Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice

Brings me back to the good old point and click adventures of my childhood.

As Steam doesn't allow for a "mixed" rating, take this review as such. For a long time, my perception of this game was severely skewed by the [b]ATROCIOUS[/b] Italian version - look it up, its dub is something that must be heard to be believed. I also didn't know of its connection to [b]Shadow of the Comet[/b] because I came to know and appreciate that game at a later date, but also because [b]Prisoner of Ice[/b] deliberately does not reveal such a connection until its second half. That said, it's not as good as its predecessor and, even when judged on its own, it's not a great game. The production values are higher but also less consistent: really beautiful backgrounds - back when it was released, I recall reading that many were painted with acrylics and then digitized - clash with 3D-rendered characters that look awkward and have aged badly. As there are occasional cutscenes made with finely animated 2D close-ups, the contrast is even more jarring. The same goes for some 3D-rendered cutscenes. Worst of all are the "Prisoners": those monsters aren't scary at all, even more so in close-ups. It's not just them—the biggest loss is in terms of atmosphere, as there is not much compared to [b]SotC[/b]. The second section of the game seems more concerned with playing antics on British soldiers and officers, and the involvement of Nazis almost inevitably makes things feel even more Indiana Jones–like. Characters are much less, erm, characterized here. It thankfully has a simple and much more convenient mouse interface, one that highlights interactable objects when hovering the cursor over them, but that doesn't save it from several instances of pixel hunting (remember, there is a book among books). Some puzzles are simple, a few even fairly clever, while others require leaps of logic. The overall story is very interesting and picks up a lot over the second half, which saves [b]Prisoner of Ice[/b] from being a bust, but Infogrames certainly didn't deliver a follow-up that measured up to the previous cult classic. Of note is that while the store page trailer features the classic Infogrames logo, the game here is the American version that opens with "I-Motion" (same iconic armadillo, just a different name), a brand Infogrames was trying out there years before acquiring the Atari name.