Let’s keep this I-movie train chugging. Tonight’s game is Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster. Mission: Collect screenshots. Yet, whenever I start up an I-movie, I always hold out a faint glimmer of hope, that maybe this one will be different than all the others, worthy of a modicum of respect. You’d think I’d learn.
This game puts a spin on the classic Frankenstein tale. It begins with minimal, Myst-like exposition where you hear audio playing out the scene of being falsely arrested for the murder of your daughter, subsequently convicted in a kangaroo court, and hanged. When you awaken, you are on Dr. Frankenstein’s table. The doctor is played by Tim Curry, with whom I’m most familiar for his turn as an Austrian villian in Loaded Weapon 1.
So you get up, blunder around the lab, look at things, and endure Frankenstein’s torturous lectures about science and how incredibly smart he is. Remember having professors in college who were world-renowned experts in their fields but felt that it was a crushing burden to actually teach classes and regarded you with the utmost contempt for merely daring to be in their presence? Now imagine one of those professors with a gun and inordinately marginal patience for your novice inquiries. You walk around and find a chalkboard with some insane ramblings and the good doctor takes time out of his busy scribbling schedule to tell you how brilliant he is for composing the formulas you see. You wander over to an early prototype of the periodic table of elements and Frankie is pleased as punch to let you know that he has discovered a new element, and that he is to be considered intelligent for doing so. The new element is called lifestone and is reportedly the key to bringing the creature to life.
But you aren’t his first attempt to re-animate something. On another shelf you find the doc’s handwritten notes, which are every bit as difficult to read as a nominal pharmaceutical prescription. Here is Frankenstein’s research note for a makeshift catfish:
It is with this note that I learn how I can end the game. If you irritate the doctor too many times by picking up this note and poking him with it, he will pop your re-animated rear (I told you he was packing)– a welcome release since I couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to be able to go in this game aside for all around the laboratory and up above in the castle turret.
astrange says:
I clearly remember reading a walkthrough for this game that involved:
1. picking up the lifestone
2. finding a napkin
3. tying them together into a parachute
4. and throwing it out the window
I’m not sure why he didn’t shoot you for this. I also remember playing the demo and thinking it was somehow my fault that the game sucked.
Multimedia Mike says:
It’s important not to blame yourself when the game sucks, astrange. :-) I was able to pick up the lifestone in the laboratory (it was on the same bookshelf as the research notes). But the doctor is very territorial and would snap at me when I did.
SeanNOLA says:
I remember my dad’s friend from work gave him this game when I was in 4th grade. I watched him play through the first bit – where you have this internal monologue about how the last thing you could remember was dying. That was my “Last Unicorn” moment: when I realized that everyone dies. I cried and cried and cried. My mom got SO MAD at my dad, and made him uninstall it.
Good to know I didn’t make my dad miss out on anything good!