Dylan Dog 2 - Through the Looking Glass is an excellent second installment in the Dylan Dog game series designed and published by an Italian company by the name of Simulmondo. This adventure game is the follow up to Simulmondos 1992 title Dylan Dog - The Murderers. As with the previous version Simulmondo achieved a fully immersive game that perfectly captures the atmosphere of the Dylan Dog comic book series created by Tiziano Sclavi. This universe centers around the character of Dylan Dog who is an ex Scotland Yard agent with a mostly unknown past.
Now Dylan is a private investigator of nightmares and he deals with all sorts of cases that are out of the ordinary. Dylan is a flawed character with many phobias, a fascination with fear and not much money, because his fees are low and sometimes he doesn't even charge for his services.
The success of this game Dylan Dog - Through the Looking Glass comes through the significant update to most features compared to its predecessor. The graphics that were great in the first one are even better in this one. The music is better too and the player is presented with a more extensive plot full of interesting characters (including some standard recurring characters from the comic, such as Groucho - Dylans one-liner cracking assistant and Inspector Block - Dylans
help and connection with the Scotland Yard) and challenging situations.
The interface has been updated to a very intuitive point-and-click system based around icons rather than a selection of verbs or text input required as it usually is the case with these types of adventure games. As a result, from a player’s point of view, the interface is almost transparent allowing a complete immersion in the game world. This simplistic interface also aid in anyone being able to pick up the controls quickly and enjoy the game, even if they are not avid gamers.
The plot is intriguing and interesting as well as are the characters. This I would attribute to Tiziano Sclavi himself being involved with the game design throughout its production.
An interesting feature is a presence of character that poses as the author of the game's plot (no doubt a reference to Sclavi). This Author character shows up, if the player has missed an important clue or failed to advance or discover something new in the given time. If this happen, the game switches to the Author screen where he instructs the player and rewinds the time in order for the player to make different choices or look for more clues. This is handy in the sense that it enables the game to have absolutely no dead ends, but it can be a bit of a spoiler sometimes revealing to much of the plot.
Nevertheless, this is a highly enjoyable game that the players will play for hours on end as it is essentially and interactive film-like recreation of everything that was great about the comic book series. The characters, the twists, the horror component, the humor and an always carefully planed out plot.
