Fascination (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
67Fascination was developed by French company Tomahawk, and published by Coktel Vision in 1991. This point and click adventure added some Miami chic to the mix, perhaps thanks to Jackie Brown, as we investigate murder and body parts, as a female undercover agent. (Read More..)
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Production Notes:
Captured: 6th Dec 2020
Narrated: 10th May 2021
Edited: May 2021, July 2021 and 6-10 Jan 2021
This came up several times in the community voting threads this series, but nobody knows much about this one I guess. I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I found this title listed among the point and click adventures on Lemon. For one thing, the images of the game didn't look all that great, and I didnt even notice that most of the screens are shaped like a silhouette of a woman - James Bond style - until long after I made the review. There is only one screenshot of an actual game screen Lemon, along with another screenshot from the nude shower scene. You might remember Darkseed also featured a shower scene, I figured it was developing quite a trend for the show!
The first thing was to watch a longplay of the game, so I could understand the basics. Seeing someone accomplish a task in a longplay is made harder due to the fact that they know what they are doing. When I started up the game, I promptly forget most of what I'd seen in the longplay, and was only armed by the fact that I knew where to go and also to write down as many passcodes and numbers as possible - which I did. I later found out that most of those numbers change randomly each time you play the game, but the phone number always stays the same. Playing this blindly, I didnt know how to use the 'interface' as almost everything is context driven. I say in the review that the phone has to be plugged in first before we can use it, but in fact the socket is only use to open the toothbrush and to freeze the ice-cubes. I got as far as I could get, but still had to look up solutions in the longplay at least twice during recording, which are seen in the review. In the end I didn't have to worry about where to stop the recorder because I got arrested by the detective, and booted out of the game, which was a bit of a pain considering I hadn't saved any of my progress up.
Editing the video involved finding songs for the soundtrack. Sure, this game is almost silent, but just like certain other games I've reviewed over the years, I never let the silence spoil the enjoyment of watching, even if that means adding new music. New bits were added over several weeks, as editing continued, and more songs were added during the final post-edit as well. The sample of 'Long Time Woman' was sung by Pam Grier. Other bits of trivia were also added from MobyGames.
Danscore:
Point and click adventures are not to everybodies tastes. For one thing, the action can be slow, and usually involves trying to screen wash the landscape with the mouse pointer, until some random pixel lights up as an item to use. In this game, that is all you get as far as a HUD - a bar showing the name of the item you are holding, and a list of items you already have. Everything else is context driven, and I'm very happy to say that the hit boxes for collecting items is large enough that you wont be hunched over the screen, squinting at every last pixel for hope and support. That being said, the use of popup boxes can often feel a bit clunky, even with a fast CPU, and the mouse feels quite slow to react. Graphically, Fascination is a mixed cocktail of some very nicely drawn and welcoming screens (inside the hotel, the Lab) and some quite bland or boring ones (the hotel pool, the secret library desk, the clothing store). Sonically it feels like they included a nice range of sound effects, but no music apart from a few jingles and the introduction sequence; which was probably a way to save money by skimping on the extra disks. Presentation is good, and the atmosphere is great, especially if you end up finding out what do do by trial and error. There are a few hand-banging puzzles, and like all of these types of games, it's possible to get stuck to the point of having to look up the longplays. Overall, Fascination is a good game from what I could see, although the sexy images and references feel a bit dated today. The pool side area could have been the perfect introduction to the game, but instead of a lush paradise like Flight of the Amazon Queen, we find a horrible Azure blue sky and matching water, which contrasts with the cyan blue view we could see from our hotel window. Overall, I'd give this 6.5/10.