The sound in the game is probably its most effective aspect. The normal environmental sounds are dead on, with a creepy soundtrack always playing in the background. The ghosts in the game will occasionally speak to you out of nowhere, which caught me off guard every single time. I wore headphones while playing the game, a setup that I would recommend for an extra dose of creepy atmosphere.

You get to know the ghosts pretty well throughout the game, from reading old notes to having them talk directly to you. They all have distinct personalities, and almost seem like they are real people, a testament to the voice actors/actresses as well as the script writer. One of the ghosts, a young boy who died in the train tunnel many years ago, serves as a hint giver throughout the game. If you get stuck, he will usually find a way to leave you a clue somewhere. This is a very clever way to make sure nobody gets completely stuck and gives up on the game, which can be a problem for newcomers to the adventure genre.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the difficulty of the puzzles in Dark Fall - The Journal, to be about a six. They are very cleverly constructed, and require paying attention to everything you see and hear in the game to solve, but they don't tend to be on the level of the IQ tests you find in games like the Myst series. The hardest puzzle I encountered was a letter substitution cryptogram which took me about an hour to solve, and I am probably an average puzzle guy. If you pay close attention to detail in the game, all the puzzles are fairly straightforward. The main reason they are so straightforward is that they tend to fit in perfectly with the story of the game. So, if you are into the story, the solutions to the puzzles flow naturally. This, in my opinion, is the holy grail of adventure games. The puzzles can be solved non-linearly, so you can pretty much start anywhere. This can lead to some confusion, making you think, "Should I go over there yet, or wait until I figure out this puzzle" in a lot of cases. While playing, it is best to just let yourself be absorbed into the story, and the order of puzzle solving will present itself.

Dark Fall - The Journal, is not a huge game, taking about twenty hours to finish in all, but is packed with some of the scariest moments I have encountered in my gaming life. If you are a hardcore adventure gamer or newcomer, I think you will find a lot of worth in this offering from the Adventure Company, a company that is definitely gaining my respect for some solid titles such as this one.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 80%.  If you can squint past the fuzzy graphics, you will find a worthwhile, and very scary, adventure game here.

System Requirements:  Pentium II 233; 32 MB RAM;  16 MB Video RAM; 24x CD-ROM;  Mouse.

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