Black Mirror II Preview

Black Mirror 2 takes place 12 years after the events of the original game, and after exploring Darren's backstory, revisits familiar locations such as the town of Willow Creek in England and the nearby Black Mirror Castle. The horrific events of the original game aren't forgotten, but have helped transform Willow Creek into a center for supernatural and horror tourism. The old sanatorium is now a hotel, the center of town has a fun faire and while the tourist trade is tapering off, locations look similar but are catering to an entirely different crowd.

It's hard to say much about the quality of the puzzles in Black Mirror 2. Many thought the original game's puzzles were too obscure, but all I saw of Black Mirror 2 was the opening moments. I saw Darren sent off on a series of errands for his boss, Fuller, fixing a broken fuse and even distracting a downtown shopper by setting off a car alarm so that Darren could talk with a shopkeeper. The puzzles certainly seemed intuitive enough, but were some of the first puzzles players will encounter.

Black Mirror 2 , though clearly a conventional adventure game, has one thing that set it apart in the brief time I experienced it, and that was the quality of the visuals. The game is rendered in 3D, with motion capture used to generate the animations for the various inhabitants of Black Mirror 2's world. It all adds up to create an environment that is positively spectacular. Both Maine and the village of Willow Creek looked great, and if the adventure game puzzles and plot live up to the quality of the visuals, Black Mirror 2 should be a whole lot of fun to play.