Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas

Gameplay

In this follow-up set in the late 1940s our hard-boiled hero Theodore 'Ace' Harding once again regains consciousness, this time in a bathroom at the Las Vegas Lucky Dice Hotel and Casino, with his memory intact. It soon becomes apparent that the Vegas mobster Tony Malone is missing a hundred grand ($112,000 to be exact) after the events that took place in Deja Vu (I): a Nightmare Comes True and that Ace has become the scapegoat; he is to return that money within a week "or else" he will die.

Deja Vu II takes place in a sparsely populated Las Vegas reminiscent of the movie Bugsy, with just a few locations to explore. However, the player has the option to take the train to other cities including Chicago (if the player attempts to go to Los Angeles, St. Louis, or New York prematurely, Ace is killed by one of the antagonists, Stogie Martin), where locations from Deja Vu I are revisited. Connections to this background story are well explained, and the game is completely playable by itself. In fact, there are situations where experience with Deja Vu I can be a disadvantage by creating certain expectations, for instance: the phone in the office at Joe's Bar is not openable in Deja Vu I, in Deja Vu II it contains an important item. To get to the office the player has to climb the fire ladder from the street, which is "too high" to reach in Deja Vu I.

There is also a police presence in Deja Vu II, though they are not after Ace directly as in the first game. Here, Ace can be arrested immediately following the player doing some unlawful act in a public location. Examples of offenses are disturbing the peace (by breaking glass or firing a gun) and indecent exposure (not wearing any clothes). An arrest causes the game to be lost as Stogie posts bail and executes the player in the desert.

Like the other MacVenture games there is a time limit, in this case the hitman Stogie, who periodically reminds Ace to "come up with the dough". Although no longer affected by drug-induced amnesia (as in Deja Vu I), the player still experiences memory flashbacks when encountering certain environments or photographs.

Together with its predecessor, Deja Vu II is considered by some fans to be the most difficult of these games and requires a lot of lateral thinking. As in Deja Vu I, the gameplay has a final part where evidence collected during the game has to be planted in the right places. This part is among the trickiest in the game, since the significance of each tidbit can be hard to assess. The player must leave evidence of Daniel Ventini's treachery on Tony Malone's desk in his office and leave proper evidence of Tony Malone's "awareness" on Daniel Ventini's desk in his secret office.

Reception

Computer Gaming World, reviewing the Macintosh version, gave the game a negative review, saying, "Linear text games with "Guess The Commands" are right down on the bottom of my list of boring ways to waste time." An example pointed out in the review is that the command "operate - flashlight" wields the flashlight as a weapon, while "Flashlight - operate - flashlight" is needed to turn it on. Compute! was more positive, stating that Deja Vu had "a quality plot and a clever interface".