D is a 1995 horror/graphic adventure game developed by
WARP and published by the then famous
Acclaim Entertainment initially for the
3DO and subsequently for the
Sega Saturn,
Playstation 1 (the one I'll be reviewing) and
DOS, later being re-released for
Windows, Mac and
Linux in 2016.
Now,
D is quite an original game for it's time since it's an
interactive movie made entirely in CGI, no real actors on screen, just 3-D modeled characters with lots of polygons in they're bodies. It must be noted that this was not only weird for the time but also quite ambitious, who would have thought that a whole game could be made out of the "impressive" looking stuff that you only saw in a couple of game intros and cinematics? I mean, in '95 many games used full-motion video with real-life actors and practical sets and it was considered normal back in the day, but a guy named
Kenji Eno had the idea of making a full interactive movie with only CGI cutscenes which presented a more "mature" kind of horror; unlike it's contemporaries like
Night Trap or
Phantasmagoria; and so we had
D.
The story puts us in the shoes of Laura Harris, the daughter of a famous american doctor who one night goes insane and murders the entire staff of his own hospital. Laura is called by the police to talk with her father so that they could aprehend him but, as soon as Laura makes her way inside the hospital, a portal sucks her in and takes her far away into an old medieval castle, where the disembodied head of her father tells her to just leave him behind and get out of there as soon as possible. Laura's job is to find out what drove her father crazy while also remembering chuncks of her past and dark lineage.
The game plays (mostly) in first-person, we move through the environment with the d-pad, interact with objects with the button O and R1/L1 serve us to scroll through our inventory. That's it.
D is a very simple and very slow-paced game, there's no combat and we also can't die through any conventional way. We just need to explore the castle and solve various puzzles in order to get to the next area until the we reach the end. Does it sound boring? Well, truth is, that depends on you and your taste. Personally, I found
D to be a very engaging and almost relaxing game to play, it's slowness added to the eerie atmosphere helped by the minimalistic soundtrack and sound effects which made the castle felt empty but dangerous at the same time, like a place you know you shouldn't be diving further and further into but you just can't help it, you have to get to the bottom of it all.
Storywise it's quite interesting since it has a very surrealist tone and also the way in which the writers built the mystery kept me invested all the way through. Videogame-wise, for 1995 this is a quite well told story where nothing is being outright explained to you but kept hidden until the very end. I do have to admit that the twist is kinda corny (it is unexpected, that's for sure!) but it serves for a satisfaying conclusion and it even gives sense to the title of the game.
Although the game is slow, what really maintains it from loosing steam is it's very short lenght. It took me about 90 minutes to complete with next to no complications on my way through. I wouldn't qualify none of the puzzles as mind-bogling or nonesensical but some of them can become tiresome and maybe even annoying (specifically one on the second 2 disc). Luckily most are quite cool and not that hard to figure out. The castle is separated in three areas and each of them is divided within 3 CD-Roms, I guess because since the whole game is made out of CGI cutscenes it makes sense that it would have been too heavy to cram into just 1 or even 2 discs. Every time you finish an area, you have to change to the next disc. Which is kind of funny since by today standards those graphics look very basic and would fit in nicely into just 1 DVD or Blu-Ray. Actually, to the eyes of a 21th century gamer they could be considered laughable and even "horrible" but back then they did caught the attention of players and reviewers alike.
The things I didn't like are the fact that you have to beat the game in just one sitting, since there's no saving and no pausing. Yeah, it's a very short game (actually it could be beaten in less than 1 hour if you know what you're doing) but c'mon, why would you do that, what if I REALLY need a bathroom break? Also, if you don't complete the game in less than 2 hours you get a definitive game over and you have to start again; not much of a problem but it is a weird choice to say the least. My main gripe is that there isn't a lot of replay value here since the game is completely linear and the are no multiple paths to take. There are 2 different endings but those can just be decided at the very last minute depending on the buttons you press. There's also a secondary objective of sorts which consists on collecting 4 glowing beatles scattered through out the castle which give a little insight on Laura's past, but there's really no actual reward for doing so, you just get to know more about one aspect of the story.
D was a commercial succes and was well received by critics. It gave the opportunity for WARP to make a deal with
Sega and create two sequels: a spiritual sequel called
Enemy Zero [エネミー・ゼロ] for the
Saturn and an official sequel called
D2 [Dの食卓2] for the
Sega Dreamcast, although there's 0 narrative connection between the 3 games and they're all completely different monsters compared to each other.
Ultimatley, I think that this is a game worth checking out despise of the score given here on Glitchwave which, if you ask me, is pretty much a sign of it's uniqueness. This means that
D is not a game for everybody. It's slow, weird and visually it hasn't aged well, which means that it's most definetly not a perfect game, but for anyone who can appreciate its virtues, it's a must have. I consider
D to be an underated cult classic and a game that I'm proud of having in my collection. If you're interested the game plays well in all of the available versions so, just buy which ever you want.
7/10