Coming from creator of the well-received Dark Fall series, Jonathan Boakes, I was expecting something atmospheric and original from The Lost Crown. Well... umm... let’s start by saying that no one else wanted to review this and maybe the developers should have stuck with the first-person flick-screen format (like Myst & Syberia) that Dark Fall used. You start your adventure as the seemingly lost, dazed and confused ghost-hunter, Nigel Danvers. Nige’s train doesn’t go as far as the coastal town of Saxton, his intended destination (for reason's that I can't remember), so needing to find his way on foot he soon finds that the ‘locals’ are a fairly weird lot (and I’m talking The League of Gentlemen weird). Anyway, Nige sets out on adventure as he attempts to unravel an ancient mystery, and search for hidden treasures on England's fog-shrouded coastline, famed for its legends of smugglers, pirates, ghosts, oddly placed anchors, piles of dead lobsters and seagull poop.

The good news for Nigel is that all the local characters he comes across speak in the same, slow, laborious and unrealistically precise way that he does, so he soon feels right at home. The voice acting in the game is remarkably free of any emotion or feel for the plot, and frequently unintentionally amusing. The nearest comparisons I could draw are that they sound like a “Learn English in 10 Days” CD. Or maybe the voice actors had all previously exclusively supplied voices for Sat Navs... Either way, what should have been a refreshingly different “The Prisoner” or “Village of the Damned”-esque English location for an adventure is almost as boring as I imagine wandering around a real Fen village would be. Some people might crave games with this sort of pace, but then, some people think Deal Or No Deal is exciting...