Mini-review of Faust: The seven games of the soul

Introduction:


	It's not very often an adventure game comes along which
	transcends its own inevitable flaws to become something truly
	great.  Faust is one of those games; it may not be a
	masterpiece, but it definitely achieves something more than
	the usual "save the world" quest.  The problem I am going to
	have with this review is to describe why I loved it so much
	and still stay free of spoilers.  Ah well, I will try my
	best, so read on...

Story (plot, theme, depth):

	First, I guess I should describe the basic plot: You play the
	character of Marcellus Faust, having no memory of your past
	life at all.  Mephistopheles ("call me Mephisto") invites you
	to help settle a dispute that he is having with "the Boss".
	To do so, you must examine the lives of seven of an amusement
	park's past inhabitants.  So off you go to play the seven
	episodes of the game.

	Oh, and that's all I am going to tell you about the story;
	part of my fascination with this game is that the story is
	revealed to you in snippets as the game progresses.  If I was
	to compare Faust with any other game I have played, I would
	have to pick Sanitarium; both of them become extremely
	gripping tales, not because the story necessarily has any
	deep meaning, but because you really don't know what the
	"tale" is even about except by playing more of the game.
	This seems to be a plot mechanism that works very well in
	adventure games; at least in the two samples I have run into.

	I have read reviews of Faust which accuse it of covering up a
	simplistic story with obtuse dialog in an attempt to make it
	seem to be more than it is.  Personally, I don't think the
	story is all *that* shallow, nor do I see the philosophical
	musings as an attempt to "add depth".  In fact, most of those
	musings are delivered by the character of Mephisto, and I
	consider them a believable (and necessary) part of his
	character.

Graphics (quality, animations, cut scenes):

	If I just tell you that the graphics are "great", I won't be
	telling you enough.  Part of what I enjoy in an adventure
	game is the anticipation and thrill of exploring a new world.
	The world of Faust is set in an abandoned amusement park, and
	your movements are strictly limited to small areas within
	that park.  Sounds bad doesn't it?  What makes it wonderful
	is the sheer beauty and strangeness that the artists managed
	to achieve.  A simple house trailer looks boring and boxy,
	until you see the porch railing designed by Dali on the
	front.  Or a house with curved, triangular doors, complete
	with huge hinges which would be needed in real life to hold
	up such a door and still allow it to work.  I could go on
	here, but let me just say that the graphics were eye
	catching, beautiful and unique.  I would guess that the
	primary artist was either an an architect in a previous
	career, or has wishes to become an architect.  The world of
	Dreamland Park is not only unique, it has enough touches of
	reality to make you want to look at things more than just the
	first time.

	The characters were fully drawn in 3D, with a very
	distinctive, and perhaps even bizarre style, one which
	appealed to me immensely (my wife wasn't as impressed).  In
	particular, I found the character of Mephisto to be a
	wonderful study in character drawing and animation.  Usually
	cutscenes using 3D characters and the game engine look
	stilted and awkward; in the case of Mephisto, the slightly
	strange movements he made just added to my fascination.

	The cut scenes weren't just movies played out for you to
	watch; in many cases they were 1 or 2 second flashes of sight
	into the past (usually in black and white).  It was a great
	way to gradually reveal a character's past without giving
	away the whole show at a single sitting.

Sound (music, voices, special effects)

	The voices and voice acting was the best I have ever heard in
	an adventure game.  Mephisto's voice in particular kept me
	spellbound at times, but there wasn't a single jarring voice
	in the entire game.

	The music was excellent, with some wonderful selections.
	However, here comes my first complaint about the game; it got
	extremely tedious when the same track played continuously
	during an entire episode.  A little bit is great for
	atmosphere, but an hour (or two) of the same tune playing
	over and over is just too much.  Even worse, there was a bug
	in the game controls; if you turned down the music volume
	slider, some portions of dialog got turned down along with
	it.  It appears that the final sound mixing got things mixed
	up between the dialog track and the music and sound effects
	track.

Characters (depth, development, interaction):

	These aren't fairy tale characters in this game.  They are
	disturbing at times, and in the end become truly "real" and
	fully realized.  The character's stories definitely make this
	a game for adults, but the characters are one of the true
	strengths of this game

Controls (user interface, save/restore, sound/video adjustments):

	The game is played in first person perspective, with
	node-based movements in space and complete 360 degree viewing
	of a single location (by moving the mouse).  The controls are
	extremely smooth, so those susceptible to motion sickness
	shouldn't have too much of a problem.

	The save/restore system worked flawlessly and easily.  Save
	slots were grouped by episode, complete with a picture of the
	game at the point of saving.

	As I have already mentioned, there was a nasty bug in the
	sound controls which made them almost useless.

Bugs or problems:

	Well, first the good news -- the game never crashed or hung
	at any time.  The bad news is that there were a fairly large
	number of bugs:

	One room in the game had the hot spots WAY off the mark.  The
	exit was through the bathtub, and one drawer's hotspot was in
	the middle of a wall.  This bug should have NEVER made it past
	final testing (more about that later).

	At least once, the cursor didn't change shape when it should
	have.  It's hard to know you can manipulate an object when
	passing over it doesn't cause the cursor to change shape.

	A cursor shape for backing up that was the same as that for
	examining items.  This caused some definite confusion at
	times.

	As mentioned, the sound controls didn't work in a useful manner.

	The subtitles were filled with spelling and grammar mistakes.
	The english text obviously never made it through a spell
	checker, and certainly wasn't reviewed by anyone literate in
	the english language.  As an single example, "loose" was used
	instead of "lose" throughout the game.

	Gamma setting was a bit low, and Cryo still hasn't
	incorporated a gamma adjustment in their games.  Shame on
	them -- I had to get hint because we completely missed an
    	entire doorway because of the low gamma setting.

	Sometimes (not always), if my CD drive stopped in the middle
	of a long cutscene, the scene would continue to play, but the
	audio would cut out completely.

	I can only assume that this game was a beta release that was
	rushed to market.  Some of the bugs should have never made it
	past even rudimentary play testing, but there are other
	indications as well.  If you start hitting function keys,
	various debugging displays will show up on the top of your
	screen.  Here's the ones I found:
	
	F1 -- Brings up a frames/second and frame number counter
	F2 -- Brings up a cursor X,Y position display
	F5 -- Brings up a up/down, left/right panning measurement
	F6 -- Brings up a rotation measurement
	F7 -- Locks the display (no panning) and shows cursor X, Y
	   -- also shows some hex numbers (no idea what for)

	All of these were obviously never intended for customer use,
	and in fact look like useful features for isolating bugs when
	play testing the game.  In other words, I really believe that
	Cryo shipped a beta version of this game.  This is not
	exactly a good thing to do, and I would have expected them to
	have released a patch for it long ago.  However, I did look,
	and no patch seems to be available.

Puzzles (difficulty, uniqueness, suitability, ugliness, linearity):

	This is the most embarrassing section for me to fill in.  My
	wife and I are reasonably good at solving puzzles in
	adventure games, but this game had us looking at the
	walkthrough more than any other game we have ever played.  A
	few times were due to bugs in the game (cursor not changing
	shape, cursor hotspot way off the mark), and once was a
	puzzle we still find inscrutable.  However, that is only
	three puzzles, and we had to look for help at least a dozen
	times.  I honestly don't know if this is either a very badly
	designed set of puzzles, or just ones that hit us in our
	major weak spot.  In general, if we get stuck in a game, the
	main reason is that we just didn't find something.  Well,
	Faust is the ultimate in "purloined letters" for us; we
	failed to find objects so often it was downright embarrassing
	to us.  All I can say is this -- hunt really hard in this
	game, or I guarantee you will miss things.  Part of this
	difficulty was due to the very good graphics; there was no
	rough edges or items that looked out of place to help guide
	you to some object.  Everything looked like it belonged
	there, so you had to hunt everywhere.

	There are two mazes in this game, but I must mention that
	they aren't as bad as you might think.  Let's just say that
	we never had to map either one of them.

	The built-in hint system was either useless most of the time,
	or required that you play (and win) an arcade sequence to get
	a hint.  This is a very poor design in a pure adventure game.
	I can't believe that Cryo would force the player to play the
	one and only timed sequence in the entire game just to get a
	hint.  Very, very bad design here.

Pros:

	Beautiful graphics.
	Wonderful artistry in the design of the the world.
	Best voice acting I have ever encountered in game.
	Great dialog and narration.
	Mephisto character was fascinating.
	A well written story that wasn't obvious from the start.
	Some fairly interesting puzzles.

Cons:

	Very buggy -- what appears to be a beta product release.
	Not one, but two mazes.
	A few puzzles that seemed impossible without a hint.
	A hint system that required that you play an arcade sequence.
	Definitely adult-only fare; not suitable for children at all.

Conclusion:

	In spite of its many flaws, Faust is the best type of
	adventure game -- one which drew me into its world and held
	me there.  I found Faust to be a compelling game in almost
	all respects; the graphics, the story, the narration, and the
	voices all conspired to provide me with sleepless nights
	because I just couldn't bear to quit playing.  This was one
	of those games that made me very sad to see the end, and wish
	for a much longer game.  It may be far from perfect, but
	Faust still gets an easy entry into my top ten games list.