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7.0 sorta fun
You always remember your first viewing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. (Sadly I don't remember my first viewing of the Rocky Horror Show, because I've never seen the stage production.) I first saw the film in the Graceland Twin Cinema in Columbus, Ohio. No, I didn't yell at the screen... or throw toast... yes, the amateur fan actors portraying the characters in front of us audience members were much too chubby for their costumes. Sadly the theater has since been knocked down and replaced by the Magic Town Kroger. I also enjoyed the Rocky Horror Show C64 computer game, where you played as either Brad or Janet and had to collect pieces of the Medusa machine to save your partner. That was a great game. I think Anuman Interactive probably used that old game for inspiration when coming up with the story for their latest hidden object game.
Frankenstein: The Dismembered Bride, from Boonty Games and Anuman Interactive, is the story of Brad and Janet... recently married and presumably recent graduates from Denton High School. Janet goes missing after the wedding, as the best brides sometimes do, and Brad tracks her to a strange manor in Bavaria, a country he had been assigned to as a journalist. Well, actually he just happens to be driving through Bavaria and his car breaks down. Before you can say "there's a light over at the Frankenstein place," he's found a seemingly deserted, spooky country manor.
A scream sends Brad rushing inside. In the cellar torture chamber he discovers that his wife Janet has been dismembered! But not to worry, the evil Dr. Frankenstein slipped on her brains, hit his head, and died. Yuck! Yet somehow, the poor girl can still communicate with Brad via brain power. I always thought brains couldn't survive long after being removed from the body, thrown on the floor, and trodden upon. (At least I got that impression from books.) Anyway, the hunt is on for Brad to find all the pieces of poor, wise-cracking Janet and reassemble her body. Get ready for some silly, corny dialogue as you explore Dr. Albrecht von Frankenstein's castle.
HdO Adventure: Frankenstein: The Dismembered Bride is a very simple hidden object game, with few bells or whistles to get in the way of the actual search for random junk in cluttered rooms. In each scene, you're asked to find about twelve objects. These are given to you four at a time in a list at the bottom of the screen. Find one and it will be replaced with the next item to be found, etc., until you've clicked on them all. As in all other hidden object games, clicking on an item removes it from the screen. In most scenes, after you've found an assortment of random items you're tasked with finding one final object with a certain tie to the story. A key to open a door into the next room, for example. There's no inventory system or dragging the key onto the door to unlock it - it's just find and click on the key and bam, instantly move into the next room.
To some degree you can move about the manor. Arrows appear onscreen pointing toward possible exits in each location. Between hidden object scenes you can wander about, until you enter a room and trigger the next hunt for pliers, eggs, spiders, apples, hairbrushes, etc. A text only dialogue between Brad and Janet's brain provides the sole story information... if I didn't know better I'd guess that the hidden object scenes were strung together first and a corny story invented afterward to loosely connect them.
Hints are plentiful, and your hint button recharges after twenty seconds or so. Click on it and you'll be told the location of one hidden object. Good luck trying to complete the game without using hints! Most objects are fairly recognizable, and thankfully the screen resolution is set to a standard 1024x768, but a few items were quite difficult!
Do you like random clicking? Me, too. Do too much of it in this game and the screen will fade for a second, and you'll have to wait until it brightens to resume clicking. I have the displeasure of announcing that Frankenstein: The Dismembered Bride contains the single most infuriating screen in any hidden object game I've yet played! At the beginning of the game you're asked to find twenty bottles of white wine in a wine cellar filled to the brim with bottles. All you can do is click by trial and error until you've gotten them all. You'll see the screen darken approximately fifty times before you manage to get every correct bottle! Way to punish the player, game developers! If you make it past this screen, give yourself a pat on the back and buy yourself a Dr Pepper.
The music is creepy enough, but it repeats even more often than the hidden objects themselves. Lovers of all things hidden object should check out this game, but without high expectations. Everyone else is probably better off faking a leg injury and skipping this one. This is the type of hidden object game that would have sold only a few copies at $19.99, but at $6.99 is just barely worth purchasing. And fair warning: the free demo only lasts an astounding twenty minutes... probably not even long enough to get through the wine cellar!
In my youth I used to be able to sing Richard O'Brien's parts perfectly when karaokeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "The darkness must go, down the river..." I wonder if I've still got the magic?
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