Description
A playthrough of Cyberdreams' 1995 graphic adventure for PCs running Windows 3.1, Dark Seed II.
A year has passed since Mike Dawson saved the world from a biomechanical alien race trying to invade our reality from a parallel dimension in https://youtu.be/O6zUwXIstMU. Mike has since returned to his hometown to piece his life back together, and things aren't going well for him. He's living with his mother who, like everyone else, refuses to believe that he became mankind's savior in the Dark World. He has no friends, and he is still haunted by dreams of his ordeal.
As Dark Seed II opens, Mike's "girlfriend" has been just been gruesomely murdered, and the police have fingered him as the prime suspect. Who killed Rita, and why? Are Mike's dreams mere echoes of his troubled past, or are they portents of horrors yet to come? Can he once again peek through the veil of reality to put his demons to rest?
These are the questions you must help him answer. Dark Seed II, like the first game, is a narratively-driven point-and-click graphic adventure that goes light on puzzles, heavy on atmosphere, and leans into the brilliantly grotesque artwork of H.R. Giger.
Dark Seed II feels quite different from the first game, though. Dark Seed was largely a solitary, isolated experience, while the sequel's gameplay is primarily driven by character interactions. The majority of your time is spent clicking your way through dialogue trees to get to the bottom of the mystery, and in most ways, the change works out well. The surreal cast of caricatures help to anchor Mike's character in this uncanny representation of the "real world", and they provide the context needed to make the puzzles feel less contrived than in the first game.
The story feels unfocused, though - there are long stretches where it feels aimless, like the writers weren't sure about how to move things along between the key plot points - and Mike is a thoroughly unlikable lead character. He's a sniveling, self-entitled whiner throughout, but at least his asinine commentary and total lack of self-awareness provide plenty of unintentional laughs. So does the fact that, despite being unemployed, he seems to sleep in jeans, sneakers, and a tan blazer.
Dark Seed II is a far more absurd game than the first, and I think that's probably what has earned it its status as a minor cult classic. The cheesy production values and the wild swings in tone make it difficult to take seriously, but it certainly entertains.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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