Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death - Review
Detective Dupin in back, and as good looking as ever! In this fifth game in the well-known Dark Tales series; you, as a detective is being called again to investigate series of murders in the town.
If you are fans of Edgar Allan Poe and expected this game to include his story of The Masque of the Red Death as mentioned in the title of the game, you will find yourself disappointing! Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death has nothing, or very little to do with the original Poe's story. Anyway, the story is interesting and exciting on its own which still managed to keep us hooked all the way through.
The Masque of the Red Death has gorgeous looking, beautiful graphics. Sadly, some scenes are a little bit foggy - ERS already proved to us that they can simply create game with sharp, clean graphics as shown in their previous game so why not this time? However, that is not a main concern since items in Hidden Object scenes are still easy enough to find.
You will get to interact with several characters and their voice overs are very good. Moreover, there is a map offered in the game which we found it very useless because although there is a lot of back and forth in the game, the map shows you nothing but the image of the location - no You are Here mark or Point of Interest mark. Puzzles in this fifth sequel is on the simple and easy side, still, the developers included enough twists on the classics which make them much more interesting.
There are a few of unique features in this game. For example, you have a camera with you which can be used to take a picture of any scene you wish, some might find it useful - we found it irrelevant though. Another unique feature is the Scale of Justice which linked very well to the game and it adds a surprising amount of entertainment in the game. Well, it basically makes the game more detective like - it is the place where you can gather evidences against both sides and make a judgement about who is the criminal - the Red Mask or the Mayor?
Apart from those new features, the gameplay is fairly standard. However, we would not say it is easy because many times the game left us confused and Strategy Guide included is very useful if that happens.
