I’ve always been rather partial to the Mel Brooks/Gene Wilder/Peter Boyle version. 
Robert Rothman
I was rather hoping prior knowledge wouldn’t be required on this one, and that it might even be capable of unpicking certain starting assumptions. But the shadow that Choose Your Own… casts seems to be a pretty long one. (The review seems, to me, to say “I hate CYOA, and this isn’t even a CYOA”.
jon
Yeah, there definitely seemed to be some starting assumptions about what interaction is for, and also how one ought to interact with a previous work; one thing that was missing was the idea that an interactive version of Frankenstein is, in a sense, as much its own independent work of art as a movie of Frankenstein would be, or an oil painting of the monster; and that it needn’t (and probably can’t) but understood purely as a critical apparatus on the original piece. (Faber and Faber’s The Waste Land does that, and does it well, but it’s a different kind of project and the reviewer here doesn’t seem to distinguish at all.)
One would like to think that a thoughtful critic who put some time into the project might unpick some of these things herself even without much background, but – well, even good reviewers strike out some of the time. Until I see deeper, more thorough feedback on Frankenstein, I wouldn’t even go so far as to conclude that it fails as outreach-for-interactive-story. It just happens not to have gotten through to this particular person.
On the flip-side, there’s now this:
independent.co.uk/arts-enter … 69147.html
in the Independent, which is quite a bit more positive…!
jon
Wow, you can say that again Jon. “Monster of a Hit” indeed. That’s fabulous news. If it ever comes out on Kindle or Android I’ll be sure to grab it.
Excellent! It’s great that this review comes out so early and was taken so seriously by the Independent (in stark contrast to the Guardian’s treatment)–I mean, there’s even an expert commentator, just as if the Inklestein were a new scientific discovery… I hope this is just the first of many more!
I just realized that Emily’s comment
may have been a response to my earlier post (it also may not have been). For the record, I definitely don’t at all think that Frankenstein fails as interactive fiction or as outreach for same–quite the contrary! I’ve read through it multiple times and I think it’s a great piece of work. I was just concerned that, because its interaction model is not standard CYOA, it can potentially be brushed off from two sides: fusty keep-your-hands-off-my-literature types (like the Guardian guy), and folks who thought that they were getting a game–e.g., a Fighting Fantasy style romp. The Independent article shows that there definitely are reviewers who can appreciate the thing on its own terms. (I have no doubt that there are readers who will approach Frankenstein on its own terms, but many will need reviewers to help them find it in the first place!)