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Since there are only two or three polygonal characters on the screen at a time, and they aren’t even very detailed at that, frame rates remain high throughout the entire game. The lips attempt to move along with the dialogue, but often fail to. The spoken dialogue itself seems to fade in and out of existence, and it seems that for some reason the audio mixing in the game is corrupt. Occasionally I would find myself left with the droning hum of the forest that would make up the base sound, and all of the component sounds of speech, gunfire, and the others that would be blended in to make the final composite sound were nowhere to be found.

The way that the engine seems to work is that it overlays the polygonal characters and objects over a preprinted background. This is easy enough to do because of the fact that all of the camera angles are fixed, thus for every angle they use, there is a separate background image. All of the footprints and miscellaneous environmental objects just act like bitmaps overlayed against the still background. This gives the game an almost layered feel, and I never got the impression that the characters really belonged in the game and that they were artificially superimposed.

The characters themselves were not too detailed, and their skeletal animation could use some work. It felt like a lot of sacrifices were made in order to ensure compatibility across a wide range of platforms. The standard colored lighting was present, and any special items would have a sort of sparkling "pixie dust" that circled over them to help to ensure that you would see them. This is a dark game set in a dead forest, and lots of grays, reds, blacks and browns are used to set the mood. The occasional bit of magic is well done, and auras emanate from certain objects and creatures in a cascade of iridescent blue rings. Occasionally you meet up with the spirits of the dead that haunt the forest (occasionally you go EV from your body as well) and are represented by the original characters in a new floating and translucent form.

Conclusion:

If you are any sort of an average gamer, or if you are normal and really detested The Blair Witch Project the movie, then don’t buy this game. I found it to be oversimplified, hastily constructed, and targeted at an audience who is more wowed by in game movies than actual plot and NPC interactions. This is a simple game, with almost no learning curve, and adequate only for hardcore fans of the Blair Witch who don’t care about graphics, sound, or gameplay.

Overall Score: 75%