Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok

Get your master’s degrees in engineering out, kids! Here comes a game that makes Sudoku look like pre-kindergarten counting games and peekaboo. Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok is the thrilling story of a megalomaniac architect that has built a Utopian city, all within the same building.  But before this lifelong dream came to full completion, trouble started brewing. The Baron was an avid collector of ancient artifacts and it seems that some still had some kick in them; enough to have the building shut down and sealed.

It is only after a silent protagonist receives a call from his editor to investigate this intriguing building, that Wittard Utopia will be remembered from its eternal shunning. Within the building, our hero will find out that something is very wrong with the forces of the beyond and it will be up to him to restore it. He doesn’t really have any choice, as there are spirits out there that will imminently destroy the planet if he doesn’t. No escaping from that, I’m afraid.

A quick look at Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok

From the moment our lead steps into the decaying premises of the Wittard Utopia, the impressive visual style descends on the screen. There is a serious amount of detail and polish put into this game. All around the city Utopia there are decaying structures, grimy kids’ toys, blackened and crumbling walls and a lot more filth and debris. This is offset by the wonderful textures, framework and Victorian designs of certain areas. It creates a believable scenery that could come right out of the mind of an obsessed architect. The mix of steampunk, modern technology and atrophy manifests an impressive game world; one which doesn’t need to bow down to the big boys, like BioShock for instance. At some point, you’d swear a Big Daddy was about to burst out of the scenery. But sadly, this is a static point and click adventure, so none of that.

Further facilitating the suspense factor of the deteriorating Utopia, the score performs an eerie back-up to the visual horror. A sharp climaxing use of background music, paired with clattering and creaking sound effects will create a fair amount of goosebumps; especially since all light in the building flickers and areas are usually rather dark. It lets the imagination run wild with terror, as each sound and each dark spot might hide a foul presence; even though it’s still a static game. That’s quite an impressive feat to pull off, as they are constantly tricking the brain in believing more is brewing than there actually is.

Welcome to the amazingly created Wittard Utopia. Leave your hopes at the door.

Unfortunately, the powerful soundtrack is barely present in the game and when silence takes over, the overly excessive use of sound effects tends to break the mood. The silence makes the game feel empty and there’s just no way certain rooms create that amount of noise, without having world’s largest rat infestation within them. But worse than that is the most robotic and horribly voice acting ever produced onto a game. Never have voices sounded so unrealistically bad; with a telephone conversation that seems read straight of a prompter and a main guide with a British accent laid on so thick, it’s almost tangible. Not only is the pronunciation in every sentence of the game mispronounced, but the guiding amulet speaks as if it had a hot potato in its mouth at all times or is caught in some sort of tornado; its speech is that windy. This completely breaks the realism Baron Wittard had going for it. Setting priorities in sound effects is basically what creates suspense in a game, so downsizing some aspects and backing up others would’ve seriously balanced out the game more.

But the small cracks of the otherwise extraordinary presentation are nothing compared to the chasm the actual game presents. Set from a first person perspective, the goal of the game is to unravel the puzzles laid out throughout the Wittard Utopia and uncover the ancient mystery posed by the artifacts. But getting there is near impossible in every way. Moving is a slow and arduous task, which makes the next screen fade in and out each time. Going to your menu screen makes it fade in and out each time. Puzzles fade in and out each; well, you get the point. While it’s not a game breaker per se, it makes exploring the vast wasteland a snail-paced process. And since Wax Lyrical did an excellent job in creating a huge world, it’s not hard to understand that adventuring the free-roam world will take ages.

I sense it too. It's an overly windy annoyance. An amulet of sorts; oh, wait.

And yet, this also isn’t the final nail in what seems to be an imminent disaster. The real stinker here is the puzzle and investigation system of Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok. This entire game can be summarized in one word: Uncompromising! There are really only a dozen or so puzzles available in the game, but getting there and more importantly solving them is a Sisyphus task. While we’re at it; there’s a nice amount of mythology to discover in the game, if you’re in for a history lesson. In any case, it’s an interesting topic to delve into, even though the main mythological antagonist resembles a seizuring silhouette. Not so much a tariffing plot device, it does take away for a moment the horribly hard enigmas set throughout the building.

Because, not only are the puzzles crushing in difficulty, but locating clues and memorizing them will make this a game that’s angering to play. Clues are scattered throughout the building; each more cryptic than the next. But the overflow of information that is necessary for each small piece makes every screen a hailstorm of research. Unless you have a complete notepad handy and are willing to dissect this game back to the main storyboard it once came from, you will not finish this game; period. The very least they could’ve done was to create an option of cataloguing these clues in a fast and comprehensive manner in-game. He’s a reporter; he can’t take papers with him? He can’t take pictures of strange drawings? No, everything will have to be documented separately.

One of the most impressive rooms. Good luck solving that chessboard puzzle, chumps.

Not only is it mandatory that each and every small detail of this game is remembered and noted down, but even then solving a puzzle will be crippling. Before any of these mysteries can be solved, players are required to perform a much too elaborate series of tasks, in order to barely inch forward; even though it is quite commendable that some problems have multiple solutions. There are even some enigmas where the game is sort of laughing at you, warning about the difficulty of a certain puzzle; such as completing a chessboard. Here’s where I’d like to stop reviewing, which is unprofessional, sorry. But I’d like to talk to you all about the Gauss curve:

What's a good textbook without an illustration?

In this world, there are 6 billion or so people, from which you and yours are of average intellect. That would put you into the center of the Gauss curve; meaning you’re smarter than about 3 billion people on the planet. That makes you feel rather good about yourself, doesn’t it? Divided into 8 sections, representing a set amount of percentages, the large majority of the world will fall into the normal distribution of section 4 and 5; which represent more or less average intelligence. The higher the section, the less the percentage of people available, as intelligence goes up. From the 3 billion people smarter than you, there’s people in section 6 (higher intelligence, 13,6%,  moi included); section 7 (high intellect, 2,2%) and section 8 (extraordinary people, Sheldon Cooper-like supermen).

You know you're pretty much screwed when you encounter abandoned soiled prams.

Before you start feeling bad, here’s the low down: Unless you’re in that minor percentage of Sheldonites, there’s no way to complete Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok. It’s not you, it’s the game. The box states a 7-year-old can play this game. Well, if he can, give this tike a scholarship and put him to the cure to cancer right away. Like mentioned, the brutal elaborate process of solving puzzles and advancing is set in a much too complex manor; no, that’s not a typo. With the barrage of mandatory information, playing Baron Wittard will leave you feeling frustrated and stupid. Nobody wants to spend their time in aggravation.

The beautiful presentation and puzzle mechanics reminds of challenging masterpieces, such as Myst. But once this link is severed through one of its many errors, what is left is an unplayable game, only suitable as a marvelous exploration demo. So, unless you’re in the market for a life task rivaling the building of a Utopian city or you’re a Mensa masochist, you’d best avoid this torturing experience of the brain.

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Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed.