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Ranking:
Release Date: November 25th, 2014 Movie Release Year: 2014

Haunted House: Cryptic Graves

Overview -

The first 'Haunted House' was released in 1982 for the Atari 2600, and featured a pair of disembodied eyes that searched a mansion for an artifact. It was notable for being probably one of the earliest example of survival horror, and Atari has gone back to the well a few times in efforts to revive the franchise. It was remade in 2010 to negative reviews, has been added to a few compilation packs, and now we have 'Haunted House: Cryptic Graves', the first full sequel in the series.

OVERALL:
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Rating Breakdown
VIDEO
AUDIO
Tech Specs & Release Details
Release Date:
November 25th, 2014

Video Review

Ranking:

'Cryptic Graves' is not a looker. Despite using the Unreal 4 engine, which is capable of some nice visuals, the visual palette here is rough and undeveloped. Textures like hair and skin lack any kind of sophistication or detail. Environmental surfaces and backgrounds are gritty and faded. As mentioned above, the framerate drops precipitously whenever anything remotely complicated happens, like switching to Alma’s special sight or even spinning the camera around too fast. This can result in a freeze or crash. Be advised that all of this is when the settings are cranked up to "Epic". The other video settings look just like Epic, that is to say not epic at all. However, strangely there are halfway decent particle effects sometimes.

Audio Review

Ranking:

The voice acting is stiff and lifeless, as though the actors have never seen the script before and are just reading to one another in the studio. Much of it seems to have been recorded on equipment that provides for extremely low fidelity. Lip syncing is laughably delayed. The music and sound effects are slightly above amateur.

Final Thoughts

'Cryptic Graves' is not even good enough to qualify as ironically bad, where we could at least get some laughs out of it. It is not scary, not entertaining, and it can barely run for more than a few minutes without something miserable happening to the game client. The better than zero half of a star rating is because it does seem to open when clicked on in the Steam menu, which means is beats out games that don't launch or else erase hard drives. If you have $20 to spend on a video game, I highly recommend you spend it on any other game.