And here we go with impressions for Black Viper: Sophia's Fate, brought to you by the super inframan, man of a thousand bundles!
The story: You play Sophia (no last name given,) policewoman by day, and by night she becomes...The Black Viper! Okay, first off, must be nice to have regular hours as a cop. Can you imagine a cop being able to get away with "Sorry, I don't work nights?" Second, it's never exactly explained what the Black Viper's role is. Is she a super-spy? A cat burglar? A superhero? A super VILLAIN? Good thing nobody will ever discover her identity (you know, apart from the fact Sophia has a tattoo of a black viper on her neck. But that's coincidence, surely.) You're called to investigate the murder of a millionaire playboy's wife. Your boss has a big diagonal scar across his face, so I was really surprised by the twist that he DOESN'T betray you. Also, for some reason they call in a Colonel Jones from the US Army, who looks like Tommy Lee Jones in a Castro beard and hat. Later on - spoilers - you find out that was all a disguise and he was the bad guy all along, who looks JUST like Tommy Lee Jones! (He's not the only one whose image they stole. The playboy's mistress is named Elizabeth Page, who looks just like Bettie Page, complete with actual pinup pics of Bettie Page in the next room.) At any rate, you have to solve the mystery using both your detective skills and your Black Viper skills for the things that cops can't do (because FUCK warrants!)
The story was mostly incomprehensible because of translation errors. Going just off the graphics, it's essentially a cheesy near-future spy caper. It had potential to be campy like Paranormal State: Poison Spring, but since the dialogue was so janky it just ended up plain bad.
Oh, and you never do figure out what Sophia's fate actually is. Unless you consider being shot, surviving, and telling your boss that you're the Black Viper a "fate." I don't.
The dialogue and audio: Speaking of which, as I said, utterly horrible. The credits state that two people did the translations, but I don't believe it. Spelling errors abound, as do typos. Nobody could pick up on the fact that instead of "wife," you wrote "wide?" Was the executive breathing down their necks yelling "Good enough, let's go!" or something?
Even the hidden object scenes weren't spared bad translations. The word "atlas" was used for "globe," and twice they asked for a "pocket," which to my surprise was actually a clutch purse. Be prepared to be utterly baffled.
No voice acting. With translation this bad, it could have gone one of two ways: one, the voice actors could have read the horribly translated garbage verbatim, which would have pulled it straight out of "plain bad" and rocketed it up to "super campy and hilarious," OR the voice actors would try to fix the dialogue on the fly and end up improving it. Either way, this game was hurt by the lack of voice acting.
The graphics: Surprisingly good, actually. In a few of the images, they've managed to make a hidden-object character attractive. Sophia is pretty sultry-looking (until they show her profile, then not so much.) and Elizabeth Page is hot (but then again, that's only because Bettie Page was.) The male characters are also done well but they're likely copied off real people. The room environments look like actual rooms. For the most part, they don't have random things stupidly or impossibly placed throughout just for the sake of the puzzle. There's a wee bit of animation here and there with nice-looking cars and helicopters. Overall, the graphics look good and were well-thought-out. The only problem?
The gameplay: The objects are SO GODDAMN SMALL! There is a built-in magnifying glass for the screen, which you can turn on and off with the scroll wheel (and props for this, it's a great idea,) but holy hell, you NEED it. Fine, I'm glad they made a game that actually has a good resolution and makes use of the pixels, but enough is enough. It was frustrating, almost as if the game was saying: "Look, but don't make your eyes strain; a hidden-object game like me is going insane." Small objects + bad translations = lean on the hint button. I really regret playing the game on hard.
The minigames range from "mildly challenging" (such as a slider puzzle) to "what the fuck are you even asking me to do?" I ran into a couple of these, and I had to skip them. Only thing is, they're set to timers. I had to wait SIX MINUTES to skip some of the puzzles. And no, alt-tabbing didn't work. Alt-tab at 348 seconds, come back at 348 seconds. So since the instructions don't help, you just have to sit there. I'm actually grateful this game doesn't have achievements, because I just know one would be "do all the puzzles without the skip button" and I wouldn't be able to do it.
Some of the inventory and overworld puzzles were infuriating, because they give no indication of what to do and when. Example: a lock appears when you twist various horns on statues around the house. But they don't tell you that, you just have to find it on your own, and clicking the statue's horn before you're supposed to doesn't reveal anything. So progression becomes an exercise in "sweep the screen and look for icon changes." (This might be better in easy or normal mode. If you play this, not that I think you should, keep your blood pressure down and don't play in hard mode.)
The length: My Steam profile says 3.9 hours, but I left it on while I went to lunch, and also to test alt-tabbing, so it's more like 3.5. It felt like 35.
The verdict: A hidden-object game that sacrificed everything to graphics. I might have been able to say "this game is okay" if they had had voice acting, if they had decent translation, if they had comprehensible minigames...or even ONE of those things. Squandered potential. Avoid this game. It did put me in the mood to look up some Bettie Page pics, though.
Alternate controls a bit ponderous, not giving immediate reaction as RE1 HD, don't know why.
Damn you leechman, i scared when he is came before entering wc in the mansion, lol.
