by Dale Farris, President, Golden Triangle PC Club
November 2001

Game Overview

Jekyll & Hyde is Dreamcatcher's new action/adventure game that is based on the famous book (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) by Robert Louis Stevenson. In this beautifully designed new game, Dr. Jekyll has lost his beloved wife to death, and the pain of his loss slowly erodes his soul. If not for Laurie, his daughter, he most surely would long ago have gone mad.

The game takes place four years after the death of his wife, and though Dr. Jekyll's anguish has subsided, the memories of his loss remain dormant, ready at a moment's notice to be stirred anew.

Professionally, Dr. Jekyll is at the peak of his career. He is director of an asylum for the insane, and he is renowned for his benevolence. The recollections of his clandestine experiments that transformed him into his peculiar alter ego, the grotesque Mr. Hyde, continue to haunt him. He has sworn to never again allow his basest instincts, that come to full fruition in Mr. Hyde, rule his everyday life.

Quickly into the game, he becomes aware that his innocent daughter Laurie has been kidnapped by a mysterious patient bent on using his daughter as a pawn in a deadly game that will seem to last a lifetime, but will be resolved by dawn. Now Dr. Jekyll has no choice but to revert to his husky Mr. Hyde character in order to search Victorian London and enter many other areas attainable only by Mr. Hyde.

What seems at first to be a task easy to accomplish soon takes on global proportions involving ancient and occult forces. Three pieces of a medallion must be collected, and unknown to Dr. Jekyll, when these pieces are combined the completed medallion will cause the release of an evil force the world has never before seen.

Dr. Jekyll must by any and all possible means do whatever it takes to rescue his daughter from the forces of evil, even if it means once again descending to his secret laboratory and mixing the potion that will resurrect the demented Mr. Hyde.

The primary character you play is Dr. Jekyll. After he drinks the potion, he becomes his alter ego Mr. Hyde. Jekyll/Hyde eventually comes across his daughter Laurie, along with other characters including Charles Dewitt, Burnwell, Stoke Moran, and the evil-doer behind the whole story.

The entire game comes on 1 CD ROM that contains all the files needed to play through the entire game.

Game Play

With this game, Dreamcatcher has branched out a bit from their vast repertoire of highly successful adventure games to blend action with typical adventure game features. In this game, you move around your primary character from scene to scene, talk with other characters, and of course find objects that have to used elsewhere.

However, in addition to these features, you also have to constantly fight off attacking insane patients in the asylum. This represents the action end of the game, involving the bad guys that are always trying to kill you. 

You use the keyboard throughout the game, although you can program an analog gamepad controller. Although the game does also support joystick movement and controls, the game's own documentation recommends against it. I suspect this may be due to the greater likelihood of problems with the many different types of joysticks and drivers for these devices that are now on the market. Although I did not try the game with my joystick, I suspect using the keyboard controls is probably easier than using a joystick.

You play the game as Dr. Jekyll as you try to save his daughter. As you move throughout the game, you will find yourself having to complete many, many, jumping maneuvers, along with timed jumps, while at the same time fighting off the "bad guys." Sound like a typical first-person shooter to you? Of course, and this is the surprising aspect of what we would otherwise expect from Dreamcatcher, a company that has specialized in adventure games.

During gameplay, you will come across a cistern or bowl of water. This means you can use the potion to transform into Dr. Jekyll's alter ego character, Mr. Hyde. Pay attention to these moments, as this opportunity means much more than merely a character change. In these cases, if you do not transform, then you will not be able to move further into the game.

The game is designed to force these transformations, in order for the character to use the greater strength and power of the Mr. Hyde character. For example, unless you transform into Mr. Hyde, in the ensuing jump challenges that happen after these transform points, unless you are Mr. Hyde, your character will absolutely not be able to overcome these physical challenges.

The bad guys are controlled by the built in artificial intelligence engine that controls these bad guys and how fast and in what direction they move and advance upon you. Many times these characters seem to advance upon your character, stop, and then turn around, while in other situations they come on at a very fast clip making it difficult to get ready with your walking stick.

In addition, in many situations, the bad guys are located far from your character but are throwing things, like plates, at you. Since you do not have a firing weapon, your only chance of survival is to try and run very fast past the bad guys, or doge the oncoming objects. Since the camera angles many times change very slowly, in some cases you have to blindly start your character running fast, since you cannot yet see exactly where he will go.

You will not have a great number of objects to carry around. In most cases, after you pick up an object you will soon use it, thus removing it from your limited inventory. You also do not have to decide which objects to store and which to drop, a nice feature.

The main character will turn his head if there is something to look at, or something to pick up, or some other type of action is required.

The game is played using the keyboard or an analog gamepad. If you have a digital gamepad, it is recommended you play with the keyboard, otherwise the character will always be in the run mode. This may be a problem, because in many situations walking will be necessary.

The menus are browsed using the escape key. You can set various audio and video settings, and save games in the Main menu. You move the character with the arrow keys, and run is activated with the L/R Shift key. The Space Bar used to jump, and the Enter key is used for activating objects, pick up or use an inventory item. The L Ctrl key is used to double attack. The A key shifts the camera lens left, the D key shifts the camera lens right, and the S key presents the subjective view. The I key opens and closes the Inventory, and the Space Bar is used to select objects in the Inventory. The Enter key deselects objects and the Arrows keys change the object in the Inventory.

However, you should be warned ahead of time about the save game feature in this game. You really cannot save a game anywhere in time during gameplay. The Checkpoint Icon, the pocket watch, appears at the bottom left corner of the screen when the character passes a pre-programmed checkpoint. At these points, the game is saved and is you select to continue playing a game after a "game over," the game restarts at the last checkpoint.

This classic video game console aspect is carried over into this PC platform version. This means that you really can only save games when the game lets you, meaning when you begin new levels or new areas. Once you do save a game, don't be surprised when after playing forward for another while, and your character dies, you find yourself starting over at the particular level, versus where you thought you were saving. When you save a game, the program indicates this location, but you have to closely look to notice that the saved location is prior to where you thing you have advanced when you try and save a game. This can be very frustrating, especially when you have to start a level over and over again, as you try and get your movements and jumps just right.

With the first-person shooter aspect dominating this game, this means you will have to get very good with the keyboard controls and in some situations, you will have to likely try and get the movement or the jumps just exactly correct in order to further advance the game plot. This may excite gamers more inclined to put up with this need to constantly try something many times, while it may especially frustrate those more used to the less frenetic pace of typical adventure games.

The game includes a neat diary of notes that will open up information about the game, your progress, and hints to what to do next.

The complexities of this game are difficult, and the story is interesting as it progresses. You will find it a fascinating tale, if you can manage to be fast and accurate with the right timing of the right keyboard controls to get you through the story. While the official walkthrough guide will help you know where to go and what to do, the skill with the keyboard controls is all yours to develop.

Sadly, it seems there are NO cheat codes, nor is there any way to enter any of the classic codes gamers revert to in order to get trough the harder parts of games. There is apparently also no way to edit any game .txt or .ini files, in order to implement these codes. While some gamers will not find this a problem, I suspect many gamers may wish they had a way to enter a "God" mode, or "Invisible" mode, or "Infinite Health" code, or other similar codes we usually find with most all other first person shooter games now on the market. With no way to more quickly enter such a code for "Infinite Health," you will just have to try over and over again to get through the hard parts.

In addition, with the classic shooter game feature of a "limited life," this means as you are hit by the bad guys, your character's life is drained. Unfortunately, this draining happens very, very quickly, and this can easily get very frustrating, especially when you have very little life left and have to somehow manage to get all the right keyboard commands at the right time to get through the harder parts.

With the limited means to save games, this also means you can get so far in the game, and find yourself "stuck" and not able to continue. At this point, all you can do is start the last level over again.

Game Play Notes

While the game play does present some additional playing frustrations, nevertheless this game is very well designed and is very impressive. The use of the 3D video card means most all scenes have a good sense of depth. The graphics and the general layout are really quite gorgeous. Many scenes are visually stunning, and the accompanying sounds greatly add to the overall eerie effect of the game.

When I first began the game, I was pleasantly surprised at the original design of the game, and was reminded of many of Tim Burton's films and the marvelous way he has of getting his odd imagination onto the screen. The set up of the game is wonderfully, peculiarly skewed, with hallways and doors slightly slanted just enough to result in a sense of being off balance and disarranged. The lighting also is done quite well, calling to mind the clever use of lighting in other such games as "Alone In The Dark," "Alice," or "Clive Barker's Undying."

You are moving the character through these richly developed environments, that convey a good sense of depth, and the attention to the layout and design is very obvious. The camera movements are slow to change and are controlled by the game, but this may have also been intentionally designed to further add to the hallucinatory perception and the sense of being in an environment surrounded by deranged minds. Although slow, these movements are still impressive as you watch the surrounding environment slowly envelop you.

The scenery, design and layout of the game is super, invoking an mystical, suspenseful atmosphere that helps immerse you in the environment of the game. The background sound effects and voice-over narrations are very well done, and the characterizations are all impressive.

The characters are interesting and some are quite disturbing, which was the intent of the designers. A lot of this has to do with the voice-overs, as well as their design. The movement through the game is also very significantly influenced by the game's camera controls that at times can be very confusing.

In many, many situations, these slow camera angle changes are painful, and can even be deadly. In some situations, your character stands in one place and a bad guy comes along and whacks you dead, but you did not even see the bad guy coming. These very slow camera changes can add to the frustration of playing the game, so be on the lookout for all corners and direction changes.

The game does have a neat first-person perspective feature, activated by the S key. This means you can stop movement and look to the left and right, as well as up and down. This is how you are supposed to manage these direction changes, as when you are walking down a hallway and need to next turn right or left to proceed. At these intersections, you would be wise to use this key to try and look around these corners before you move.

The adventure game features are super, and without all the bother with dying all the time, this could have been a super adventure game on its own merits. At any location, you can look, down, and all around, and realize the fully developed layout and design beauty of the game.

About Those Walkthrough Solution Guides

I urge anyone interested in this neat game to also consider getting a copy of the solutions guide. In my case, I always work with computer games with the official walkthrough, because I just do not have time to try and puzzle out the correct combinations of either objects or puzzle solutions. I just have too many other things to do.

However, many gamers choose to play without a solutions guide, as they prefer to reason out the game on their own. In these situations I also think they probably have far more available hours to devote to playing the game than I do.

However, the action challenges in this game are some of the most difficult I've ever run across, so the guide will at least help you know where to go and what to do there. You will just have to try over and over to get through some of the more difficult areas, and this is many times made more difficult by the changing camera angles that many times do not keep up with you.

For example, when trying to run very quickly down a slender beam overhead in a room, in order to get past bad guys throwing plates at you, you need to be able to see ahead of your character before you begin to try and operate the keyboard command to run fast while not falling off the beam. As you stand there, awaiting the camera angle to move behind you, so you can see where you are going, you can also be hit by the bad guys. Since the life span runs out so very fast with so few hits, you are going to likely have to start this over and over to finally get through this part.

In my situation, playing with a walkthrough means I can concentrate on moving the game plot along, and most importantly, open up all the wonderful scenes and action that the coders have worked so hard to include in the game. Assuming you are good with the hand-eye coordination required in this game, then the walkthrough will surely help get your money's worth out of the game.

What makes this issue even more relevant here is that DreamCatcher seems to realize this, as evidenced by their always wise price points for their games and their solution guides. Jekyll & Hyde is very reasonably priced, and this makes buying the additional solutions guide (also very smartly priced) a no-brainer. You end up with a total investment that means you will be better able to get through the entire game and not end up spending an excessive amount of time with the game. So, no, I don't think using a walkthrough solution guide is any indication of any lack of skill or abilities, but instead, a more appropriate way to invest minimal time with an adventure game, that ends up much more likely to be a fun experience.

Game Features

One CD game in one package
Fantastic, mystical tale of a tormented hero in his quest for his daughter
Many very difficult action sequences
Realistic display of characters with cinema quality animation
Full-screen immersion and original orchestra score
Voice narrations greatly add to the believability of the characters
Original, twisted horror-fantasy game environment
Run, jump, climb, and attack through 40 intense levels
Unique characters and level bosses
See your way through  asylums, caves, a train yard, a cemetery, and more
One character - 2 different ways to play
Gripping, graphical action adventure that captures the imagination
Deep storyline that captivates attention 
Keyboard arrow keys move and locate the main character
Totally recreated settings in authentic detail
Beautifully drawn backgrounds, objects, and characters
Aptly created sound effects and background score add impact

Some Game Concerns

With this neat new game, Dreamcatcher has kicked up a few notches the technical sophistication and hardware requirements in this game. The higher requirements signal the general increase in system capabilities that have been occurring over the last few years as more computer owners invest in PC systems with more capable video and sound boards, faster processors and more memory.

You cannot save your game at any point, a feature that may frustrate savvy gamers. This is a typical action, first-person shooter game, and you can indeed "die" in the game. When this happens, you are returned to the beginning of the level.

Hints and Notes

Keep track of diary entries
Mr. Hyde can jump further and higher than Dr. Jekyll
Hyde can also absorb more punishment and he has more powerful punches
Cisterns of water mean you soon need to transform into Hyde
The potion wears off soon
Practice makes perfect, especially in the many difficult places
Use crates and dark alleys as cover
Patterns of movement define the end-of-level bosses
Save when you can, even though you start over at the level beginning
Talk to all characters, but be sure you have saved first
Always be prepared for combat with the "bad guys"

Targeted Customers

Jekyll & Hyde will appeal most to action gamers more inclined to play first-person shooter games that demand quick and precise action with keyboard commands. The adventure game features are built around this primary premise of fighting or quickly avoiding the many bad guys.

Install and Setup

The game loaded fine on my system, and it comes with the required DirectX files. I loaded the game on a Win 98 SE machine (P III-850, 256MB SDRAM) that had a Creative Labs Annihilator 2, 32MB video card (an nVidia GeForce 2 GTS board), and a Creative Labs Live X Gamer! sound board, and the latest drivers for each. An HP CD RW 9200 drive served as the CD ROM drive, and the mouse and keyboard were both USB connections. I also had already installed the DirectX 8.0a files. My machine also had an internal Zip 250 drive, standard floppy, MPEG 2 decoder card, two 8-port USB hubs, a Logitech Wingman Extreme joystick, standard microphone, Cambridge Soundworks DTS 2000 speaker system, and a NIC board connected to SW Bell's DSL modem.

Price

$19.99 3 CD ROM discs (super bargain!)
$  9.99 the official strategy & solutions guide (a great bargain also)

Minimum System Configuration Requirements

Windows 95/98/ME
Pentium II 400 MHz processor 
64MB RAM 
12x CD ROM Drive
DirectX compatible sound card
8MB VRAM DirectX compatible 16-bit color video card
Analog gamepad compatible

At the time of this writing, no patches for this game had been released.

Unless otherwise noted on the product pages on the DreamCatcher games website, or on the system requirements section of the packaging, DreamCatcher games will NOT be supported using the operating systems of Windows 2000, Windows NT or any Windows emulators. Although some may find that the game may install and may be played on these business operating systems, gameplay and the overall performance of the game may be questionable. Also note that DreamCatcher games will NOT be providing patches or updates which will allow the games to run on Win NT or Win 2000.

This is an excellent example how the computer game industry has mainly focused on coding their software to run mostly on home machines in the standard retail market, running Microsoft's primarily retail market operating systems.

At the time of this writing, DreamCatcher also sells games for Mac machines, with more soon to be available also for the Mac. No other information was available on the future continued support of their software for Apple machines. I am guessing this support is very likely to continue.

Dreamcatcher will very likely soon be releasing games for Windows XP, Microsoft's newest operating system, since it will be the OS installed on so many newly purchased machines in the retail market.

The above system configuration requirements indicate the minimum system configuration requirements, and as any experienced gamer knows, you just don't ever want to load and run any computer game on minimally configured systems. Note that these minimum requirements also represent a gradual increase in system resource requirements for this game. Although you will not necessarily need a state-of-the-art, 64MB 3DFX graphics accelerator video board or 3d sound board, nonetheless, these requirements are steeper than many of Dreamcatcher's other fine games. However, even with this increase in requirements, I think that most gamers will likely easily have the resources necessary to support the efficient operation of this adventure game.

Computer games are notorious for taking over machines, and this is why users will need to be sure and close out all their other open files, before playing this and any computer game.

About DreamCatcher

In 1996, DreamCatcher Interactive launched their first title and since then, they have become a very successful publisher in the computer game entertainment software industry. In my opinion, one of this company's strongest assets is their dedication to provide customers with high quality entertainment software at very affordable prices. Some of the best interactive computer games now on the market come from DreamCatcher.

Bringing to market titles that are affordable, without jeopardizing content quality, is another significant factor that helps distinguish this company from the many that flood the market with countless game titles. DreamCatcher thrives on innovative marketing strategies, solid retail and developer partnerships, and on providing excellent customer support that is well above industry standards.

A new partnership with Her Interactive has enabled DreamCatcher to now sell the super games in the Nancy Drew series, including Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill, Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger, and Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion. Check this link to read a review of these Nancy Drew Interactive Mystery Adventure Games.

Dracula: The Resurrection and In Cold Blood are two current games for the PC that will soon be released for the Playstation, and DreamCatcher also plans to release more games in the future for the Playstation 2 and the GameBoy Color platforms.

Arthur's Knights ($19.99) Necronomicon ($19.99) and The Legend of the Prophet and the Assassin ($19.99) are two of DreamCatcher's newer games that should also prove to be successful titles in their long list of super adventure games.

Other super games from DreamCatcher Interactive include Traitor's Gate, The Messenger, Riddle of the Sphinx, Jewels of the Oracle, Jewels II, Egypt 1156 B.C., Odyssey, TimeScape, Ancient Conquest, Beyond Time, Beyond Atlantis, Lightbringer, Legend of Lotus Spring, Nightlong, Seven Games of the Soul (also sold in Europe as Faust), SafeCracker, The Forgotten, The Sacred Amulet, and Time Machine.

All these are similarly designed adventure games, and all are priced very reasonably, the most expensive being $29.99 (In Cold Blood), with most around $14.99, and many even priced at $9.99, which I think are super prices for these super games. At the time of this writing, I have purchased and played nearly all these games, and these reasonable price points have always gotten my attention.

I think these affordable price points represent a very important strategy of DreamCatcher that has helped them achieve their success. When you consider the very expensive proposition to invest in the coding and other very expensive costs to develop and produce a computer game today, I think it is quite remarkable that this company markets their products at such a reasonable price.

I also think it is important to remember that DreamCatcher is still very much in the business of producing quality computer games, something many other companies can no longer attest to since they have gone out of business. What is even more remarkable, in my opinion, is that at the time of this writing, DreamCatcher Interactive remains wholly owned and self-sufficient, and has not yet been absorbed by a larger company.

So, with the easy on the pocket-book price of the game, and the also minimal price of the solution guides, you have the makings of a winner in the hotly contested battle for our limited disposable income and free time to invest in playing computer games. DreamCatcher Interactive is certainly a company worth watching and supporting.

Contact Information

DreamCatcher
The Adventure Company
5000 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario
M3H 5T5
info@dreamcatchergames.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.