City of Lost Children

Before I even get started let me tell you that this game is French. Its is so french, you can actually feel the disgust towards Americans radiating out of the game. Had I not told you it was French, you would have figured it out yourself after aboot[damn] ten seconds of gameplay. This is an adventure[read: puzzles] game is based upon a FRENCH movie by the same name, a movie which apparently rivalled " The Naked Lunch" as one of the most disturbing movies of all time. I hate France, and have never seen the film, so I can't tell you one way or the other.

This is an adventure game that uses very clean and crisp pre-rendered backgrounds, that you have to scrounge around looking for items and clues. The characters themselves are nicely animated and detailed, and you will run into about a dozen other characters as the game progresses, each more disturbing than the last. Trust me, the cyclops guards will screw with your head. The graphics are very dark and moody, and set the tone for the game perfectly. But the same graphics also hurt the player, because sometimes it is impossible to see what the hell is going on or where you are going. RE1 and 2 had dark scary graphics and I NEVER got lost, so I don't know what the problem is here. There are two camera angles to use in the game, but neither one is of much help. Be prepared to endure the most horrible experience in PSX gaming this side of Cosmic Race: THE PIXEL HUNT!! AAAAUUUGGGGHHH!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Well, this is an adventure game, so don't expect to hear Dolby Surround sound rocking your house here. You do get mellow yet erie background music, and the voice acting is pretty good overall. The character that you control is an 11 year old girl, so her voice will get annoying after a while. The game would have been much better if there was an option to smack the girl, Dungeon Keeper style.

If you think that you can handle the pixel hunt, well, just try not to kill yourself controlling this little hussy. Stiff non-responsive controls are compounded by the fact that the camera prevents you from seeing anything. As a result, you will fail many of the timing based puzzles over and over again, until you snap your controller in frustration. Oh, and since this is an older game, don't even think about analog support, much less dual shock capability. What could put the final nail in this clunker's coffin?

Why bad gameplay of course! If by divine intervention, you perservere against bad camera angles, bad control, and the pixel hunt, you'll find out the final horror in this game: None of the puzzles are worth solving! Yes thats right, if you have played any other games before this, you have seen all of these puzzles before, and done much better too. Also, the tie in too the movie is so heavy yhat you will be at a severe disadvantage if you have never seen the film. Some of the puzzles are so bad that they are incomprehensible without a walkthrough, something I despise in a game. A prime example is when you need a hairbrush to open a safe, but first you have to shut down a light house to get past a cop! Does that make the least bit of sense to anyone? If so, then buy this game! Frankly for the price that I found this at EB, you could pick up Resident Evil the Directors Cut, which if much much better than this piece of crap.

Graphics: 6/10

Sound: 4/10

Control: 3/10

Gameplay: 4/10

Overall: 4.25/10 After playing this game, I'm gonna go nuke France AND Canada!