karligula

I don't normally write reviews for games but I had to for this one. To stop people wasting their money. Now I'm not denying how much effort went into Dark Meadow. It looks beautiful, the animations are great, the sound is fine. But as a game it's awful. Ok so I wake up in a room somewhere, I step outside into a corridor, I get attacked by a monster. I beat that monster and take one step forward. And get attacked by another monster. Another step, another monster. Over and over again. Which wouldn't be so bad but the combat ****. Wait for the monster to attack. Dodge it. Swipe furiously on the screen. Repeat till monster dead. Then wait while the game halts and counts up your result. Every. Single. Time. The crossbow **** because the icon you touch to grab it is too small so it's easy to miss. Then when you pull the string back it aims the crossbow upwards so you have to make some stupid swirling motions to aim the damn thing. And the icons used to dodge are too fiddly. The icons themselves are big enough but you have to tap exactly the right spot or they don't work. Which in the middle of combat **** because you're tapping the dodge icon and you don't dodge. So you've battled down a corridor. Go through a door. Oh another corridor. Battle through that, through a door. Oh another corridor. There's no map so you don't know where the hell you are in this mass of almost identical corridors. I must have gone around in circles for two hours. Battling the same monsters again and again, purely because I couldn't tell one corridor from another. Sooner or later you'll die. And it puts you right back where you started. And you have to battle through the whole thing again. Even the menus are confusing. And when you pick up something to read, the scrolling is slow and jerky and keeps stopping and starting whenever it feels like it. I have no idea how far I've gotten into the game, for all I know I've barely scratched the surface, but I just don't want to bother fighting through all the same monsters again for the twentieth time. I'm a veteran gamer, I've finished Doom3, Half Life, Portal, Modern Warfare, Bioshock, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid 4, Motorstorm, you name it, I've finished it. So I know how to get through games and I can tell a good game from a bad one. This isn't a good game. I gave it 5 because yeah ok, the graphics are nice. Disappointed.