The Others

The Others
by Paprikari - March, 2012

Available at:
Big Fish
GameHouse
iWin



A local toymaker and all his factory workers mysteriously vanished on the same night. It's up to you, ace reporter Mary Bingham, to delve into the town's hidden mysteries to discover the truth. But first you'll need to understand the strange inhabitants to solve the riddle of the shuttered toy factory. Is the ominous figure in black trying to help you, or is he leading you into certain peril? What lies beyond the elaborate labyrinth? Uncover a new world of shocking secrets as you hunt for clues in this heart-stopping mystery-adventure!

• Truly unique and challenging mini-games
  
• An exciting out-of-this-world adventure
  
• Novel inventory system enriches gameplay
  

Click images to enlarge
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Three Reasons Why...**

BASED ON DEMO

I can’t play this game, let alone recommend it.

FIRST REASON
This game is old. As in not just old-fashioned, as in copyright in 2012 old. And it shows. The style is the HOG-heavy, realistic graphics, rudimentary story, type of older game. There is no widescreen and no aspect correction. The location graphics are flat, and/or fuzzy, the HOP scenes are grainy and static, no animation. Just slightly interactive word lists, and piled up junk. There is no map or journal, and only one puzzle so far. There ARE 3 levels of difficulty though.

SECOND REASON
The game has great voiceovers. A little overacted, but clear and well done. Unfortunately, every little black bar comment is spoken. And every conversation. It is harrowing after only a few minutes. Especially with that somewhat strident, over-precise tone. Normally I love well done voiceovers, this one, I couldn’t wait to shut off. But of course, you lose the special effects sounds that way.

Still, both these reasons are not, on their own, enough to deter me normally.

THIRD & ONLY NECESSARY REASON
As the game progresses, the cursor gets more and more sticky. I found I could only play about 10 minutes at a time before the cursor would.stop.for.a.rest.after.each.click. Totally unplayable. If you want to exit every 10 minutes, it will reset to no lag, but it takes such a short time to freeze up again!

WHY YOU MIGHT LIKE IT ANYWAY
Obviously, I don’t like the game. But it is, excepting the above, fairly well done. The story involves some new elements as well as the standard ones. We are investigating the mysterious closure of a toy factory. Don’t remember seeing that before. You must work your way through a labyrinth to find answers – not new, but usually entertaining. What has happened to a whole town of people?

And remember, you may be watching on a smaller monitor than me. You CAN mute the voices. And for all I know, you won’t experience any lag at all on your machine.

So if you like HOPs, and simplicity in design, and you’re lucky, you may like this game.

But I can’t recommend it.

JustTheFacts wrote:

THIRD & ONLY NECESSARY REASON
As the game progresses, the cursor gets more and more sticky. I found I could only play about 10 minutes at a time before the cursor would.stop.for.a.rest.after.each.click. Totally unplayable. If you want to exit every 10 minutes, it will reset to no lag, but it takes such a short time to freeze up again!

Urgh!  I was going to download the trial, and see what I thought.  Might not though, if the cursor... is... so... sticky. 

Thanks for a brilliant review   

Is for some, not for others... never can figure out how that it is. So maybe give it a try? Didn't do much for me, but I'd guess you'd like it more..

Okay, I downloaded the trial, and didn't find the cursor sticking at all. 

The game is wonderfully creepy - it really made me jump at times.
And there was something sinister about

Spoiler:

    


But although I didn't have any problems with the cursor, I DID have problems with the HO scenes. 

Some of the items you had to find (in any given scene) were shown in blue.  I could never find any of these blue items, so I used the Hint button.  This made the blue word change to something else, and that something else is highlighted, and I had seen it already, but it wasn't listed before. 

Exampe:  One of the blue words was CAR.  So I had to find a CAR in the scene.  Couldn't find it, so I clicked on HINT.  The word CAR suddenly changed to the word STOOL, and the STOOL is highlighted.  I had already seen the stool, but couldn't pick it up, cos it wasn't on the list before.    Very odd. 

Whoa, that IS odd!   Never seen that particular programming glitch before!

Yeah, I'd never seen it before either.    
And for that reason, I won't be buying it.   

Frodo wrote:Yeah, I'd never seen it before either.    
And for that reason, I won't be buying it.   

Hi everyone.  That blue word is supposed to be like that.  If you click on the blue word 3 times, it gives you 3 different items.  Your goal is to find which of the 3 items is the one in the HOS.  At first when that happened I thought I was having a very blonde day, but then the lightbulb went on and voila !!!  It's kind of neat actually

Ahhh, I'm glad you figured it out Tesamoine.  I thought there was something wrong with the game.    

Not sure I like what they've done with the blue words though   

Most of the time, 2 of the 3 words are ludicrous.  So it's not that hard to figure which one you're looking for.  If you save them until the end of your search it's a lot easier.  Plus the HOS are fairly simple.  It IS a good game once it gets going.  Very surprising as it goes along. 

I must give it another go then, now that I am redownloading all my games into my lovely new 2TB extra brain!   

Two TB!   Color me envious!

And only $6 more than the 1TB drive I went in the shop for!!

PC has just spent 6hrs removing all big fish games (250GB). Now start much longer process of redownloading all the damn things.

I am a computer dummy, obviously. What's a TB?? (And I think I want one!)

Okay I googled it - terabyte, yum! I wonder can I get add'l (TB?) memory for my current computer instead of having to buy a new one? IIRC it's around 5 or 6 years old -- originally 500 GBs, I think. But I really don't want to buy a new computer (though it's inevitable.) I'm using Vista and I like it; not eager to switch.

You don't have to if your computer is holding up well.  You can get external hard drives (yes, with terrabyes of storage!!) that you just plug into a USB slot.  Completely awesome, but remember that there are no cooling systems on your external drives!  Keep air flow to extend the life of your drives!

JustTheFacts wrote:
PC has just spent 6hrs removing all big fish games (250GB). Now start much longer process of redownloading all the damn things.

When I get ready to dump all the BFG from my laptop and re-put them on my external, I really hope you and Genki don't get tired of all my dumb questions! 

The very first time I posted here was about that - I never got all the old games off.  Egads.  I'm so glad to Internet Know some Really Smart People.     

pippi - Can help you get rid of any leftover games, but need to know why you are doing it, so can figure out safest way. Also helps if you know which game site they come from and if have game manager/installer.

RMom, like you, really didn't want to fork out for new computer at this time, since everything is fine for my needs except not enough storage space (remember, I'm the nut that keeps EVERY game she owns downloaded all the time). I had 500GB, and that just wasn't enough.

The gizmo I have just plugs in, like genki said, into the USB, and I have set my Big Fish games manager to download games to the new external drive. So am good for about 2000 games now  

All for AU$95!!

Hi Just the FACTS,  all the games I have to get of are BFG. It will be a few weeks before I have time, though.  Like you, I like to keep all my games downloaded all the time.  That sounds like a great deal on a 2TB drive!

BFG is EASY! Just go to the folder for bfg games in "my computer" and ctrl + A and delete the lot. I broke the workload up, because I didn't want my pc to have a brain freeze, but still was very straightforward. They  take awhile of course, but you don't have to even supervise. Although, checking once in a while to see if any files are exceptions for one reason or another (when that happened, I always said skip it, eventually they all went away). At the end, reboot, poor little game manager all empty   so sad!

Of course, you also have to empty out the recycle bin using this method, or they'll just go on taking up space there, but still, again too easy.

Only hassle is, the shortcuts in the windows start menu are all still there.

Oh THANK YOU for the info and tips! (Can't believe I'm such a dummy about these things, haha.)
Where can I buy one in the States... I guess like a Best Buy or someplace like that. Are they all compatible I wonder.

ETA - My computer still works fine otherwise but downloading games has been so slow lately that playing has been a real drag.

Just ask if is compatible with your version of Windows. That's all that's really needed to know -you should be ok with Vista I think.

Some come with power cord, some are charged through the USB. If your pc is a bit older, you may not want to use up a USB port, because older pcs didn't include as many.

Then it's just a question of how much you want to spend.

If you go to www.seagate.com, or www.toshiba.com, they will not only show you what they have but also which shops you can buy them from physically, or you can buy them direct. Weirdly, it is often cheaper to buy them from an outlet other than the manufacturer!   

You can get external hard drives even at Walmart!