Dark Seed II

Here's how I got it to work:

1. Unstuff in Mac OS 9 with StuffIt Expander 5.5
2. Mount image with ShrinkWrap 3.5.1

The image has a resource fork, so it can't be safely unstuffed in Windows. An ISO would certainly be more convenient.

Thanks for download link MCP!

Yes, your link was indeed dead. I erased it, sorry. Good thing you put yours back up too cos MU doesnt keep files for very long, they just expire.. May have been the typo as well, but I didnt see a download on that prev MF link.

What the hell happened to my external download link?

I got shitty parents, so when I was teenager one of my goals was not to repeat their mistakes with the children I would eventually have. The mother of one of my friends told me that's precisely why parents screw up. They're so focused on steering away their kids from the bad things they lived through, they don't realize they're pushing them against a different pile of crap.

That's what happened when Cyberdreams developed Dark Seed II. They avoided the same pitfalls from the first game but by doing so they fell into new ones. In Darkseed character interaction was minimal and the voice acting was abysmal. On this game the player talks to a wide variety of characters and the voice acting is done by professionals. But they overdid it.

The dialogues are not intuitive. The game's so linear you just pick the first option and then pick the next one and the next one until the end. Most of the lines are unnecessary not to mention cliché and everything Mike Dawson says is moronic. Rather than a nervous breakdown that guy suffered a total meltdown. He should be looking for a new brain instead of Rita's murderer.

This "new" Mike Dawson is one of the many continuity errors you'll find in the game. But since you have to be familiarized with the first part to notice them, and I suspect most people who will download this game will be newcomers, this is really a minor thing. The "new" storyline stands on its own and even try to patch things over by suggesting the second game takes place on a different timeline.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

However there's one continuity error I can't overlook. I'm talking about the Shape Shifter. The Ancients needed someone to behead the members of the Other World Cult, but because Dark Worlders can't cross to the Normal World they created him, a hybrid that could stay here long enough to do their dirty work. But in the end it turns out that he doesn't exist. He's actually a figment of Mike's imagination, who's the real killer. That makes no sense.

Here's what Raymond Benson, the man responsible for the story, said in an interview. They asked him, "Now, the big question. Does Jack actually exist? Is he completely a manifestation of Mike's sick mind? Or is he an agent of the Ancients and the Dark World version of Mike?" He replied, "Ahh, well, I'll never tell. It's supposed to be ambiguous. I was highly influenced by the work of David Lynch at the time, especially 'Twin Peaks.' In 'Twin Peaks,' did Laura Palmer's father really kill her, or was it a supernatural being known as 'Bob'? Or was 'Bob' really Leland Palmer? Same kind of thing. Lynch never tells us. You're supposed to make up your own mind about it, interpret it as you wish." I interpret it as proof that companies should not hire cheap writers to plot games.

Spoilers end here

Cyberdreams did get a couple of things right. They removed the time limit and expanded the Dark World. Now you can explore it as much as you like, clicking on every hot spot and seeing all the different ways you can trigger Mike's death. And with the new engine it looks and sounds better than ever. For that reason alone I'm willing to replay this game for years to come. Too bad Cyberdreams folded in the late nineties and the series stopped here. It deserves a proper conclusion, much like Twin Peaks.

You can watch the entire game at http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Darkseed%202/. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for a link to the interview quoted above.