Game reviews

The opening movie starts out on the ocean liner, the S.S. Andrea Doria; you see a man enter the room of another passenger who is sleeping. The man strangles the sleeping passenger, lifts his body, and puts it in a steamer trunk. Next, you see the ocean liner docked and two men, an English and Egyptian man in a heated discussion that ends with verbal threats, followed by an older English man telling a handsome stevedore to be careful with his steamer trunk (the trunk we saw earlier!).

One week later, we see a scene at a train station with a concerned father saying goodbye to his daughter, telling her to be careful. That daughter is you, Laura Bow!

Laura’s back in her second (and sadly the last) instalment of the Laura Bow series, The Dagger of Amon Ra. Since we last left her, she has graduated from New Orleans and she is ready to make her mark on the world to become a reporter – and what better place than New York City?!

Upon her arrival in The Big Apple, Laura, partly due to her naïve nature and small town mentality, is first robbed when she carelessly sets down her suitcase only to have someone walk off with it, and then mugged when she stops to give a man some money and he takes her whole wallet. Welcome to the New York experience, Laura!

Although most people would take this as a sign of defeat, Laura does not. Rather, she takes on a chipper approach to the problem, stating, “I’m not going to let a little bad luck ruin my day. Hello New York, Laura Bow has arrived!”

Somehow, she arrives at the New York Daily Register News Tribune (known simply as The Trib) without being killed, where she has an interview with Sam Augustini, the owner of the paper. In the 1920s, the newspapers were run on a men-only policy, so Laura is the only woman there. There isn't even a bathroom for her.

Not only does Laura need to prove to Sam that she can make it, but she has to prove to herself along with the male-dominated newspaper that she can do it. Besides, her job was more or less given to her since her father and Sam go way back; she needs to prove she deserves this opportunity.

Her first assignment is to cover the burglary of the Dagger of Amon Ra, a priceless Egyptian artefact, at the Leyendecker Museum. If she doesn't get her story by 3 p.m. tomorrow, she is out of a job. Later, Laura ends up at a museum function where she is able to investigate the story more – that is, until she finds a body. After being questioned by the police, everyone is stuck at the museum due to the key being lost – oops! As the story unfolds, it is discovered that the killer is in the museum, as more people get killed off.

Laura really needs to be at the top of her game to avoid making it out of this one alive, because not knowing could lead to her end – and I don't mean the end of her newspaper career!

The Dagger of Amon Ra was produced and designed by Ken and Roberta Williams. It was released in 1992 after King's Quest VI and utilized a lot of the same technology, such as point-and-click interface and VGA. It was available on floppy disk and CD, with the added speech on the CD-Rom version.

Similar to its predecessor, The Dagger of Amon Ra unfolds in six acts, has many interesting characters with secrets and hidden agendas, concealed passageways, tons of mystery and intrigue, and a dose of humor. For people who love the 1920s, The Dagger of Amon Ra showcases more of that era’s feel with a speakeasy, flappers, and the notable music of the time period.

If you love The Dagger of Amon Ra, you will very much enjoy the Gabriel Knight 1: Sins of the Father for its southern charm (as the key character Gabriel is a native of New Orleans), ability to question suspects, and solving a case.