Dave Gilbert continues his career as the auteur of a new school of old school graphic adventures with The Blackwell Legacy, the first of a series of planned games featuring freelance writer Rosangela Blackwell.
In this first outing, Rosangela comes to grips with her powers--or affliction, as it may be--and is forced to deal with a haunted dog run in Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park. Helping her out is the mysterious Joey Mallone, a fedora-wearing ghost whose dialog is straight out of Raymond Chandler and who has apparently been haunting her family since the 1940s.
As with Dave's previous game, the great strengths of The Blackwell Legacy are in the writing and voice acting, both of which are excellent. It's a classic puzzle-solving graphic adventure in the Sierra mode, with better graphics than The Shivah (but still in a somewhat pixellated old school mode). One basic hint: Sometimes selecting two notes in Rosa's notebook will combine them to create a new clue to the puzzle.
Between this game and Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine, perhaps we're seeing a renaissance of the classic adventure game? We can but hope...
