Dark Tales 6: Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher

Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher
by ERS Game Studios - March, 2014

Series links: Dark Tales 1: Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dark Tales 2: Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat, Dark Tales 3: Edgar Allan Poe's The Premature Burial, Dark Tales 4: Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug, Dark Tales 5: Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death, Dark Tales 6: Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, Dark Tales 7: Edgar Allan Poe's The Mystery of Marie Roget, Dark Tales 8: Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, Dark Tales 8: Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, Dark Tales 9: Edgar Allan Poe's Metzengerstein, Dark Tales 10: Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, Dark Tales 11: Edgar Allan Poe's Lenore

Available at:
Big Fish as Collector's Edition / Standard Edition
GameHouse as Platinum Edition /
iWin as Collector's Edition / Standard Edition
Steam as Collector's Edition



You and your colleague, Detective Dupin, have accepted an odd case at the ancient House of Usher – to find the twin sister of Roderick, who has vanished without a trace. As you delve deeper into the mystery, the connection between the twin’s malady and the old estate appears even more entwined. Why are townspeople disappearing? What secret is locked in the forbidden library? And can you and Dupin find the answers before more innocent victims are claimed?

The Collector’s Edition includes:

• Play the bonus game to uncover more mysteries
  
• Use the available Strategy Guide
  
• Earn Achievements
  
• Purchase collectible items for your exam room
  
• Get wallpapers, soundtracks, and concept art
  

For the Standard Edition

• Walkthrough
  
• Strategy Guide (Big Fish)
  

Click images to enlarge
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Love the Dark Tales games.  Excited the new one is out now.     

Now I just need a BOGOF sale...   

Did you get the coupon for the 60% off any game after installing the FTP game?

You could use that.

lol~  Frodo used that code to get Emberwing!  She had to have her dragons      

Hehe, Genki's right.  I NEED my dragons               

Curiously Creepy Case*****

BASED ON COMPLETED GAME

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
One of the lovely things about this series is that each story stands alone, and is sufficient in itself, while they also linked by the illustrious career of the famous detective M. Dupin, and of course, ourselves. With each new mystery our role has grown, and this investigation finds us with not only our own office, but a lab as well, where we must analyse vital evidence! [Note: I suspect this is a CE only extra]

SIGHTS & SOUNDS
Beautiful hand painted graphics, clear and colourful, with excellent cut scenes. The acting is very good, in particular the melancholy twins are very convincing. The locations are richly detailed and varied, a delight to the eye.

The soundtrack is great. The series signature tune is played, at times, by piano solo at first, and sounds wonderful. It is joined by mysterious but mild music, that is relaxing as well as atmospheric. The voiceovers are nicely done, although some of the accents were a little too broadly American for my taste. In some locations, there are the creepiest whispers and giggles. Enough to curdle the blood. *grin*

WHAT’S HAPPENING?
We have been called to the estate home of the Usher family by their doctor. The last survivors of the family are twins who have been ailing all their lives with a mysterious illness. As well, each suffers whatever befalls the other, and they are both continually weakened by it. Now, Roderick is deathly ill, and Madeline has disappeared! It is up to us to find answers before the twins bring about the Fall Of The House Of Usher. The back story is delivered to us in various ways, some character reminiscences, combined with sepia animated sketching. I feel the explanation for all this, when it comes, is unclear and somehow unsatisfying. I think there should have been more evidence pointing in that direction.

GAMEPLAY
Fun stuff here! There are a lot of things to do and to find. The HOPs (12) come in several flavours: interactive word list, riddles, silhouettes, fragmented objects, matching pairs and multiples of, also dioramas . Some scenes are visited twice, but when you return to a scene, it will be with a different search method. If you wish, you can play a very intriguing and original Match-3 game that is easy to learn but fun to master. Definitely good. There are mostly easy puzzles (13), some with a new twist, and a few hard ones. You can make some of them more difficult by choosing that option within the puzzle itself.

As with all the Dark Tales, this game is not particularly hard, but we can customise the difficulty levels. And there is plenty of help for those who want it. We have an interactive map and directional hint. There's the journal, which was left behind by a previous investigator. He took photos, so matching them to the scene, gives us valuable pointers about where to go next. Parts of a message appear on the back of each photo and the message is compiled in the journal. At one point, even the Usher’s black cat gives us a nudge in the right direction. We can also take photographs of locations for ourselves for our office photo album, again, a CE extra, I think.

Early in the game we come upon a “Reborn One”, who takes the role of the normally cute companion (but we already have M. Dupin!). Certainly not cute, it is interesting and visually striking. Its particular skill is to ‘create life’. The Reborn One is an interesting character visually, but has nothing to say for itself. There is a helpful mouse with us for part of the investigation, and the weirdest thing. A very amusing and active but ugly rat, who sits to the left of the (lockable) inventory bar for the entire game, without making any contribution whatsoever other than comic relief.

COMBINED IMPACT
I’m officially hooked on the remarkable M. Dupin, and am sure it is only a matter of time before the detective agency becomes a family business. So I am necessarily biased. But this is an exceptional game regardless, and delightfully dark. Although all of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are creepy, Dark Tales games usually haven’t been so much creepy as mysterious. This one is the creepiest of the series, sometimes scary, often startlingly unexpected. Also lovely, involving and intriguing. And most of all, fun.

I recommend this game!

Why So Shy, Monsieur?

BONUS CONTENT REVIEW! POSSIBLE SPOILERS!

BASED ON COMPLETED GAME

BONUS CHAPTER
A bit of a frustration, actually, for all that it was well put together and intriguing. The story is loosely connected to the main game, but in a confusing way that never becomes truly coherent. Mostly, I just plodded through doing whatever was next, without any real motivation, because I never quite got the hang of how this fit with the main story. This drove me nuts, and spoiled this chapter for me. It took a fair bit more than an hour, and was possibly closer to two, to complete the chapter. The English is a little less polished, and the graphics were occasionally off.  This is true of several other ERS bonus chapters. They get sloppy near the end.

STRATEGY GUIDE
Easy to use, easy to find. Clear enough screenshots and pointers.

GALLERY
Videos x 14, Wallpapers x 6, Concept Art x 15, Screensavers x 5, Music x 4. So far, uninspiring. But there is also the PHOTO ALBUM.

This is a collection of photos you took with your CAMERA within the game. Great idea, letting us create our own wallpaper, but they are all screenshots of the location, and do NOT include the most important ingredient, M. Dupin himself. Why, I ask, oh why, can I not have likeness of my favourite detective on my desktop? Come, Monsieur, be not coy! Let me commission a portrait from ERS!

COLLECTIBLES
These are gold coins that you find only in the dollhouses scattered about the game. Yes, I said dollhouses *grin*. And, yes, they are inside them.  Being reasonable sized dwellings, the dollhouses are not too hard to find, and once you use your special magnifier to see inside them, the coins are very obvious. It’s an odd arrangement, but original. It would have been nice, seeing they were there, for them all to have been different (the dollhouses), and collected somewhere for display.

LABORATORY
This, too, is frustrating. Having found all the coins needed to equip your laboratory, you proceed with a couple of very mini mini-games to discover the guilty suspect. That done, there is no follow through. We don’t pass the information on to Dupin, we don’t catch the culprit. No closure.

ACHIEVEMENTS
Many achievements, both performance and story based. They are displayed in our office, where we also have our photo album.

REPLAYABLES
Mini-games x 17, HOPs x 15. No fancy further puzzles to gain access to these games.

COMBINED IMPACT
I should remember to stop doing this to myself. ERS just don’t put all they’ve got into their bonus content, and I am usually less than happy with my purchase.

I recommend the SE game. 

Wow, great to know!  Thanks, Justie!

ERS makes me nuts because Dauphin was not IN THIS STORY!