Gabriel Knight III

              Played by Peter Clark on a P.C.

Having played the previous games in the Gabriel Knight series I
was looking forward to playing number three. I had heard that some
people had experienced difficulty in running the game and that it
was very picky as to what machines it would run on.  However, I
had very few problems. The game installed correctly and, apart
from a few unexplained crashes, everything went smoothly.

The game begins in the French village of Rennes le Chateau where
you find yourself unceremoniously dumped on a French Station. You
have been following up a case for a certain Prince James whose son
has been kidnapped. However, your arrival at this village drops
you into a dark and sinister mystery. As you guide Gabriel and his
assistant Grace Nakimura in their chase, a far deeper and more
terrifying mystery begins to unfold. There are whispers of a
sacred bloodline, vampires and boundless treasure that will lead
you towards a path that is inescapable.

Having found a hotel to stay in, you discover that a treasure
hunting tour is also based there and, oh no, your old acquaintance
Detective Mosley is on the tour. You smell a rat straight away.
The female French tour guide, Madeline, immediately takes
Gabriel's fancy and, during the adventure, Gabriel tries to
impress her. This has to be curtailed later when Grace arrives on
the scene. Some parts of the game are played as Gabriel and others
as Grace. There is no choice in the matter as the game decides
which character you will play.

The game is divided into days and subdivided into blocks of two or
more hours. You are not permitted to enter the next block until
you have discovered the appropriate amount of information. This
seemed a little odd at first but at least you know that, when you
enter the next time block, you have done all you needed in the
previous one.

Basically, the game is one of finding and questioning each of the
characters taking part in the treasure hunt together with a few
others who live in and around the village. In a departure from the
previous games in the series, this one is played in a 3D scenario
and personally, I am not sure that this is an improvement.
Although the character movement and 360 degree viewing was useful,
I found that, even using a PC with a fairly high specification, it
tended to slow the game down especially when changing screens.
Although interrogation of the other characters forms a large part
of the game, there are some other puzzles in it. These are usually
mathematical in nature and few in number, mainly occurring at the
end of the game.

A lot of use is made of Grace's computer that she has installed in
her hotel room. I have a dislike for too much machine operation in
adventures and this, as far as I am concerned, was the least
enjoyable part of the game. Far too much time is spent inputting
evidence and analysing it. The procedure to do this is complicated
and I don't know how anyone could possibly work this out without
help. I for one had to make much use of Internet help lines to get
through these parts. I enjoyed the game although not as much as
the two previous stories. It is certainly worth playing.

The game is published by Sierra and the minimum specifications
are: -

Windows 95 or higher, Pentium 166 with 3D acceleration or 233
without, 32Mb Ram, 4x CD Rom Drive, 16 Bit colour, 4Mb Video card,
Windows compatible sound card.












                              - o -