The Watchmaker

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $25.20

Features:

• Windows 95/98/2000/Me
• ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
• Got Game Ent
• PC

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Wish I could give it 0 stars... [Posted on 2003-01-14]
Save your money. It is awful and boring and a shame developers even wasted their time on it.

Horrible... Don't bother. [Posted on 2003-04-26]
This game is so boring I couldn't go through with it. Seriously. It was such a drag. I yawned so hard I nearly dislocated my jaw.

Not to mention the graphics. Gah!... They were horrid.

There are so many great games out there. Please don't waste you time with this one.

This was so much fun....... [Posted on 2003-06-21]
This game has two interactive people in it. It was fun to play but confusing sometimes. You had to really think about it. If you like interactive games, and I have never seen one like this, this would be a great game to play. You can be two different people and get two different answers from both the detectives. I really enjoyed it. Kept me coming back day after day for more.

So much potential... [Posted on 2003-08-06]
Good stuff: fairly neat story, acceptable graphics, good ambient sound
Bad stuff: everything else...but specifically...
1)click-mapping: Terrible. If you're outside, you're probably pointing at a tree. It doesn't matter where you click, you'll end up looking at a tree. Often, clicking in front of your character spins the camera and has you running in the opposite direction.
2)camera angles: Everything's hidden or around an unnecessarily awkward corner. Camera often sweeps and spins in a rather nauseating manner.
3)doorways: You will get stuck in doorways in the latter half of the game (also a wall or two). Best advice, zoom in and hope you have a specific item to click on in the next room. A couple of times, I had to switch characters, move and warp the stuck character to a different location (you'll understand if you play it)
4)voice "acting": aka reading a line written on a page and not really giving a damn either way.
5)two characters: No need. But the woman is the lesser of two evils.
6)others...just don't buy it. Okay game, but frustrating and lazy programming and acting destroy it.

An Average Execution of an Outstanding Concept [Posted on 2003-12-30]
I am an avid X-Files fan as well as an adventure gamer, so the Watchmaker looked like a pretty good bet. Victoria Conroy and Darrell Boone do indeed resemble our courageous FBI team: Like Fox Mulder, Boone is an investigator in the paranormal. And like Dana Scully, Conroy is a young professional woman with a penchant for balance and reason. Boone is a little arrogant, and Conroy is a little perturbed by that, but they manage to work together pretty well. You help them do that-you are able to control either player at any time: in fact, sometimes you must switch off in order to accomplish certain things in the game as well as trade off inventory items. While Boone has been hired by the law firm to assist in the case, the firm has Conroy as their own plant to keep the case on track-this is pure X-Files. Doubtless, the creators of the game were thinking of just that when they drew up the storyline.

The duo is sent to an Austrian castle to retrieve a pendulum device from a group of religious fanatics. The castle inhabitants are a fully developed group of characters: you learn about them through extensive conversation. The puzzles are very logical. Once I solved a puzzle, or found a hint online, I always felt like a big dummy for not figuring it out sooner-it was either fairly obvious or pretty sensible given enough brain time. The graphics are in my opinion very well done and very satisfying: sunset over Austria is quite beautiful. You can also switch from first to third person points of view to examine things closely or broadly. For an outstanding review of the details of the game, see the review below by "wysewomon," entitled "Solid Adventure."

It is not immediately obvious, but this game is a lot like Syberia. The protagonists in both games go to a European setting and deal with the interaction between the old world (Europe) and the new world (multinational corporations). So, while more than just a few adventure games take place in castles, The Watchmaker keeps it fresh by playing with the interaction between history and the future.

This game requires a lot of video memory and system memory. I can thank this game for prompting a video card upgrade and eventually a system memory upgrade. The recommendations on the box are woefully inadequate: while the publishers suggest a minimum of 8 mb of video memory and a recommended 16 mb of video memory, I would say that 32 mb is the absolute minimum video you should have in order to play this game. 64 mb is even better. Their recommended 128 mb of system memory is about right. You may have no problems with the game; nearly every system configuration is different. But I did try this game on two different computers and had essentially the same problems with it on each one.

Ultimately, I was unable to complete the game because of repeated game freezes. In the game's favor, I can say that I was terribly disappointed not to have been able to complete the game because of technical problems-the game is quite fun and very engaging. On the other hand, I was a bit frustrated to have to reinstall my operating system (admittedly, Windows Me is a weak operating system to begin with) after countless bad restarts. Moreover, the Trecision Watchmaker website is not very helpful.

The voice acting in this game is by far the worst I have ever experienced, a painful and embarrassing exercise in torture. Fortunately, Victoria and Darrell's voices are tolerable enough for the majority of the game; but there is enough character interaction to make this component of the game extremely agonizing. What were they thinking of when they chose the voice actress for the wife? Help us. But to the game's credit, the ambience created by the music is really very lovely. The grounds theme is very melodic and soothing, and it often played in my head long after I was away from the computer.

I read the reviews on this game for a long time before I bought it. I hesitated because of the overwhelming opinion that the voice acting was not only bad but nauseatingly intolerable. But finally, though, I decided to go for it because the storyline seemed too intriguing, too much of what I was looking for in an adventure game. Both of these perceptions turned out to be unproblematically true: the voice acting is utterly abysmal and the storyline is excellent.

And even though I had what were finally irresoluble technical problems with the game, to the degree that my system became unstable, I am not sorry I played it, and I might try to play it again on my new Windows XP system. Not everyone will have the technical problems I had-in fact, if my searches online are any indication, few people had such problems. The voice acting is something I got used to-but if you think you might not be able to tolerate entirely unengaging voice acting, I would not recommend this game.

Because of the wonderful graphic and musical ambience, the engaging storyline and setting, character development, and unique interface, I would like to give it 5 stars, and it pains me not to be able to do so. Sadly, because of the technical difficulties and poor voice acting, I cannot give this game more than 3 stars.

Click here for more details and discount information...