The mind is a labyrinth
It’s really hard to review adventure games without giving away the story. So I’ll try to make this review as spoiler free as possible. Sanitarium starts out with a cut scene of a man talking on his cell phone in the rain while walking to his car proclaiming he “found the answer” and begins to drive home haphazardly. He comes around a tight turn, hydroplanes and crashes into a ditch. You take control of this mysterious man who awakens to the sounds of klaxons blaring in a, you guessed it, an asylum that looks akin to the famed Arkham Asylum. You can’t remember your name, where you are and how you got to this forsaken nut house. A classic case of amnesia. This is where your adventure begins as when you try to escape asylum, you get to travel well into the depths of your own mind solving puzzles, battling monsters in an attempt to recover your memory and your sanity. You have 13 chapters in the game to recalim your memory and your sanity. If you’re not careful you might lose your sanity as the puzzles get exponentially difficult as the game progresses. Sanitarium isn’t insanely sadistic though, you’ll be given clues throughout the game to solve such puzzles if you scour your surroundings looking for them.
Control wise, the game couldn’t be any simpler. If you know how to use a mouse, you know how to play. The first gripe I have is that you have to hold down the right mouse button and point where you want to go in order to walk about the map. Secondly your character movement is insanely slow as it takes a long time to get from point A to point B. Third, you can’t press a button or anything to access your inventory screen, you have to click on yourself and select what you want to use from a radial menu. Whenever you want to use something ,you just select it and place it somewhere on the map where you would like to use the said item in hopes that this is the item that’ll help move the game along. This starts out very simple at first, but later on you’ll become frustrated (as with most adventure games) and only the most hardened of adventure game veterans won’t be tempted to look up solutions to the puzzles from a walkthrough guide.
It’s interesting to mention there will be some combat situations you will have to deal with as well, but they’re rather simple and you’ll just need to click at the right spot at the right moment. Just a bit of timing and you’ll be fine. You also don’t have to worry about death, and reloading a previous game. The only penalty is being send back to the far end of the map, to try again. This is what would drive me mad in most adventure games as you’ll be playing for hours getting so far ahead and forget to save causing you to redo everything before you died.
Face your fears
Sanitarium does an excellent job scaring the living piss out of you. For me I have always found children a bit creepy, but you’ll be dealing with mutilated little brats that look like they were considered too scary for Bettlejuice. When you’re dropped into chapter two you’ll meet kids that have two mouths, a melted face, eyes ripped out and happed to be hosts for other deformities I wish not to mention as I fear I’ve already given away too much for the second chapter. On top of mutant children you’ll also face creepy clowns, grave yards and even fantasy worlds inside your own mind which are all loosely connected to you trying to figure out who you are, why you’re here and hopefully reganing your memory and sanity. On top of that, you’ll be tasked with stopping an un-ethical doctor that performs some “experiments” to the patients that would make Josef Mengle smile.
Synesthesia
The levels are wonderful, the design is some of the best I’ve seen in an adventure game. As with adventure games expect a stellar writing along with epic storytelling and for the time perfectly executed voice acting. The only drawbacks to the voices is that they voice actors seemed to be recycled a lot and the sound quality has not aged over the years (they’re highly compressed and sound a bit tinny). Don’t let these flaws distract from the puzzles, the characters, the story and the overall wonderful presentation. The sound effects are solid and the music is even better as it adds to the gothic atmosphere that looks like something out of Tim Burton’s nightmares. While the pre-rendered visuals do seem rather dated, this was common practice back in the 90s. The animation cut scenes do seem rather stiff and lacking detail but I’m far from the reviewer that lets visuals get in the way of my experience.
