Impressions for the newly-bundled Nightmares from the Deep 3: Davy Jones
The story: Once again you play Sarah Black, museum curator and author. The game starts with you about to give a presentation on the reality of mythical figure Davy Jones, when the lights go out (naturally) and he shows up to kidnap you and your daughter Cory (Holy hell, they finally named the daughter! Two things about that though: first of all, at one point she signs a contract "P. Black" so Cory might be a nickname or her middle name; secondly, if you name your daughter "Cory Black" you've basically mapped out her career as a porn star.) Your dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks daughter stupidly signs a pact with Davy Jones to spare you, so your job now is to stop Davy, save Cory, and also save Davy Jones' daughter, who - wait for it...can you guess? - doesn't have a first name. She's just "love" and "dear" and "my daughter" and "the girl."
Anyway, as far as the story goes, it's a nice wrap-up to the trilogy. It's a bit predictable, but it's decent.
The dialogue and voices: The pirates in the game still give it their all. They sound like character actors. Of the remaining cast, Cory does a passable job, but the others sound under-acted, wooden, like they're reading scripts but not really understanding the context. Some of the dialogue contains spelling errors (nothing too egregious, except for the one time "riches" was correctly spoken, but "reaches" was written. Ouch!) and as for the quality of the dialogue, let's just say the bonus chapter contains my favourite piece of dialogue in a hidden object game ever:
"Oh, it's a book! It looks like it's been read recently!"
I could totally see that getting mileage as a Let's Player's catchphrase.
The gameplay: The hidden object scenes are done well, and if you get totally stuck you can either use a hint, or switch to mahjong - which I actually played this time because there was only one achievement for it, and that's to play three games. Thank goodness! The mahjong is super simple (maybe eight different types of tile to match) with seemingly unlimited reshuffles. Don't bother with it after you get the cheevo, because the hidden object scenes are way better. There were zero bullshit inventory puzzles to be had, and the other minigame puzzles were...well in my opinion too easy for the most part, but there was one tough one, and that was a refraction puzzle very similar to one from Melissa K. and the Heart of Gold (a brutally tough HOG on expert mode.)
The length: My playtime says 7.1 hours but it's more like 6 because I left it on while doing other stuff. That's the main chapter, the bonus chapter (which gives you no achievements whatsoever - not even the mahjong counts there,) backtracking right before the end to find the last collectibles, and replaying part of the main chapter to get the mahjong achievement. So it's a good solid length.
The verdict: A fine title from Artifex Mundi, which is to be expected by now. I am a bit worried that they might be getting too casual/easy because I didn't have many problems on expert, but then again maybe I'm just getting better at them because I'm an old hand at them. That said, while it's not tough to follow the story if you didn't play 1 and 2, I'd still recommend playing 1 and 2 first. But if you got them in a bundle, just play and enjoy 'em.