Thursday, June 4, 2009

Who is Oscar Lake?


On the subject of computer games, I recently took a stab at Who is Oscar Lake?, a disk included in my Instant Immersion French 2.0 box set. This is a first-person "role-playing game" where you play a gem expert who is framed for the theft of an expensive blue diamond. This "game" was . . . simply pretty crappy. I understand it's a learning tool so I wasn't expecting amazing graphics or gameplay, but even as a learning tool it didn't seem very effective: as the player, you can sometimes respond to what a character says in multiple ways, but the different responses are always simply different ways of saying the exact same thing. In other words, I couldn't see for the life of me how the choices could have any effect on gameplay, which means that increased proficiency in French or careful reading or listening doesn't seem to matter. Anyway, the game box boasts of 3 possible endings that increase in difficulty--after maybe an hour's play, I stumbled on one ending (being convicted of the theft) so I guess I have to load a saved game and see if I can make progress along a different route.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

There is also a review of this game on the German Travel Blog - if you are interested. It's such an obscure title; http://germantravelblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-who-is-oscar-lake.html