Storywise, I really dug Sacred Line. Darko's
native language is not English, but he had
an awful lot of help with proof-reading.
While it's not Stephen King-quality prose, it's
eminently readable with no confusion. The
text is delivered in short snippets, suitable
for the screen resolution, and while it's pretty
linear, there are still plenty of choices to be
made, items to be found, and deaths to be
met. Impatient gamers will enjoy the lack of
saving/reloading when a death happens, as
Sacred Line just rewinds a couple of pages
to the most recent checkpoint, letting you
re-think your actions and try something
different. This removes any real sense of
urgency, but compared with other console
adventure games like Uninvited or
Shadowgate which delighted in the
unrepentant slaughter of the protagonist, the
superiority of this system becomes
apparent. It's no different than holding your
fingers at a certain point in a CYOA novel,
which is something we all did, so don't try to
deny it.
Most importantly, there aren't a whole lot of
options for this sort of game available to
Sega enthusiasts. Snatchers does it all with
greater pizazz, but take away Hideo
Kojima's involvement and the massive
budget and you'd get something that looks a
lot more like Sacred Line. Perhaps the best
connection you can make to the game is the
Japanese-only Play Novel: Silent Hill which
takes the PS1 classic and boils it down to a
series of story-based choices and dialog
between characters (look for more on this
and other visual novels in a future issue!).
Before you make a purchase, you have to
decide which version of the game you want
as Darko offers two options. The standard