| The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure (PC DVD) |  | From: Lighthouse Interactive
Category: Video Games
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £11.99
You Save: £8.00 (40%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 685
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp
Media: DVD-ROM
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 8717662270628
ASIN: B001B7BD52
Release Date: July 18, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
The Lost Crown November 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A not bad effort from the creator of Dark Fall.
The plot itself is not half-bad, even if there is a non-sensical and silly back story to the main character.
Throughout the adventure I felt very much compelled to carry on and see the story to its conclusion, even more so when things got genuinely spine-tingling towards the end.
For the most part the game follows a decent pace and I found the play time to be just about perfect. In all it took me about four days of solid play to finish, which is practically epic in this genre.
The puzzles are of a decent quality and are all logical and well placed. I only really found myself stuck once, but it was my fault for missing a vital clue (which in fairness is easily done). Some of the puzzles certainly left me feeling smarter for solving them, which is a sign of good adventure game design IMHO.
Although the voice acting of the main character is utterly dire and his dialogue even worse, I still felt myself bond to him in some way.
On the plus side, the rest of the cast is virtually flawless in the way they deliver their lines and the conversations are easy to follow and all make sense in context.
A minor gripe I had was with a couple of silly 'action sequences', one of which sees the player fending off evil spirits with what appears to be a magic fork!
Although the change of pace was nice, the game engine was obviously not designed for this type of play and the whole experience left me feeling more 'amused' than excited.
Still, these sequeces are very few and far between, so largely ignorable.
Graphically Lost Crown delivers with real world locals and actual photographs making up a majority of the scenery. Although for the most part the scenery is in black and white I still found myself absorbed into the game world.
Overall a highly decent example of adventure gaming and well worth a look for fans of the genre. Doubly so if you're interested in the paranormal too.
 Good 'starter' game! October 14, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This game is 36 hours long and is quite scary in parts. The real attraction is the fact that there is a FREE walk-through available on the 'net. Ideal if you are a beginner at this type of game...and very necessary in certain parts of this intruging game. Good luck.
 Excellent conception, not sure about the execution... October 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Boakes and the Dark Fall series, so I was waiting impatiently for this game, and mostly I wasn't disappointed.
Let's get the gripes out of the way first. As other people have said, the ending is a bit of a letdown. Also, Nigel Danvers, the main character, as voiced by Boakes himself, comes across as a pompous prat played by an amateur actor from the planet Pluto. This is odd, because Boakes has done quite good voice acting in his other games and in Matt Clark's Barrow Hill. There are two problems here; one is the eccentric acting, the other is that I think the character is *meant* to be a pompous prat (he wears a tweed cap, for goodness sake) and that makes him harder to identify with.
Another minor problem; the exteriors were photographed in Cornwall, but Saxton is supposed to be in East Anglia. Anyone who's seen both areas will know that this is incongruous, and I'd have just set it in Cornwall anyway myself.
I had no problem with the slow pace of the game. I don't need things to go at ninety miles an hour to keep me awake, and watching Nigel glide/walking through the very pleasant if monochrome scenery was no hardship at all. It is possible to get through transitional scenes more quickly by double-clicking if you really want to. I loved the depth and scope of the game world, the treatment of the exteriors, and the puzzles, and the storyline itself was excellent up to, as I said, the ending, which was perfect for an M R James story but not so good for a game.
All in all, I found it very enjoyable, with the caveats listed above, and I'm still a huge fan.
Lost in more ways than one.... September 25, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Well this is a troubling review i find myself having to write.
This is a very atmospheric game that draws you in despite its clear failings. Its like there are two forces. One is the awful stilting, clumsy dialogue (that doesnt let you fast forward through the exact same repetitive dialogue time and again), character models that look awkwardly cut and pasted onto the beautiful photo-realistic black and white backdrops. And the other force is the immense atmosphere, the genuinely creepy sounds, hunting ghosts with the ghost-hunting equipment. But primarily the MAIN draw that keeps you playing this game is *the mystery* that keeps unfolding, getting deeper the further you go in.
You see the story is the main element to an adventure game for me. This is a classic chilling ghost story. You are trying to solve this mystery.
And if this game could keep its promises (it tantalizes you with depth and intrique) then it would easily be adventure game of the decade. BUT it cannot. And unfortunately you will not realize this until the *end* of the game. There are so many threads that are left unanswered and remember it has drawn you in like a master fable so you are hooked but imagine that you are coming to the end of a brilliant mystery novel and find that the last few pages of the book have been ripped out.
That is how i felt at the end of this story. I'm sorry but even if i enjoyed all of a book up until the last few pages. If those last pages were ripped out then this undoes all the good work gone previously. The ending to this game did not give due credence and attention to the amount of strands that it or rather Jonathon Boakes attempts to weave.
Now if JB turns around and says.. these riddles and anomalies (lots of spoilers which is why i have not mentioned them specifically) are answered in "The Lost Crown 2" then i would say to him. No sorry m8 i dont buy a book to have the author sell me the remaining pages as a separate novel just so i can find out the answer. Furthermore my suspicion is that these anomalies are not deliberate but just massive plot-holes that JB has overlooked while he was so busy having his "big-picture" moments he forgets the details...and about tying everything together.
By all means be enthralled by it (as i was) but be prepared for a lot of unanswered questions and dissapointment at the thoroughly underwhelming ending.
simply this: September 9, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm way past my 30's. I hadn't played a game for some years. This game disturbed me most of the time. Probably the best horror game ever.
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