Gabriel Knight 2 : The Beast Within

Gabriel Knight 2, The Beast Within runs the whole gauntlet from pain to pleasure. Pain because it is so bug-ridden and pleasure from it's well acted parts and excellent storyline.The story is a continuation of the Schattenjaeger Saga as in Gabriel Knight Part 1, The Voodoo Murders. While not necessary, it would be instructive to play GK1 first as some references are made to the Voodoo Murders in GK2.

While GK1 was a standard animated game in SVGA. GK2 consists mainly of live actors with occasional animation added in. In almost all aspects Gabriel Knight 2 is heads above GK1. The exception is the complexity of the puzzles that Gabriel must overcome to solve the crime. Even with 6 CD's, the video still takes up too much room.

I played this on a 120MHz Pentium Clone with a 6X Teac CD, 16MB of EDO RAM and a Sound Blaster Vibra 16-bit audio card. This combination gave the game excellent playability. Scenes changed fast and the music was "appropriate"...by that I mean it really seemed to fit the action/scene rather than having been added as an afterthought. The sounds are real, that is, live off the sound-track of the scene or recorded real-world sounds...very good.

The story begins with Gabriel, who continues as a Schattenjaeger (a detective-like investigator of the supernatural), at home in his castle when a horrible crime is committed. The townspeople come to him to ask his help to investigate a series of murders, believed by some to be the work of werewolves. Naturally he agrees and off he goes, with his partner Gracie, in search of clues. Chapters alternate between Gracie and Gabriel. There are only a couple "reaction-type" scenes but they will bother a few purists. As usual, save frequently but at each point where you get killed you have the option to try again. The game is relatively free-form except for the very end where it becomes solidly linear.

For those of you that were disappointed with Phantasmagora, you will be pleasantly surprised to find both good acting and challenging puzzles. I don't mean puzzles of the complexity of a 7th Guest but rather the kind of problems that you might encounter if you were an Evil-Fighter messing around with the Powers of Darkness...you know. The "HINT" button will cause places to flash that still have unfinished business. This is just the kind of minimal help that I find useful and non-intrusive.

The Game does however have quite a number of bugs. But they have since been since fixed with the Sierra Patch. This patch fixes a multitude of problems and if you try it without first installing the patch and later decide you need it, all saved games will be no good and you must start again...oops!

All this considered, I found the story compelling and the game well worth the problems it took to fix the bugs. Sierra's patch works and if you have version 1.11 or later you are probably ok. Even though it has 6 CD's it is arranged in Chapters and there is little CD swapping...especially if you opt for the 42MB install. If you like "Mature Subject Matter" with some graphic violence then you will like this game...buy it!

This article was contributed by
Lou Duncan