D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die Review

Cover Art

     Hello everyone and happy Wednesday, hope your all doing great.  Today I am dipping into the very shallow pool which is the point & click adventure genre.  Very popular during the 90s, the popularity of the genre has declined yet still has some gems that we all smile at to today such as the Monkey Island franchise.  So today I bring a game from that fading genre called D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, an exclusive for the Xbox One made by Sweary.  Centering around protagonist David Young who gains special powers after taking a bullet to the head giving him the ability to see the events of a past event through objects related to said event he calls "mementos".  David worked for the police force as a very useful detective because of his gift up until his wive was mysteriously murdered and with her dying breath she said something about "D".
  So then, and stay with me here, David quits the police force and goes about investigating everyone with a name starting with "D".  For anyone in modern America whos seen a cop show, one would thing they'd need a little more to go on than that. At some point a scantly clad women who thinks shes a cat to the point of not speaking and hunting mice moves in with David.  It was at this point where I paused with sadness, put down the controller, and went outside...for a couple of days.  A week later after doing things with my life I was walking by my Xbox One and remembered I had a game to play so I could review it.  It was a rather dry year in 2014 and since I don't any games stockpiled, I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel here.  Since I got the Xbox One for Christmas, I haven't had it for long so I've been playing the only game I have for it which is the next-gen version of Grand Theft Auto V (even though I played through it three times), which I will probably review in the future once I muster up the strength to write that novel of a post.  So until The Witcher 3 comes out, I'm probably not going to be reviewing too many Xbox One games.

Action fight

Where was I...Oh right!...crazy half naked cat ladies.  I'm betting that that bullet took some basic senses with him, including the one to make him not sound mono toned about everything.    Anyway, constantly searching for a year or so following the incident, David is confronted by an old cop friend who is concerned for David on account of him investigating every person on Earth whose name starts with D and brings him some evidence to speed up this impossible investigation. Throughout the course of this game, the player interacts with a variety of objects but is constantly bogged down by a stamina feature.  [My following statement is not quoted from The Escapist "Yahtzee" in any way, I just share the same views on the matter, please don't sue me.]  Everything David does drains stamina, from opening doors to conversing with people.  Although, something that came off strange to me was the action sequences where David partakes in heated gunfights and a good deal of fist fighting yet walks away not even the slight bit winded.  To regain stamina David gulps down every food item in sight, his cat person roommate can also sell him food.
  The player is also graded on each thing in accordance to how its actually supposed to happen, so everything you do it wrong and leaves you wandering why not just watch a movie.  I got this game for free by the way.  The overall problem I had with this game was it was boring with an unimaginative narrative.  Sure, it had a good plot and some good ideas but is evened out by the generic bits when its not being fucking weird, once again; cat ladies.  But then again, perhaps I'll never understand the land which is modern Japan and you'd be right to say that.  Moving on, as I said earlier the point & click adventure genre is dying out, so it takes something special to stand out today.  I hold Telltale's The Walking Dead as such an example.  With a good setting, engaging characters and a story influenced by your decisions makes it a heart wrenching masterpiece.  While there are a few episodes to come in season 1, it may pick up the pace were episode 2 fell flat, but until then my opinion stands firm.  Hope you enjoyed this review and I will back next week with more games.  Until then, have fun.
This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.

 Trailer