Enough of comparing these two titles though. As a stand-alone game, how does the title fare? Well, it's very much a mixed affair. Most important of course is the gameplay, and unfortunately the gameplay is a little disappointing. It's a very linear affair indeed, almost feeling like a connect- the-dots puzzle as you progress from cutscene to cutscene. In between you'll have to take down a few monsters and solve a few puzzles, but there's nothing overly taxing here at all, especially as the ghosts and stick monsters can all be taken out with your pistol, for which there is always an ample supply of ammunition. Since it's a Revolver you'll have to reload after every six shots, but rather than making combat more interesting it makes it a little more annoying as you'll often get your leg bitten off by a fast daemonic dog while you frantically reload. I often found myself firing off the last two or three loaded bullets just so I could reload and have a full six shots ready for the next encounter.

The story is quite possibly one of the best aspects to the title, revealing why the search party for Robin Weaver was found bound hand and feet with their guts torn out. We also learn more about who exactly Lazarus is through interactive cut scenes where you control Lazarus when he was a soldier during the Civil War. Unfortunately, the telling of the story suffers from bad voice acting made worse by glitchy sound. Lazarus himself sounds perpetually bored and there were times when the speech would simply cut out, leaving the characters lips moving and the subtitles going without any actual audible spoken words.

Blair Witch Volume 2: Legend of Coffin Rock isn't a bad game, it just feels distinctly average despite its interesting story. The puzzles prove little more than a brief distraction from the repetitive action, and the complete lack of scary moments or atmospheric lighting mean that it's not so much a horror game but more of an action title with a story line that focuses on the occult. Even compared to the Rustin Parr game, which was meant to be a short title but ended up almost feeling longer than some full games, the second Blair Witch title is also over very quickly. If you're interested in the Blair Witch mythology, then it may be worthy of your attention as it does a good job of telling more of the Blair Witch story, but in the end Blair Witch Volume 2: Legend of Coffin Rock proves ultimately forgettable and only mildly entertaining.

Pete Closs
Games Editor