Having stopped demonic Aztec forces from consuming Central America you are also glad you’ve released the souls of all those taken from theHaving stopped demonic Aztec forces from consuming Central America you are also glad you’ve released the souls of all those taken from the town. You also saved your friend Peter but now he needs your help again. A similar issue is happening elsewhere in a jungle. Again Peter is captured but this time by ancient Chinese demons that needs to sacrifice him. It’s up to you to save Peter and the world from supernatural evil or the world may never live one more day...
With the moderate success of Orneon’s previous game Secrets of the Dark: Temple of Night (2011) it seemed obvious to do the sequel teased at the end of the previous one. Secrets of the Dark 2: Eclipse Mountain (2012) offers a new location and a different threat in the form of ancient Chinese superstition. The change in scenery allows the developers to really engage in this ancient history. The game doesn’t lack historical detail when it comes to object design and interiors. It helps since your quest to help Peter isn’t that interesting with various bosses to get rid of yet every one of them ends up as developed as a cameo. At least your friend is a little less annoying this time around. Like its predecessor Eclipse Mountain offers a fairly unique gameplay style in utilising light and dark to morph rooms so specific progress can be made. Puzzles are a little easier than in the previous game yet some still turn up the difficulty too high. The game engine used still works weirdly with a stable frame rate for clicking but animation is stuck to a stilted 15fps or so. I’ve seen many older HOGs use this engine and I’m not clear why companies like Orneon used it when they knew the results they were getting. By far the biggest problem with this sequel is the developers relegating more than half the game to the ‘Collector’s Edition’. Here we get just one bonus adventure but it completely unbalances the standard game length. The bonus game (or should that be a lot of the game?) revolves around freeing the souls captured by this evil without a thank you for helping them. There are sparks of creativity like flying a hang glider to cover ground but moments like this is few and far between. We need more of those moments especially when the only way to play most of the game is to buy a more expensive edition of it.
It’s difficult to recommend Eclipse Mountain, a game where a good 60% of it exists in a collector’s edition. This is pretty unacceptable for those unaware of the standard game length they might purchase. The game neither is exciting enough to pass up or cheap enough to consider buying. From playing this HOG one thing is totally clear: Orneon need to learn more about structure.… Expand
