Rating SHIVERS

[Tawmis]

Granted, there's only two...

So - if you had to rate the games from best to worse - what order would you put them in?

Maybe say what you liked or disliked, to explain the order, to generate some conversation?

[BBP]

I'm about the only Shivers fan here, I suppose...

Shivers:
Best: constant menace of the Ixupi - before you figure out how they work, they're everywhere and some are hard to avoid. Because they make you jump there's something at stake while you're walking around - you may accidentally give yourself a fit again. I literally fell off my seat at the first Ixupi attack and closed the game - only to find out there was no avoiding that jerk and I'd have to let him scare me again.

Also: some great puzzles: Polygons, Pinball, Chase, Elevator puzzles, Clock...
Beautiful surroundings in an interesting setting
Music mostly wonderful. Ixupi music is great, both with the 7th interval and with the fact that it's there - audio hint, brilliant!
Stuff to learn, yay!
Story is not too complex but still compelling, it makes sense and there aren't really gaping plotholes.

Worst:
Guillotining
Hanging
Many "insert password here" puzzles - opening the gear puzzle box, Stonehenge, theatre door, door to the tower room, workplace drawers, Poseidon's globe, door to the subterranean world (siren song), door to the maze (movie), skull dials, Tombs & Curses tomb, opening door to Gods & Killings (from the Shaman room), opening the UFO in Planetarium...
Lengthy sections of walking without getting anywhere - up the museum steps, towards the place where you get on the ship, the long passage between lake and elevator, lengthy maze...

Shivers II:
Pro: hints in the music videos is absolutely brilliant
Some great puzzles, I love the tiled puzzles in the cave and the cemetery

Con:
Story is hard to get - there is an overload of characters and we never get to see most of them! Our main contact is listening to answering machines and hoping you can make something of who's cheating who. Replay value of the game isn't so high you'd stand a chance of telling what happened.
The music videos quickly lose their awesomeness and become utterly tedious when you're still looking for hints
No sense of threat - it's all concentrated in the caves. There are a few things that can cost you a touch of life, like falling barrels in the warehouse, bees, snake and the books, but it's peanuts.
Scenery is mostly unattractive
Mine maze is the worst - I didn't want to bother getting lost in there.
Gaping plot hole - why is the corpse of the hiker in the supermarket fridge? Why has she become a skeleton in a matter of weeks?

Needless to say, Shivers I wins.

[Tawmis]

I'm about the only Shivers fan here, I suppose...

I only ever played the first Shivers game, myself.

That I remember, anyway. I may have played the second, but it may be blurring with the first...

[Collector]

For whatever reasons I remember Shivers two more than the first one.

[BBP]

One other thing about Shiv 2 is how the less fantastic ending, where you give Ianyi to Nora, more satisfying than the best ending (though you get an extra puzzle). It's the only ending in which she is revealed to Max to be the spirit of his deceased wife and she tells him off for making the town into a ghost town.

I developed a dislike for Nora over the repetitive tune when she arrives on the scene, and of course that cemetery stunt which is the only scare outside the caves.