The Blackwell Bundle Review

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This series consists of four individual games that create a huge well thought out story. As you play each individual game you soon realise they all tie in together to create a clever and captivating story. This is an epic series for all those point-and-click fans and will happily entertain you for hours. The game has been developed by Wadjet Eye Games who were founded in 2006 by Dave Gilbert, an independent adventure game designer.

The Blackwell Series so far consists of four games: The Blackwell Legacy, Blackwell Unbound, Blackwell Convergence and finally Blackwell Deception. They have all been released slowly over the last 6 years, and now we have them all available as one download.

Now, the first thing you will notice is that this game has not been made using the latest graphical wonders that we are used to from other developers  like Telltale Games. You can tell from the beginning this is a small independent developer with limited funds. The graphics are, to say the least, very old school. In fact they look and feel like a game you would have played from the late nineties and not a game of the modern age. You can play this game on a Pentium 3 computer system if you still have one. This gives you an idea that you don’t need a fast machine. It looks blocky and very old school. However, don’t let this put you off, in fact it’s part of the appeal. It actually makes the game stand out and, after delving in and having a look, you soon realise that there’s a captivating and gripping storyline to follow.

There’s some pretty decent background music, well mixed alongside some well-spoken narrative. This all helps draw you into the story, which will leave you wanting more as you can’t wait to find out what will happen next. Every character in the game has spoken dialogue, something I like to see as reading text on the screen can take away the feeling of immersion in a game. The controls are of the usual point-and-click style and they work well enough. The only slight annoyance, is that sometimes working out what to do next can take a while, but this is often the case in adventure games and I’m sure if you really wanted to you could find a walk-through somewhere. I would recommend you don’t though and you bear with the game until you work it out. As in most adventure games, this will add to the fulfilment and enjoyment .So let me give you a small breakdown of each game’s plot and storyline without spoiling it all for you:-

The Blackwell Legacy – The protagonist of the game, Rosangela Blackwell (Rosa), is a young freelance writer who lives on her own in New York City. Shortly after the death of her aunt, Lauren Blackwell, Rosa is set the task of investigating a suicide at a college dorm. As she starts to have headaches and dizzy spells during the day, eventually she is joined by a ghost named Joey Malone. The ghost explains that Rosa is actually a medium, just like her aunt, and she is required to help ghosts that are stuck in the real world to cross over.

Blackwell Unbound – The second game is more of a flashback and features the investigations of Rosa’s aunt, Lauren Blackwell, and Joey back in the 70’s. They start to investigate two ghosts, a murdered saxophone player and a murdered woman who haunts the construction site of her old apartment building. After spending time investigating their murders they soon realise that both murders are connected.

Blackwell Convergence – The third game takes place six months after Rosa met Joey’s Ghost. As she investigates a possible lead from a director at a film company, she soon learns that an actor from a recent film has been murdered and she starts to unravel more ghostly storys that all link together.

Blackwell Deception – This final game in the series involves Rosa getting a phone call from her former newspaper employer asking her to investigate a case for him. She soon unravels yet another murder. Yup, there are a lot of dead people here. Here we have more of the same as she is now knee-deep in the ghostly spirit world and is faced with her most demanding case yet.

I hope that gives you a rough idea of what to expect from the Blackwell Adventure series, without giving away the whole story. As I have already said, you can’t really go wrong here. Once you get past the graphical limitations, we are left with a great series that will take you hours to complete. A world of murders and double-crossing bad guys. Now of you go and prepare to enter the world and mind of Rosangela Blackwell.

 

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.

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