It's 1998, and a company is developing and releasing a game on CD, with lush cartoony graphics and voice acting! In a dying genre, on a dying machine, for the select few who have upgraded to a CD drive. Wow! No wonder I'm the only person to have ever played this game.
A demo is available on the Aminet here. It has been downloaded 11 times in 10 years.
Sixth sense investigations is described as "a new graphics adventure for the Amiga, based on the classic LucasArts style games. The base storyboard tells of a crazy young guy who has the ability to communicate with the spirit of a sarcastic man. A friend, who thinks of himself as a detective, profits from the psychic abilities of his friend (the crazy psychic guy), by using his skills to solve the most bizarre problems of the rich."
This game is long - it will probably take you 10 or more hours to complete; it has lovely stylised cartoony 256-colour graphics that show off the machine nicely; it has voice acting - that's right, actual voice acting! - for all the characters. It can't be that bad, can it? Can it?
Yes. Yes it can.
The stop. frame. animation is atrocious. Wonderful, lovely colourful vibrant graphics, spoiled by populating the gameworld with sprites having 4 frames of animation. Don't make him. reach. for. that. bottle! Nooooo! Oh, the humanity!
The main character has the DULLEST VOICE EVER. It's not that he sounds bored, although he does, it's the fact that he's got a voice that expresses no emotion or excitement, is monotonous and makes you want to commit suicide, or possibly genocide, after 2 minutes of listening to it. Thanks for spending all that time and money recording the voices, now watch as I turn them all off by the end of the intro sequence.
On the subject of voice acting, grabbing a developer and getting him to do as many regional British accents as possible, one for each different character, doesn't work. It didn't work in Simon the Sorceror II (and Beneath a Steel Sky for that matter), and it doesn't work here. Hire professionals (nod of the hat to Dreamfall, here), don't hire the receptionist to do all the girl voices.
The plot is one of comical sci-fi mystery involving parallel dimensions, robots, genies and Mega Drive-playing kids. The plot is actually quite good, and is versatile enough to enable locations on alien planets.
The dialogue, then. Ye gods, don't mention the dialogue! You know that person you know, who says things that try to be funny, and almost are but not quite, and you can see how they were trying to be funny but didn't quite make it, and you end up pitying their poor sad existence because it's obvious they also know they're nearly funny but they will never achieve an actual laugh? This dialogue was written by That Person. It tries to be funny, and cooky, and zany, but ends up being a little bit embarrassing, and sounding a little bit sad, and not always making sense. "Hi, I'm a zany mad professor! No, look at me, please look at me, I'm crazy! And I'm really funny too! See, did you see that thing I just did, just then?? It was crazy!! I'm mad, me!!"
The best part of the game is: the ending. Why? Because it's one of those endings that render the entire storyline into oblivion. Think of a time-travel novel where, in the final scene, someone travels back to before the start of the story to prevent all the events of the story happening, resulting in none of it ever happening. That's like the ending of this game, except more clever. I won't reveal the ending, I will instead remain the sole human apart from the developer who knows what happens.
I used to think I would only inflict this upon my worst enemy, but I've decided since that I wouldn't even do that. Besides, being my antithesis they'd probably enjoy it immensely and develop a sequel, which they would unleash upon me. Also, I would lose my street cred with them for saying it's such a great game in a ruse to get them to play it.
Suffice to say, there are no walkthroughs for this game, probably because no-one ever played it to the end, except for me. Which leaves me as the sole person to have ever played through the entire game. Let's hope things stay that way.