For those that don't know, Lighthouse is a Myst-like 2 CD-Rom game. It takes the genre a step forward with some well done animated characters though not quite the caliber of Disney's terrific "Toy Story" title. THE GOOD Great graphics but not as outstanding as Sierra's ads and the box would lead you to believe. However, the music and ambient sounds were absolutely outstanding! As a former musician this is an area that means a lot to me. The soundtrack and timing of the various pieces did an excellent job of envoking a mood and sucking me into the game. Every bit as good as a big budget movie. I really can't say enough about how good the sound and musical pieces were. The voice actor's were the best I've heard in a game. Easily understood and their accents and tonal quaility added greatly to the enjoyment of the game. In both my 486DX100 (AMD chip, Paradise Bahamas video & SB32 pnp) and my P120 (Intel, Millenium, AWE 32 non-pnp) the game ran fine under Win 95 and I experienced no installation or running problems. The premise of the game, good vs evil, is an old one but well done here with a logical story-line. Initially the game may appear linear but there are a number of ways to move from location to location, there are also back-up parts if you mess up and you'll find that "there is more than one way to skin a cat" in this game. I felt that most of the puzzles were integrated well and made sense within the environment and the story line. There is a puzzle box in this game that is the most satisfying experience I've encountered in a long time. It was a challenge and a pleasure to solve. THE BAD Unfortunately, it was the only real satisfying puzzle in the game. Most of the puzzles were typical and too many others were downright trying. Rather than use your intellect, it was more of an endurance test and a measure of your perserverance. Not enough logical type puzzles and a little too many "creative" ones for my personal tastes. I should say I have not finished the game as I'm hopelessly stuck at the very end trying to get the train to switch tracks and failing miserably. Consequently, I can not comment on the ending at this time. Another dislike was the couple of times that a seque was shown by what I call the Phantasmagoria method--where it looks like every other line is black. This was done in the introduction and 2 other motion scenes so far. The rest of the time animation is done ala Toy Story, just wait till you see Amanda!!! Some bad game design with the hints for an area given AFTER you've gone past the applicable part. So in order to use that info properly, you'd have to go back to a saved game and start the section over. There is a voice that tells you to switch CD's that for some reason I found intrusive. It's bad enough having to change CD's to get into the next segment and the voice, in addition to the written message, seemed to pull me out of the game. AND THE UGLY!!! The game was definitely too pixel sensitive as I often tried to get an object that I knew was needed, way too many times before I was successful and that is only one of many examples. Also directional arrow keys would not appear where it was expected and I spent way too many hours trying to fix one machine only to discover that by moving to the center of the screen I received an arrow that gave me an even closer view of the item at the bottom of the screen I was trying to fix. Only then could I successfully interact with the broken part. I have now run across a similar problem with trying to switch tracks as the game seems to be very location sensitive. Lastly I found the interface very unfriendly. Your cursor only changes for directional arrows, not over any hot spots. The directional arrows that pop up are very big and you have to move your cursor to an illogical position to get the directional arrow you need. Also, there are some items you can click on and others that clicking on them does nothing but you can click and drag them. There is no way to know which is which. So there I am on every screen, meticulously clicking on everything and then repeating this over for each screen by clicking and dragging and yet a third time looking for that spot where the cursor will change and give a direction. All this just to find the "magic pixel" to continue the game. Great way to spend a week?!? SOME CAVEATS: Regarding the inventory, the booklet says that if you click on one item of inventory on another that they will change places. It is only in reading the "readme" file (and whoever does) that you find out that the four spaces showing are considered on-hand and can be manipulated. If it is in your inventory bag you can't do anything with it (even though you can see it, grab it and click it on the screen) until it is placed in the on-hand section and then clicked on again. I didn't read the darn file until recently and that's how I found out that some items that I was trying to combine unsuccessfully would only combine if they were in that section. Go figure!!! CONCLUSION... This is an extemely difficult game that will offer many hours of game play. I doubt if there is more than a handful of people that could complete this without a hint or help. If you like more the mechanical type of puzzles and ones that take great leaps of creativity this is for you. Personally, I like to play games for enjoyment and relaxation (yes, I liked Phantasmagoria, QIN and Gabriel Knight) and this one was way too tedious for me. It's a mixed bag as I enjoyed the visual and auditory experience but found the mental aspects too tiring. I can't recommend it nor would I say to stay away from it. royboy PS If you need some help I've done everything except the very ending and Balmoral Software has a great help page for part of the game at: http://www.balmoralsoftware.com/lighthou/lighthou.htm ,-~~-.___. <-----------------------------------> / | ' \ -=| ROY MADRID PASCARELLA |=- ( ) 0 -=| E-MAIL: royboy@cris.com |=- \_/-, ,----' -=| |=- ==== // -=| U S A |=- / \-'~; /~~~(O) <-----------------------------------> / __/~| / | =( ______| (_________|