The protagonist and anti-hero is named Ryan, a bartender in a futuristic dystopian city who has been plagued by strange dreams of an entity known as the Dreamweb
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This review contains spoilers
"And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels. Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the Earth." - Book of Revelation 16:1
As this phrase fades out, we see a strange temple with seven different people in red robes, with the Keeper, the leader of them, talking about a conspiracy involving, as you guessed it, seven different people that are slowly taking over the Dreamweb, and thus must be stopped, or else the world will suffer from the consequences of those seven people dominating the Dreamweb. So a man named Ryan is called by the Keeper of the Dreamweb to be tasked with one mission:
Kill the seven people
And after the starting credits which totally isn't inspired by Blade Runner at all, we see Ryan wake up in his girlfriend's house, called Eden, and thus Ryan starts his journey to accomplish his mission.
What a way to open a game like this. It manages to create genuine intrigue and mystery with a surprisingly simple premise.
Unfortunately, as you can tell from my rating, the game is not very good at all.
Dreamweb is another one of those obscure point and click adventure game generally remembered by a few things, whether its the underrated soundtrack by Matt Seldon and Steve Boynton, or the very graphic (albeit cartoonish for today standards) violence at the time, or of course those """DiStUrBiNg SpOoKy aSS gAyMeS""" icebergs, which is how I first heard about this game, and the premise of the story combined with it being cyberpunk made me interested in it, though not enough to really want to play it. And then I played Westwood's Blade Runner and I thought about giving this a shot, and I did...
Now, I don't know if its because I was spoiled by Hotline Miami and Blade Runner, or if my expectations were a bit too high, but I was thoroughly disappointed by this game unfortunately.
And my biggest disappointment with this game is easily with the story, so I will start with it. As I said, at first the premise of the story is really intriguing, with a lot of bigger details surrounding Ryan, the seven targets and the Dreamweb itself being hidden under a veil of mystery, that's all fine and dandy. But then as you progress through the game, you unfortunately realize something...
There's no actual meat to the story.
A lot of the questions that first arrived early on in the game are never answered in any way, which in of itself is not that big of a problem, but the few ones that are actually answered have a largely unsatisfying payoff, for example, from all of the questions raised in the start, I will mention this one in particular:
"Why are those people we have to kill such a threat to the Dreamweb, and consequently, the world at large?"
Well, as it turns out, they are members of the so called Project 7, headed by one of the members called Mr Sartain, working together to rule over the Dreamweb, and thus rule the world.
Its such an easy cop out answer that ruins the intrigue of the story first established in the introduction, and ultimately is where you truly realize that there is nothing to the story besides the average "Chosen One saves the world" kind of deal with a cyberpunk setting to complement it, there is no deeper meaning to anything happening, there is no deep dive into Ryan's psyche or anything related to the dreams beyond the very basic of things, and there is nothing interesting scattered throughout the world that could ultimately answer some of the questions brought up throughout the game, despite the story alluding to so much more happening than it seems. Honestly it just makes me really wish the game went ALL OUT into surreal horror akin to the nightmare sections of Hotline Miami and Max Payne.
But I guess there is still an intriguing premise surrounding an otherwise underwhelming story, which is more than what I can say about the characters. (Almost) Every single one of them is completely one-note and paper thin, whether the character is Ryan, the targets or any of the other side characters like Eden and the Keeper of the Dreamweb, it doesn't matter, all of them fit that description, none have interesting personalities or backstories beyond the really basic like "David Crane is a famous singer that's very rich", and this is one of the seven people you have to kill, combine this with the underwhelming plot and the unsatisfying payoffs, you feel absolutely nothing about killing those characters, or even anything about the rest of the city, even when you die and the game over screen tells you all the consequences of being unable to kill all the targets, because everyone is just a plank in terms of character, in fact, calling them planks is an insult, that plank from Ed Edd and Eddy alone has more personality than anyone here.
And to put more salt into the wound, we have the gameplay, which, as you expected, suffers from some of the same problems other point and click adventure games do as well, ESPECIALLY pixel hunting, seriously, the sprites in this game are awfully small, sometimes having less than TEN pixels, and I am not even joking, which is made all the worse when certain sections of the game demands that you get items that you should have found WAY sooner, typical of bad puzzle design in point and click adventure games from the 90s, like, no joke, the first area alone has atleast FOUR different items you need to get to progress later on, and some of them are easy to miss (but atleast the game warns you that you missed some items), it seems as though the devs knew this issue very well, since there is an option that allows you to look closer into where the cursor is pointed. Oh and you can pick up almost any item you find throughout the game, which on one hand is kinda cool, but on the other hand aggravates some of the bigger problems present, as at a few points I became paranoid of even dropping some items in fear that I would need them later on, which is honestly hilarious since all the puzzles are perfectly fine as they are, and in the late game it does have some more interesting puzzles. And the movement of Ryan is slow and only moves when you click on a object you can interact with, which sometimes make the backtracking you might need to do if you missed certain items even worse.
Okay but even despite everything bad I mentioned about this game, atleast there is the saving grace that is the presentation, right? RIGHT??? Well, actually, YES and NO, the YES part is that indeed, the soundtrack and atmosphere of this game is pretty good, the soundtrack especially is really good, even if somewhat repetitive, want to give special shouts to Like Killing Hitler and The Dealer here, those are genuinely very rad and really make the action sequences hit more than they would normally, and Septimus is just as awesome, giving this ominous atmosphere to the one place where you will find this music. Now visually it is a mixed bag, on one hand the atrocious pixel art is the root cause of some of the very issues with the gameplay I mentioned before, but on the other hand the church fucking rocks, and so does the cyberpunk city with the orange hues and black buildings that appear, absolute gold. Oh and the graphic violence is so absurd and over the top that it becomes unintentionally hilarious to just see the death scenes!
But yeah, at the end of the day I can best describe this game as a lot of wasted potential, there are things here that if there was more work could genuinely lead to a great game, the story could go ALL OUT on surreal horror and an deep dive into Ryan's psyche and the Dreamweb itself, but none of it is actually done, and instead is wasted on a underwhelming plot with thin characters and a slog of a gameplay makes me unable to like this game.
Lession of the day go play Hotline Miami or Westwood's Blade Runner instead, and maybe give a listen to the OST of this game!
As this phrase fades out, we see a strange temple with seven different people in red robes, with the Keeper, the leader of them, talking about a conspiracy involving, as you guessed it, seven different people that are slowly taking over the Dreamweb, and thus must be stopped, or else the world will suffer from the consequences of those seven people dominating the Dreamweb. So a man named Ryan is called by the Keeper of the Dreamweb to be tasked with one mission:
Kill the seven people
And after the starting credits which totally isn't inspired by Blade Runner at all, we see Ryan wake up in his girlfriend's house, called Eden, and thus Ryan starts his journey to accomplish his mission.
What a way to open a game like this. It manages to create genuine intrigue and mystery with a surprisingly simple premise.
Unfortunately, as you can tell from my rating, the game is not very good at all.
Dreamweb is another one of those obscure point and click adventure game generally remembered by a few things, whether its the underrated soundtrack by Matt Seldon and Steve Boynton, or the very graphic (albeit cartoonish for today standards) violence at the time, or of course those """DiStUrBiNg SpOoKy aSS gAyMeS""" icebergs, which is how I first heard about this game, and the premise of the story combined with it being cyberpunk made me interested in it, though not enough to really want to play it. And then I played Westwood's Blade Runner and I thought about giving this a shot, and I did...
Now, I don't know if its because I was spoiled by Hotline Miami and Blade Runner, or if my expectations were a bit too high, but I was thoroughly disappointed by this game unfortunately.
And my biggest disappointment with this game is easily with the story, so I will start with it. As I said, at first the premise of the story is really intriguing, with a lot of bigger details surrounding Ryan, the seven targets and the Dreamweb itself being hidden under a veil of mystery, that's all fine and dandy. But then as you progress through the game, you unfortunately realize something...
There's no actual meat to the story.
A lot of the questions that first arrived early on in the game are never answered in any way, which in of itself is not that big of a problem, but the few ones that are actually answered have a largely unsatisfying payoff, for example, from all of the questions raised in the start, I will mention this one in particular:
"Why are those people we have to kill such a threat to the Dreamweb, and consequently, the world at large?"
Well, as it turns out, they are members of the so called Project 7, headed by one of the members called Mr Sartain, working together to rule over the Dreamweb, and thus rule the world.
Its such an easy cop out answer that ruins the intrigue of the story first established in the introduction, and ultimately is where you truly realize that there is nothing to the story besides the average "Chosen One saves the world" kind of deal with a cyberpunk setting to complement it, there is no deeper meaning to anything happening, there is no deep dive into Ryan's psyche or anything related to the dreams beyond the very basic of things, and there is nothing interesting scattered throughout the world that could ultimately answer some of the questions brought up throughout the game, despite the story alluding to so much more happening than it seems. Honestly it just makes me really wish the game went ALL OUT into surreal horror akin to the nightmare sections of Hotline Miami and Max Payne.
But I guess there is still an intriguing premise surrounding an otherwise underwhelming story, which is more than what I can say about the characters. (Almost) Every single one of them is completely one-note and paper thin, whether the character is Ryan, the targets or any of the other side characters like Eden and the Keeper of the Dreamweb, it doesn't matter, all of them fit that description, none have interesting personalities or backstories beyond the really basic like "David Crane is a famous singer that's very rich", and this is one of the seven people you have to kill, combine this with the underwhelming plot and the unsatisfying payoffs, you feel absolutely nothing about killing those characters, or even anything about the rest of the city, even when you die and the game over screen tells you all the consequences of being unable to kill all the targets, because everyone is just a plank in terms of character, in fact, calling them planks is an insult, that plank from Ed Edd and Eddy alone has more personality than anyone here.
And to put more salt into the wound, we have the gameplay, which, as you expected, suffers from some of the same problems other point and click adventure games do as well, ESPECIALLY pixel hunting, seriously, the sprites in this game are awfully small, sometimes having less than TEN pixels, and I am not even joking, which is made all the worse when certain sections of the game demands that you get items that you should have found WAY sooner, typical of bad puzzle design in point and click adventure games from the 90s, like, no joke, the first area alone has atleast FOUR different items you need to get to progress later on, and some of them are easy to miss (but atleast the game warns you that you missed some items), it seems as though the devs knew this issue very well, since there is an option that allows you to look closer into where the cursor is pointed. Oh and you can pick up almost any item you find throughout the game, which on one hand is kinda cool, but on the other hand aggravates some of the bigger problems present, as at a few points I became paranoid of even dropping some items in fear that I would need them later on, which is honestly hilarious since all the puzzles are perfectly fine as they are, and in the late game it does have some more interesting puzzles. And the movement of Ryan is slow and only moves when you click on a object you can interact with, which sometimes make the backtracking you might need to do if you missed certain items even worse.
Okay but even despite everything bad I mentioned about this game, atleast there is the saving grace that is the presentation, right? RIGHT??? Well, actually, YES and NO, the YES part is that indeed, the soundtrack and atmosphere of this game is pretty good, the soundtrack especially is really good, even if somewhat repetitive, want to give special shouts to Like Killing Hitler and The Dealer here, those are genuinely very rad and really make the action sequences hit more than they would normally, and Septimus is just as awesome, giving this ominous atmosphere to the one place where you will find this music. Now visually it is a mixed bag, on one hand the atrocious pixel art is the root cause of some of the very issues with the gameplay I mentioned before, but on the other hand the church fucking rocks, and so does the cyberpunk city with the orange hues and black buildings that appear, absolute gold. Oh and the graphic violence is so absurd and over the top that it becomes unintentionally hilarious to just see the death scenes!
But yeah, at the end of the day I can best describe this game as a lot of wasted potential, there are things here that if there was more work could genuinely lead to a great game, the story could go ALL OUT on surreal horror and an deep dive into Ryan's psyche and the Dreamweb itself, but none of it is actually done, and instead is wasted on a underwhelming plot with thin characters and a slog of a gameplay makes me unable to like this game.
Lession of the day go play Hotline Miami or Westwood's Blade Runner instead, and maybe give a listen to the OST of this game!