed in a certain order to open one gate is beyond me. Unfortunately, hotspots to pick up inventory items are also quite small and easily overlooked. There are many keypads locking off certain areas, and clues for each keypad can be found scattered around the school, all of them coded in different types of riddles, which prevents them from feeling repetitive. There is no way to die in this game, which makes some of the action seem less threatening. One particular scene feels as though Matt is in peril, but the outcome is the same no matter what you do.
The visual presentation in Relics: Dark Hours is by far the best part of the game. The entire adventure is done in a first-person slideshow format, with the ability to turn either 90 or 180 degrees, the latter being very helpful to avoid looking at a blank wall when trying to simply turn around. The live action video sequences are blended seamlessly into the photographic backgrounds, so there is barely any noticeable change between them – a rare feat in FMV adventures. Although not a big complaint, there is a slight flickering that isn’t usually noticeable, but it’s obvious on some screens and can feel slightly nauseating.
The school is decorated for Halloween, and between the rubber rats and pumpkins scattered around, plus the many realistic-looking posters advertising a school dance, there’s plenty to look at that adds a touch of atmosphere. When manipulating items, such as pressing the numbers on a keypad or turning a lock, Matt’s hand comes into view to perform the action, which is so much better than seeing a lever move itself. The slideshow format means doing a lot of clicking to get around, however, which can become tiresome when trekking all the way up to the third floor only to be told to go back down to the first.
While the graphics are the best part of the game, the sound has to be the worst. The audio quality of the dialogues is very poor, with some unscripted static and over-sensitive microphone recordings of the actors delivering their lines. Sometimes when a character is speaking, the audio seems to bleep out, as if censoring a curse word, but there are many other curse words that are not censored throughout the game, so either the developers were spotty in their censoring or the audio just keeps cutting out. Music comes and goes, always playing a slightly scary tune. That is fine near the end and during other dramatic parts, but since it plays on and off throughout the entire game, you become accustomed to it and the familiarity deprives it of its emotional impact when it’s most needed.
Relics: Dark Hours only takes a few hours to complete, and that is mostly spent clicking through the screens to return to a floor Matt recently left. The story has a nice premise, but the rather generic characters let it fall flat, while the puzzles are mostly easy, the hotspots too small, and the sound abysmal. The full-motion visual presentation is really the only enjoyable part of the game, as the video and still backgrounds are smoothly integrated, and the haunted high school is an interesting setting to explore. Unfortunately, what it shows is much better than the story it tells, and this is coming from someone who loves ghosts and the supernatural. The game is certainly not a total disappointment, but when the final bell rings, Relics: Dark Hours is anything but first in its class.
