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A charming little game that's great fun despite being let down by unforgiving puzzles.

  • Trihan
  • 05/08/2012 10:43 PM
  • 707 views
Time to dust off my review style, it's been a while since I used it.

So what's this The Theater thing all about anyway? (Story)

The storyline of the game revolves around a group of kids who are exploring an abandoned theater and find a bunch of cool costumes which they intend to wear on Hallowe'en. 13-year-old Geoff is the protagonist the player controls, who decided to dress up like a troll. Unfortunately, all is not right with the costumes and the kids wearing them turn into their respective monsters when midnight hits. Geoff is affected by this to a lesser degree than his peers, and sets off to save them from themselves before humanity is doomed.

I can't in good conscience give the story any less than 5 out of 5. The premise is fantastic, makes a good excuse for using a variety of charsets, and the plot actually kept me playing despite the few shortfalls which I'll go into in a bit.

Geoff, who are your friends? (Characters)

There's only one playable protagonist in The Theater, and that's Geoff. The only other major characters in the game are his group of friends: Kayleigh, Geoff's little sister; Amber, his girlfriend; Dave, one of his best friends from grade school; and Tommy, the dorky boy next door.

Although they don't have a huge number of lines or screentime, each kid has a solid, defined personality and they really felt like real people to me.

I'm going to give characters a 4 out of 5. It falls slightly short of perfection only because none of the characters really had enough time to make the most of their disparate personalities. I would have liked to have seen more done with their relationship dynamic.

Where are we going and how do we get there? (Mapping)

Maps in The Theater are functional: they do what they need to and little else. Everything looks like what it's supposed to be, which is always a good thing. I will say the maps tended to be a little on the large side, especially the sidewalk buildings. There just felt like too much empty space that wasn't being used for anything. There are also some absolutely VILE maps (I'm looking at you, skeleton maze and doomsday realm!) but that's by virtue of them being generated with the random dungeon generator (as far as I could tell).

Mapping gets a not-too-shabby 3 out of 5. What's there suits its intended purpose, but nothing really stood out or made an impression.

Kids turning into monsters? What gives? (Gameplay)

The gameplay ties in very closely with the plot, since the majority of the action revolves around solving a puzzle sequence specific to the monster costume chosen by its respective kid. Kayleigh chose a witch; Amber, a medusa; Dave took the skeleton and Tommy dressed up as a shadow creature. The puzzles are mostly well-thought-out, but there are a couple of exceptions that are really going to drag the score down.

My first gripe is that the medusa puzzle is REALLY easy to automatically screw yourself on. Once you enter the room and see what you need to do, you need a specific item that you had no other reason to take with you other than to solve this puzzle. However, once you're in you can't get out, so if you didn't happen to grab said item you need to reload your save or be turned to stone.

My second gripe is with the endgame puzzles. The "battles" all require you to use a specific item, but sometimes it's pretty much a crapshoot involving the random use of items and then either dying and reloading or progressing a bit. The final final part also takes a bit of brainpower to get past, and I honestly wouldn't have figured it out if TestZero hadn't told me what to do. It's also possible to screw yourself over at the final save point if you give away an item you needed to win. It just feels too...unforgiving. If possible, it's worse than a Sierra adventure game. And we all know how brutal those were.

I also have a minor gripe with one of the other gameplay features: the trading cards. I actually really liked the idea. There are 10 trading cards dotted around the game, and if you collect them all you get an extra little bit in the ending. However, two of them are in areas that, once completed, you can NEVER go back to, and one of those is in an area where going to the location of the card makes absolutely no sense given your goal once you get there. In fact, it's quite easy to get a game over if you go after the card and don't know where you're going.

Despite these gripes, I still enjoyed the game and the gameplay certainly helped with that. I had a lot of fun with it. I really debated long and hard about the score here, pingponging between a 2 and a 3, and ultimately decided to give it a 3 because I still had fun despite the problems. That's the mark of a good game. In fact, even after I'd beaten it I went back and did the whole fucking thing again to get the trading cards I missed.

Whispering sweet nothing. (Music and sound)

The music used in The Theater was pretty low-key for the most part, hanging around in the background and never really pulling me away from what I was doing. Everything fit the area or scene it was for and nothing really jarred me. Sounds were used pretty liberally, and one thing I really liked was that major "events" had a little "ooh, something is happening!" sound effect and I'm a sucker for stuff like that.

Not much else to say really. Music and sound gets a solid 4 out of 5. I considered docking a point for pure RTP, but considering it's an older project I'm willing to forgive it.

So what you're saying is... (Overall comments)

If you're looking for the next big title, The Theater isn't it. If you're looking for a brilliant puzzle game, look somewhere else. If you want a fun half-hour distraction with an enjoyable plot and fiendishly unforgiving puzzles, I would definitely recommend a download. As one of the first VX titles I've picked up in ages, I could certainly have done a great deal worse.

Averaging out the scores, The Theater scores 3.8, rounded up to 4. I look forward to seeing The Masquerade, TestZero.