Beyond Shadowgate (1993)

Wow. Just wow... There are a lot of weird, weak and outright bad games for CD-based systems in this era. Beyond Shadowgate feels like it belong right next to a slew of skeezy CD-I games like Hotel Mario, Zelda: Wand of Gamelon and Tetris (The Tetris CD-I release is kinda cool though with a cool soundtrack check it out!) But what stands out to me is that ICOM simulations actually WAS the developer for this title that deviates very strongly from the franchise it's based on. The game actually feels more like a Sierra adventure game (such as the Kings Quest series) due to it's use of action oriented menus and real time puzzle-action gameplay. It also features a humorous tone with the occasional bit of extreme violence. The game is also often bright and colorful, in no way does this feel like Shadowgate or get the vibe right, it does however offer some funny references and 'jokes' to several of the puzzles in the first game. Unfortunately, there are also some really hard puzzles and a LOT of 'gotchas' that usually revolve around letting someone die who shouldnt die that you could rescue if you were fast enough. There's also a lot of real time beat em up fighting that can be exploited in a few ways. I decided to just resort to a Lets Play of this after borking my game doing something wrong i wasnt supposed to do, not realizing it until I was further into the game. Kinda a funny take on Shadowgate but despite the digitized speech, sound and music, real-time game play and animated graphics (all of are which arguable improvements over the original classic MacVenture games) it's in no way a game that's aged well.