Sanitarium Review

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Sanitarium

Review by TogerDecember 2002

“Where Am I? What Am I Doing Here?”

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. You know what I mean—the long day at work is finally over. So you head for the car and head down the mountain toward home. It’s not a bad drive, but it’s raining and the roads are slick. As you enter the one bad curve in the road, you pump the brakes and the pedal goes all the way to the floor! This does not bode well. You bounce off the guardrail a couple of times, then your car plunges through the guardrail and over the cliff and your world goes black.

The good: You awaken with your head completely swathed in bandages.  The bad: You have amnesia. The ugly: You’re in an insane asylum.

To quote the game box, this is “a journey through the depths of one man’s consciousness to confront the demons from his past and escape the imprisonment of his mind.” Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Uh … By the way, are you the squeamish type? Easily upset by animated horror or the sight of bodies and blood? If so, then you might want to steer clear of this game. Being raised on a steady diet of Outer Limits and Saturday nights spent watching Creature Features, not much fazes me, so I’m pretty warped and twisted. On the other hand, gentle reader, if you’re faint of heart … This game is rated Teen for a reason.

“See You in Hell, Freak!”

From the moment the publisher’s logo splashes across the screen wrapped in bandages and you hear the screams and cries of the inmates, you know you’re going to be in for some psychological fun and games!

Sanitarium begins in earnest when you awaken inside the asylum and must find your way out of the Tower Cells before the generator explodes. Once you’ve gotten out of the tower, you’ll navigate your way through eight more chapters of mind-warping “worlds.” Each chapter takes place in either a part of the asylum or one of several other locations, including a “Children of the Damned” type town, an Aztec village and an insect hive.

Sanitarium’s story is imaginative, dark, creepy and malevolent.  It’s the kind of game you’ll want to play with the lights off and your headphones on. Chapters that take place in the asylum are accompanied by the wailing, screaming and crying of tortured, unseen inmates.

For me, the creepiest part of the game was the options screen, where a pair of evil eyes followed my every move. Also, in keeping with the atmosphere, there’s a big green eye staring wildly out of a bunch of gauze on the box and the jewel case.

“I Can’t Do That from Here”

All of the puzzles within the game are relevant to your current situation and make absolute sense. Need to get out of the morgue before you freeze to death? Better figure out how to open the hinges so you can open the door! There were no puzzles thrown in there just to pad the game. In some cases, the puzzles take place in the world-at-large, such as returning a child to its parents, whereas others will offer an up-close-and-personal view.

Can we talk about the myriad puzzles? There are the usual inventory-based puzzles. And then there are the fetch-this-for-that-person-and-receive-something-in-return puzzles, mechanical, anagrams, matching symbols, music, and one … drum roll, please … maze. Don’t hyperventilate! The maze is pretty easy—it’s an open maze, no walls—as long as you don’t do what I did and push all of the buttons (subtle hint), you’ll do just fine.

The only problem I encountered with any of the puzzles was that sometimes the item I needed looked just like some of the background objects. So there is a wee bit of pixel hunting—minor gripe.  But then, I’ve got old eyes.

“It Looks Like a Giant Eye!”

Sanitarium is contained on three CDs with virtually no disk-swapping. Once you’ve moved onto the next CD, you stay there.  The game also will start from any of the CDs—now there’s a refreshing change!

The game itself is fairly linear—you cannot move on to the next chapter until you’ve completed everything in the current chapter. Also, inventory in one chapter doesn’t follow to the next, so you’re sure to find what you’re looking for in the immediate vicinity. For me, that’s a good thing. As much as I loved the King’s Quest games, I really hated all that traipsing back and forth or the fact that I’d get all the way to the end only to find I was missing a crucial object. Is that heartless or what?

The interface is traditional point-and-click with a slight variation.  To move your character, click and hold the right mouse button, then drag the arrow cursor to where you need to go. Once there, release the mouse button. Personally, I disliked this method.  It was especially bothersome in close quarters, in which case I either ran up and down stairs, a lot, or got trapped by objects when I was trying to go elsewhere. Everything else, such as interacting with objects or people, is accomplished by using the left mouse button.

Should I mention Sanitarium’s arcade-type sequences? Don’t panic! There are only two such sequences and they’re really not that bad. Would I lie to you? Once you’ve gotten rid of the lesser critters, they stay gone even if you should die when you face the Big Bad. Oh, dear. I’ve said the “d” word. Yes, you can die in the arcade sequences, but you’re immediately revived and you have an infinite number of lives. Plus, with the save-anywhere feature, you can choose to reload from your last save instead of starting at the beginning of the sequence!

Inventory management is really simple. A left-click on your character will bring up all of the objects that you currently carry in their own individual circle, which in turn circles your avatar. When you hover over an object, Max will tell you about said object. 

Oops! Did I give away that your character’s name is Max? Not to worry, I don’t think that’s a spoiler. After all, Max will remember his name rather early in the game.

“Only Good Bug Is a Dead Bug”

Graphically speaking, some of the scenes can be pretty graphic.  A couple of times I found myself saying, “oh, ewww!”—but you’ll notice that it didn’t stop me from playing! Sanitarium’s graphics are in beautifully detailed prerendered 2D. The circus level had floating balloons, empty vodka bottles and bits of trash scattered about the grounds, while the hive level was suitably squishy and organic-looking.

As Max travels through the various levels, events or objects will trigger a memory. Memories are done via cutscenes with a wonderfully old, faded, sepia-toned, eight-millimeter-film look and feel, even down to the pops, lines, stray hairs, stutters and shaky camera angles found in home movies.

Voice work for the game was very good. At first, I wasn’t really enamored of the actor who voiced Max, but then I decided he seemed a little dead in the beginning because he was confused and didn’t understand the things that were happening to him. Conversations with NPCs are spoken as well as subtitled. You can also toggle subtitles on for the cutscenes and observations that Max makes.

Ambient sounds were excellent. As Max walked on different surfaces, the sounds of his footsteps would change accordingly. Heavy metal doors clanked with force. Don’t get me started on the hive—that whole level was disgustingly gross! We’re talking wet, slurping, slithering, squishy sounds! And I loved every nasty moment! Curiously enough, there’s not a lot of background music during most of the game. One chapter has especially haunting music to make the chapter very sad, sweet and poignant. During the final two chapters there is background music, which heightens the tension quite well.

Traveling through the game, you’ll meet all manner of characters: Aztec warrior shades, disfigured smart-alecky kids, disgruntled circus performers, insectoids, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and some seriously funny inmates. You’ll even play various incarnations of Max—Grimwall, a four-armed, hoofed, horned Cyclops; Olmec, Mighty Aztec God; and Sarah, Max’s sister.

“Well, They Do Say You Really Can’t Go Home Again”

Sanitarium is a wonderfully creepy, psychological thriller/mystery of a game where the sole purpose is to discover who you are, why you’re in the asylum, who’s done this to you and how to get out.  I found the story worthy of an Outer Limits episode with all of the twists and turns that one would expect in such a story.  The reverse mouse movement notwithstanding, Sanitarium rates the FFC gold star from me!

If you haven’t already played this game, you should. You know you want to do it. Have you checked your car’s brake line of late?  How’s that for psychological manipulation? The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: DreamForge Entertainment Publisher: ASC Games Release Date: 1998

Available for: Windows

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Screenshots

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System Requirements

Pentium 90 16 MB RAM 4X CD-ROM drive 16-bit sound card DirectX 5 30 MB free hard drive space

Where to Find It

The Software Society 18.99

Prices/links current as of 12/02/02Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

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