The Isle Tide Hotel Review (Bee)
Do I like it? Yes. Do I recommend it? No.
Another Wales Interactive moviegame, with its trademark bizarre-but-fun script, goofball acting, and guys walking down hallways and staring at doorknobs. The story is silly nonsense cribbed from other pop culture books and movies, stitched together into a pleasant enough mess. The actors are fun and often ridiculous. The branching paths branch well enough and provide for a decent game of this type, in which you fill in your knowledge of what's going on over multiple playthroughs.
Therein lies both the strength and the terrible weakness of this one. What is the over-arching purpose of this latest WI game? Is it to provide you with story, to provide you with fun, to present you with a nice diversion, to hand you some convoluted digital art creation?
Whatever the purpose, the imperative clearly becomes: We filmed 10 hours of a man walking down hallways, and there's no way we're letting you skip a single second of it, if you want the whole story.
As with Wales Interactive's previous offerings, they only let you skip footage if you've seen it before, and only after a complete run-through of a primary story arc. This means you only get to forego dude opening doors, or dude walking across a room, if you've already spent at least about an hour or two in-game watching these transitions. But here's the kicker: There are SO MANY "unique" transitions. At one point, there's a room with 5 people to talk to. They filmed all the permutations you might choose of whom to talk to first, then next. Over 5 people. That's a classic "5+4+3+2+1" possibility puzzle. 15. 15 Different transition scenes just for "Guy walks from one person to another." 15 instances of unskippable ambling that adds absolutely nothing to any potential enjoyment of the experience. Why? Because they filmed it.
This is done again with a door maze. Did he try to open the East door in a room with dim lighting, and it opened easily and he went through? Unique permutation. Was the door locked? Unique permutation. Was it in a room with a clock? Unique permutation. In a maze with over a dozen rooms.
YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME WITH THIS.
Personally I gamed the system: Had Isle Tide running in one window while I did something, anything else in another. I WILL NOT WATCH A MAN JIGGLE DOORKNOBS FOR 3 HOURS you terribly odd people with your nonsensical game design mental problems.
So as usual, Wales Interactive puts out a neat, fun, interesting one of these, then attempts to ruin it with just awful design decisions. Liking it takes work. These sort of complaints about this studio have been freely accessible in reviews since their early offerings.
Someday, maybe they'll take good advice, freely offered.