Mini-review of The Watchmaker
Copyright Murray Peterson, 2002

Introduction:

	Watchmaker is one of those games that I find to be quite
	frustrating; there is a darn good game inside there, but the
	developers couldn't quite succeed in bringing it to fruition.
	It feels like a game that was rushed to market before it was
	ready, and that a few more weeks or months of polishing could
	have produced a wonderful product.  Sadly, they didn't spend
	that extra time, and the end result is less than stellar.

Graphics (quality, animations, cut scenes):

	Watchmaker is completely 3D, with textures applied to
	polygons for both characters, buildings, and scenery.  The
	polygon count is quite low, resulting in blocky looking
	characters with unnatural features, especially hands and
	hair.  This low polygon count also resulted in rooms and
	buildings that were quite "sparse" in nature, without a lot
	of the clutter that helps add to the sense of realism.  I
	assume this "crudenesss" was an attempt to keep the computer
	requirements to a minimum, as opposed to any lack of effort
	on the developer's part.

	The low polygon count would have been fine with me, but the
	graphics also suffered from some severe problems.  Seams
	between polygons were often quite visible, and one character
	could happily walk right inside several pieces of furniture
	and a few walls.  Both of these problems ruin the "immersive
	effect" of a game, especially when you are laughing at a
	character that is buried inside a cabinet up to her waist.

Sound (music, voices, special effects)

	The music was pleasant, and suitably atmospheric for each
	situation.

	The sounds effects were well done, with footsteps, doors, and
	machines all sounding very good.

	The voice acting is less than stellar, with a few characters
	being absolutely terrible.  In many cases, the voice acting
	sounded like almost illiterate people reading from the
	script, with no retakes; nothing but a dull monotone
	throughout, with not one jot of emotion showing through.
	This game could have been improved tremedously by something
	as simple as forcing the voice actors to redo their lines
	until they got some emotion in their voices.

	If you want to be amused, you should play this game with
	subtitles turned on; some of the vocal statements differ from
	the subtitles in silly and funny ways.  As an example, the
	subtitles say "Reminds me of the Day of the Triffids", while
	the voice actor intones "Reminds me of Day of the Daffodils".

	One warning -- the language in the subtitles is much cruder
	than that actually spoken.

Story (plot, theme, depth):

	A good game reveals the story to the player as the game
	progresses, and this game actually managed to do this quite
	well.  One major problem was the opening cutscene, where they
	parrot far too much plot at you right up front, which ruined
	much of the suspense, and also sounded completely
	preposterous when it was just baldly stated.  This was one
	cutscene that had me snorting in disbelief, when they could
	have had a much less "informative" cutscene and allowed the
	remainder of the story to be revealed as the game progressed.

Characters (depth, development, interaction):

	The game has lots of dialog with the various characters, but
	most of it had little or nothing to do with the central plot.
	As the game progresses, you learn more about the characters,
	and at the same time, they become more peripheral to the
	central story.  By the time the game had finished, I felt
	that I had spent all my time talking to the wrong people,
	when the "important" people weren't anywhere to be found.

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

	Watchmaker lulled me into a false sense of security; by the
	end of the game, I had decided that I couldn't be killed, and
	that there were no timed sequences to worry about.  Hah!  The
	silly developers went and threw in three timed sequences in
	right at the very end, any one of which can kill you if you
	get it wrong.  Even worse, this came with with no automatic
	"restart", so you had to go back to your latest saved game.
	I was less than impressed by the entire set of ending
	sequences, which seemed entirely out of character with the
	rest of the game.

	Most puzzles were inventory based, where you need to find the
	correct item(s) and apply them to the correct locations.  The
	game was quite non-linear, which meant that some items were
	in your inventory for a long, long time before they could be
	used.  Adding to the difficulty was the fact that most
	inventory items didn't disappear when the were no longer
	needed, so you could spend an inordinate amount of time
	trying everything that could possible make sense.  A few
	puzzles required uses of inventory items that made little
	sense to me, even after I found the solution.

	Some of the puzzles were outright silly, where the game
	refused to allow you to solve the puzzle in a perfectly
	logical manner, but instead forced you to read the
	developer's mind and use the combination of items or actions
	that were "blessed" by the game.

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

	The controls allowed both keyboard and mouse control, with
	some notable problems.  For example, it quickly became
	frustrating to move characters around by pointing with the
	mouse, since the game had hot spots that were visible right
	through walls and buildings.  For example, I clicked on a
	spot that said "tree", and the character ran right around to
	the back side of the castle to the tree that the game engine
	thought I had clicked.  At one point at the end of the game,
	there were three stairwells that were all visible to the
	mouse cursor, and two of them had the character Victoria
	walking through the walls to climb these invisible stairs.

	On the other hand, keyboard movement worked fine, but you had
	to use the mouse for looking at or interacting with objects,
	such as opening a door.  The combination of the two control
	methods kept forcing me to swap hands between the keyboard
	and mouse, usually grumbling every time I did so.

	I thought that one movement command (lean forward) was
	completely unnecessary, until I hit an object that was
	perfectly visible, but not grabbable until I invoked this
	command.  I guess the game authors felt that I should be
	forced to use every possible movement, even if they had to go
	to ridiculous lengths to force the issue.

	The save game system worked well, but there were nagging
	oversights in the design.  The load and save screens looked
	almost identical, and could easily be confused.  This
	wouldn't matter, except that the save game screen did not
	warn you when overwriting an existing saved game.

Bugs or problems:

	The game crashed once, and froze twice (in the same timed
	sequence).  However, I was able to continue past the "freeze"
	spot once I clicked the mouse at a different speed.

	Characters could walk inside furniture and walls.

	Seams between polygons were visible.

	The maid completely disappears and moves to a new location
	before a conversation is finished.  You end up talking to
	empty air for a few sentences.

	Hot spots "show through" walls and buildings.

	Periodically, the speakers would start "buzzing"; moving to a
	different location always caused it to stop.

Install/Uninstall:

	The game uninstall did not remove the speech files copied
	onto disk.  Other than that oversight, everything worked
	smoothly and cleanly.

Pros:

	Good game hiding inside

Cons:

	Buggy controls and "glitchy" graphics
	Terribly voice acting
	Timed sequences
	Characters and plot don't mesh well enough
	Ridiculous introductory cutscene
	Arbitrary puzzle solutions

Conclusion:

	Watchmaker is a game that doesn't quite succeed for me.

	It has a pretty good story line, but the developers threw it
	away with some less than stellar decisions with respect to
	the introduction, and then completely ruined it with some of
	the worst voice acting I have ever heard.

	It has some interesting characters, but the story didn't
	integrate them with the central plot.

	It has acceptable graphics, but the developers then allowed
	the seams between polygons to show, characters to walk inside
	objects, and hotspots that were "visible" right through walls
	and buildings.

	It has a reasonable set of puzzles, and then they ruined it
	with timed sequences and some truly arbitrary puzzle
	solutions.

	Since relief was my primary emotion when finishing the game,
	I honestly can't recommend this game.  It's not a *bad* game,
	just one that disappointed me by not living up to its
	potential.