Good Game
As a puzzle/escape game this did pretty good, aside from Jason being a dancer it was ok. Some parts were challenging and I had to look up in the Walkthrough(Max: Twice) and yeah. I really liked the part with the voices and it showed your gravestone there.
Decent
It was fairly fun.. The graphics were good throughout the game with the exception of Jason. The mood was eerie until he popped out in a fugly union suit and started disco dancing. Blocking his dance moves was too easy. If you had created a more realistic and scarier Jason you would have received a better score for sure.
took to long to get in to
i just thought too long to get in to but could be a goodgame if given the time
A decent P&C adventure game if nothing else
It seems that at this point in time Afro-Ninja stands as the NG god of P&C adventure games (P&C stands for point and click in case your wondering), what with the escape series, nightmare house and now this. Certainly over time the quality of the illustrations have improved vastly, but it seems that the set pieces are starting repeat themselves. There wasn't a single puzzle or trick in this game that hasn't been used in a previous escape game, and if you've played previous Afro-Ninja games than the puzzles presented in this one will be second nature to you by now. Then again that's a piece of criticism that could be leveled with most P&C adventure games so lets move on to the whole horror aspect.
Escape from Crystal lake is a game that's really trying to be a horror game, but all the horror elements are let down by game play issues. One of the biggest problems with the horror is how pathetically easy your fights with Jason are. A serial Killer ceases to scary when they are unarmed and remain in your sight at all times. Every time you fight him your armed and he's not and there a little text box and flashing indicators telling you exactly how to beat him, and it's hard to be scared when all Jason ever does is dance around on the screen and throw a really slow punch ever now and then. It's a shame really because there was so much potential for a great horror game, things like the letter drop mini game and the murder scene in the bathroom really set up the atmosphere for great horror game, and I'm not kidding when I say this game has one of the best soundtracks of any horror game out there, but in the end it's all let down by a pathetic villein.
Another major issues plaguing Escape from Crystal lake that was also a problem in nightmare house is the linearity. The free roaming environment the map implies is an illusion, the game is essentially linear, all locations are locked initially and you will find each key in order as the game progress. You the player never really make any decisions which kinda takes away the whole adventure element.
The shame of it is that Escape from Crystal lake truly had the potential to be a great horror game where it not for some truly bad design choices that failed to make it scary. There was so much the designers could have learned if they just took some time to look at some good horror games and what makes them scary. Take Exmortis for example another P&C game here on Newgrounds. Exmortis keeps the player in the dark about the plot and whats going to happen. All you know is that there are these weird things that occupy this house and are evil, and there's this other thing that's been killing people, and your probably going to be it's next victim. This game on the other hand is depressingly predictable, you can see every event coming if you watched any Jason movie, there's no plot twist, and the game always tells you exactly whats going on at all times. Afro-Ninja certainly could have taken a number of pointers from games like Condemned and Resident Evil Outbreak as well, such as villains that jump out at you rather than staying in your sight at all times, and why Afro-ninja do you give the player control of the lights, in a good horror game the lights turn off at the worst possible time, a murderer is alot scarier when you can't see him half the time, Condemned proved that, and yet whenever I'm fighting Jason there's plenty of light and I can always see where he is. In Outbreak the player is often forced to run away from fights and complete objectives with zombies in hot pursuit. Your always being chased by something which makes the game alot scarier. In this game we're allowed to take our dear sweet time and Jason patiently waits until we have a new weapon to attack us, your never forced to run and once you figure this out, he ceases to be scary.
All these aspect just whittle away the whole horror aspect of the game. It's still a decent point and click adventure if nothing else, but it could have been so much better, and as far horror goes it's not nearly as scary as Kelly Osbourne's face.
Thanks for the in-depth review. I suppose one thing to keep in mind though is that this game wasn't exactly meant to be a fright-fest. Think of the original Friday the 13th movies- did they ever REALLY scare you? aside from a few cheap moments, if that? Now compare those to more modern scary movies. The Freddy and Jason flicks have always been about being scary and cheesy, but with a bit more emphasis on cheesy. That being said, you're right about puzzle replication- it's hard not to re-use ideas that worked well previously =)
Its pretty good but if my car broke down in from of camp crystal i'd run for my life