Eternam - Final Rating

written by Aperama

Eternam is probably one of the more divisive topics I've had to attack here on the blog. The 'win' post has made it very clear that there were people who actually found this game somewhat endearing and likeable in its own way. I decided to focus on the more negative aspects because every time I attempted to write about it up front, it simply read as gibberish and barely came out to more than a paragraph or two. Eternam is a big game where not a lot actually happens. There are plenty of jokes throughout the way, most of which don't necessarily tickle my personal funny bone. In contrast to most of the other games I've reviewed where I found personal interest, or could at least understand the target audience, this one just never worked for me. Given as much, I decided to spend the last few days researching reviews both of a time-specific nature (Zero, a UK magazine, has its highest review yet I can't find anything from it outside of the score so it's largely useless) and of a more up-to-date theme, not that a great many people have put together video reviews et al of it.

This is, just as a reminder, what happens after a train almost runs you over

Eternam - Whoops, Outta Budget! (Won!)

written by Aperama

 

The reward is a wonky closeup of our 'helper' – they really love to zoom in!

The pain is finally over! I no longer have to worry about having to load up Eternam. I swear my computer has been quietly weeping over running it up! The music has been extremely lacklustre when it has actually existed, the graphics are weird more than endearing.. there's just pretty consistently nothing to look forward to. The game's consistent lack of logic is enough to make me want to cry most of the time. But it's over! You guys don't all have to skim through my posts of hate-filled ranting any longer – it's over! The worst thing is that the game ends on not just a cliffhanger, but an abrupt one. Much like the last French game which I played for the blog, B.A.T., I ran into a game which promised far more than it was ever going to be capable of fulfilling, desperately struggled to fit in what it actually had and then ended with little more than a 'The End!' screen. There again, at least Eternam doesn't have a sequel...

The full view of Eternam. The map does not match the overland – 'Sholda' is black and desolate

The 'Dragoons' are good fun, at least

Eternam - Through the Stargate

written by Aperama

I'm definitely regretting extending my last play post at this point. See, my previous post was spent running around making useless conversation with dozens upon dozens of bad spoof characters to pop culture. It generally involved too much insanity to actually be swallowed in one sitting. Inversely, this time around was the new island of 'Paw' – or as I thought of it mentally, 'Egypt-land'. The parallels to Westworld would be far cleaner in this instance were the game just slightly better grounded in anything – reality would be nice, but I'd even settle for something as steady as pudding at this rate. There are a total of six NPCs within this island, counting the genie who can trick you into a bottle and the Japanese photographer (stereotypes, ha ha!) who will then save you from it if you make the mistake of taking his offer of 'all of the genie's power'. It's as though they ran out of ideas for characters to speak to, and just figured 'eh, we'll put all of the game's puzzles here instead'.

Welcome to the 'giant tomb'

Eternam - Sunshine of the Spotted Mind

written by Aperama

Eternam is getting to the point where I repeatedly ask myself a simple question: 'why?' The problem is the direction of this query. At first, it was 'why would the developer do this'. This is actually a fairly common question as I look into games, particularly with a critical eye turned towards things given the relative age of the games we're playing here. Using the 'latest technology' at the time is often the explanation for a relative drop in quality (e.g. the FMV revolution to truly kick in some time soon on this blog). I'm past asking that question, as the answer to that is simply not one I have the capability to understand. I don't operate on that 'either crazy or genius' level and likely never will. The question I'm now asking is 'why am I even playing this?' Even with the impetus to complete the game for the blog, I'm struggling heavily with that question. The other bad games I've played here have at least had the saving grace of being short – this feels like it's gone on forever already! There are things that make you appreciate other, finer things. One might read Hamlet and find that they're encouraged to watch it as a live play, making their appreciation for the artistry of the performers that greater. Eternam on the other hand makes me long to read Twilight for its incredibly deep and emotionally strong female protagonist.

It is, after all, a game that has us watched by our robotic overlords

Eternam - Parlez vous francais?

written by Aperama

I've probably spent more time ragging on France and its bizarre adventure game design choices than I'm probably allowed without becoming known as an enemy of the state. I mean, I live an awful distance from France anyhow, so I could probably continue with impunity, but that's not to say that I should continue to blithely fire away for no good reason. Eternam has provided some laughs. I can't deny it, there's been an occasional snort here and there. The game has so many flaws that they're just not worth the laughs, though. When I was (far too young to be playing) Leisure Suit Larry 3, I found the same issue that could easily have dogged my progress in this game. See, not only does this game have its bizarre first person map issues, but in the more traditional 'adventure game' pieces of the game, it's very easy to fail in finding exits from rooms.

On the main map, we're playing Space Invaders..

Where here, I have to ignore no less than three obvious exits which.. aren't

Eternam - Oh Deer...

written by Aperama

Alright. This is a game that I now have to try and approach a touch more seriously, given how poorly it apparently comes across when joked about. Admittedly, my jokes weren't exactly up to par and were largely just a gimmick to make this feel more readable, but this game. This game. I would ask you all to realise that I am being completely direct when I state that in this previous hour and a half playing, I was given impossible directions (follow a path by direction when no sense of direction is given), walked on water with no clue as to whether or not I was moving in the correct direction in doing so (as most water drowns you instantly), and was then promptly sentenced to death for stepping on a lawn. Again, no hyperbole. This is simply what happened.

Vive le freaking France

Eternam - When You Can Count Your Money, You Ain't Got None!

written by Aperama

I'm not gonna lie – this game is a struggle. Staring at an empty DOSbox prompt with “DRIVE:\ETERNAM\>” is something I'm almost frightened to admit to. Eternam hasn't quite given me PTSD, but boy does it feel like it is capable of as much. The cardinal sin is that the game isn't so much weird as incomprehensible. I understand every word that is in front of me, but it just doesn't come up into coherent sentences. This section was almost something I'd call easy, but was made difficult by what I would imagine is partially an issue of translation issues and partially of desperate attempts for humour which are largely just inane.

As promised, a random skull to start the day

Eternam - Missed It By That Much

written by Aperama

I've literally been staring at a blank page for the last three days having played Eternam. Maybe it's been a week. Or a month. I really can't tell any more. (Technically, I had to stop writing for a month and a half after starting this, but that sentence was already written and is still true – I only have a point of reference because the time is saved on my computer.) Basically, there's the 'art' side of my brain which understands what I've just taken in – it's a game that manages to use surrealism to a point that even Salvador Dali would be impressed. There's the 'comedy' side of my brain which sees the fun of what the creators of this game were out for – there's lots of fourth wall breaking and there's clearly no place that isn't worth going for the sake of a joke. But this game takes those two facts and then forgets what it really needs to be a good game – coherence. Super Mario Brothers explains itself without ever needing to have a lengthy manual or tutorial. You can't go left (the screen ends) but the screen to the right moves. You get killed by more or less anything, so you jump around things, and then eventually land on something by accident to learn that they die when you jump on them. This game lets you kill the first three characters you meet to no obvious negative reaction. I decided not to just because I don't want to get through and find that there's a need to keep them alive. I literally don't know if there is a function behind the option to kill things, and have been given no reason to suspect there is. Vive le France!

That's not to say that the characters don't deserve being murdered with laser beams.
I literally quit after this scene, the first person you talk to in the entire game.
I had to close it. I was worried that my computer would explode.

Game 77: Eternam (1992) - Introduction

written by Aperama

Mixed Up Fairy Tales - Final Rating

Written by Aperama

Mixed Up Fairy Tales is a game I had quite a bit of fun with. Admittedly, I did augment my experience somewhat by using it as an introduction for my far-too young daughter to watch an adventure game being played, but that's not to say I couldn't have had fun with it solo. The issue with the game, even if I'm to ignore the fact that it was designed for a younger audience and the other things that will doubtlessly be explored in the actual rating, was the way it was designed for 'classroom' play. This is to say that I feel the relatively simple design may have had a double purpose (and I invite Corey to dispute or confirm as necessary). If you have a game that really has lots of finicky interactions, you're going to have a single player hogging the computer for a huge degree of time. Sure, there's still the definite sense of exploration in this game, but there's always the option to go back to Bookwyrm for puzzle solutions and there's never a puzzle that requires more than one item to solve. Whilst this would no doubt infuriate a veteran adventure gamer in their twenties who spent large amounts on this game (I tried to get an RRP for its release but couldn't find one), it'd be considered a boon to a game that an entire classroom of youths would want to get through. This before they were giving iPads to individual kids as they started school, anyhow.

The game design lends itself to being played by lots of different people, not so much the same person/family over and over again

Mixed Up Fairy Tales - Malia in Wonderland (Won!)

Written by Aperama

I know – one play post and we're already to the end. This is not a typo or a trick. Unfortunately, the truth is that this game is simply.. well, simple. It's not like I didn't enjoy it! I enjoyed reading Game of Thrones, but I don't need every novel to go several hundred pages. That said, I can't really pad it further I feel. Outside perhaps of giving more detailed synopses of the stories contained than the games actually give, as they're all told from the first person of an outsider in-game? This makes it far more interactive to a player, yet does remove certain intricacies that we can gain from having either multiple points of view or a tale being told from afar. When you're the one getting the magic beans, unless there's something noteworthy which happens during the journey to do so, there's really not a lot to say about Jack's quest up the beanstalk. Why? Because Jack is still the one climbing, not the player. King's Quest 1 takes the opposite approach, knocking out Jack and putting you in his shoes, where this is very much about the story of origin first.

Mixed Up Fairy Tales - Book 'em, Wyrm-o

written by Aperama

A rooster gives my first impressions of the game

It's fair to say that there really hasn't been another game quite like this on the blog as yet. It's not as though I consider it a bad game – hell, I am fairly sure that I would have far preferred it to the 'Wheel of Fortune' clones et al that littered my school computers before my brother managed to trick the school staff into using our copy of Monkey Island on them (er, not that this happened naturally because piracy is bad) but in truth, all of the other games we've reviewed aimed at an 'easier playthrough' or a 'younger audience' really aren't quite on the same level as this one. This game is very much a First Steps to Adventure-styled title, not something that really offers much for an older audience. Amongst the things which simplify it are a system with no real inventory (the panel for inventory says 'your hands are empty' but the only things I have been able to 'hold' have actually been people/animals following me), lots of big text, big sprites that really show everything off in the game openly – you see a frog and using the hand icon on the frog makes it jump, for instance – I will not say using the 'do' icon on the frog, as that is just a bit frightening – meaning that where there have been other titles that perhaps lean upon the 'edutainment' side of things.. we're really into a game that is more an 'experience' than it is a game with puzzles that culminate together to a pleasant outcome. That said, I've been playing it with my toddler on my lap / narrating it throughout, and that feels like a happy medium – she's very much interested in the graphics and music and enjoys the attention of having something read to her like a 'story book'.

Game 74: Mixed Up Fairy Tales - Introduction (1992)

written by Aperama

Mixed Up Fairy Tales is a Sierra game, so it's as good a place as any for us to start 1992 as any! That said, it's definitely not the game that most would associate with 1992. In fact, I'd not actually realised that I was signing up for Mixed Up Fairy Tales, a Lori Ann Cole designed venture programmed by (what I affectionately think of as) our own Corey Cole, but had rather expected it to be Mixed Up Mother Goose. Bizarrely, Mixed Up Mother Goose never actually hit The Adventure Gamer in spite of being almost Accepted and was really the initial reason Trickster introduced the term 'borderline'. At the time, Zenic, Canageek and Ilmari were all pretty dubious and Zenic even went so far as to suggest that 'when one of Trickster's kids grow up, they can play Mixed Up Mother Goose and give it a simple thumbs up or thumbs down'. We're now into the land beyond Trickster, where Mixed Up Mother Goose could have just as easily have been played by an infant and reviewed summarily. Fortunately, I happen to have one handy – my daughter is now 9 months old! We all know kids are growing up faster these days with tablets and smart phones, so it's clear she's more or less ready. (I'll possibly do the writeup, and the actual use of the mouse, and the play decisions, but she will hold executive veto of blabbing and loud noises.)

Heart of China - Final Rating

Before I begin with the rating work, I'd like to say that my investigative work has proven that.. well, there wasn't actually a lot more to Heart of China. What they managed to put together at Dynamix was, pun not intended, a dynamic interactive movie. Reading the manual the first time, I more or less thought that they were trying to put together a game that had so many gameplay elements it might as well have shot for the stars.. and included some intergalactic travel while they were there. And sure enough, they did. What happened as a result of this is they put together something far too grandiose and couldn't follow through properly, so the only real 'gameplay changes' are of the 'go back and try again' variety, for the most part. Taking one path over another makes no particular difference, though it does seem as though the path I took was the only one that gave the 'best ending', with the rest all taking too long to have Eugene Lomax be willing to pay the full amount and as such not giving the 'Chi survived actually!' end. They clearly put heaps and heaps of work in, though, and this is shown nowhere better than the auxiliary supplements that come with the game.

They also give a clue as to what Almira, the 'crazy plant lady', is actually up to

Heart of China - WON!

Written by Aperama

Heart of China is finally over! Well, I say finally – it feels like it only just started. It's pretty fair to say that I do feel a little bit like I was expecting more – but at the same time, the rather obscenely short playtime really allows the little things to stand out, good and bad. I imagine that if this were a game I'd put real money into, I might have replayed the silly tank minigame or the fight at the end a little more, perhaps? But I won't waste any more time with these thoughts. There's heaps for me to get through (not enough for two posts but almost too much for one) so straight to it!

Heart of China - Curse of the Ninja!

Written by Aperama

First, I'd just like to apologise to everyone. I'm not going to make any real excuses or do anything more than just explain – ninjas attacked my computer. Oh, sure, it was a 'fixable' thing, but it was undoubtedly the work of black-clad people who broke into my house mid-way through the night. Smoke arose from my computer and it died – and we all know what ninjas do with smoke, after all. It's been so long since I got to talk about this game that you've probably all forgotten about it – so my apologies. Ninjas. What can you do?

Okay! I get the picture! Ninjas 'didn't' kill my computer! No problems, Sir!

Anyhow. For those who weren't paying attention last time around...

We even get a postcard!

I'm at a bit of an impasse which is rare for me in my time here on the Adventure Gamer – I had to stop because I didn't feel I'd be able to get enough information down in the space of a post, instead of wanting a break from the game. Heart of China is really quite fun! Dynamix is borderline amazing at managing to take a whole bunch of small things that really could irk (there are so many stereotyped characters and iffy dialogue spots that it would be out and out considered racist these days I feel) and still coming out with something that feels a bit more than the sum of its parts. Last I left the bunch of you, Lucky, Kate and Chi were all piled onto a plane and deciding whether they should try to rush back to Hong Kong and E.A. Lomax's safe arms.. or if, y'know, they should actually cure Kate of the poisonous cobra bite that was completely Lucky's fault.. or Chi's for not being willing to fight a cobra. Or even Li Deng's – why on Earth he thought 'surrounded by a pit of cobras' was a reasonable way of holding a hostage...

Heart of China - Tanks for the Menageries!

Written by Aperama

Like always, Jake's problems involve planes and flying money

It's probably fair to say that my experience with Heart of China is 'confused'. It's not that I'm not enjoying myself – no, the game is definitely fun in and of itself – there's a certain something about it that does make it fun. But boy, it is on the 'bizarre' side of things. We left off with the cutaway to Kate Lomax being dressed up as an Oriental who.. uhm.. lady of the night. The game immediately moves to the time-honoured 'Indiana Jones line' form of transport on a little map. I nearly thought that there was actually some degree of choice allowed here, but I was very wrong – no matter where you click, Lucky begins to make his Yankee Doodle fly away towards the fortress of Chengdu where Kate is being held hostage. Makes sense, I suppose. The little 'flying dollar bill' thing really felt like it belonged in, I don't know.. a different game of some sort? But I can handle it. Why the game then offers dozens of false landing points and only allows one, though, I am not too certain of – it may well be for remembering the lay of the land later in a tank chase. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Heart of China - Immigration issues

Written by Aperama

Heart of China is already striking me as though it is a game that really, really wanted to do something amazing and unique, and probably found itself struggling a little with the effort of doing it 'all'. It's not that I'm not enjoying myself, but I've already found a few puzzles in the opening little area that have definitely made me shrug my head in spite of them being undeniably solvable. The game starts in Hong Kong, with Lucky Jake Masters (he insists that his name is simply Lucky, with several characters already having belittled him for that little idiosyncrasy in the little section I've played) having just freshly been told by Eugene Adolphus Lomax (E.A.) that he needs to go and rescue his daughter. Well, perhaps I come slightly ahead of myself here – the game actually starts with a little cinematic, and an incredibly long credits sequence over Lucky's flapping aviator's scarf blowing in the distance. The cinematic I feel is best summed up in a short GIF:

I particularly like the evil man's 'glint'..

Game 70: Heart of China (1991) - Introduction

Written by Aperama

Heart of China – 1991's most 'under the radar' adventure game for me

This is probably a first for me here at the Adventure Gamer – an exciting game that prior to this blog I'd never really heard of, but now I'm legitimately excited to get started in on (Countdown had me cautiously optimistic – this is full­blown finger­quivering anticipation!) Heart of China is the third adventure game created by Dynamix. If you've read Joe's work on Willy Beamish (or would like to follow that to Ilmari's post on Rise of the Dragon), you'd know that Dynamix is essentially Sierra­lite – a company best known for simulators that was bought out during the late eighties-­early nineties and decided that this change meant that they ought to start producing adventure games. This company will see quite a few more releases to be covered on this blog (with a lot of ex-Sierra employees 'jumping ship' later on – Jim Walls went from creating 'Police Quest' to 'Blue Force'.. a game about.. motorbike cops. Huge leap, as I'm sure you can tell.) This game has a few interesting quirks to it, definitely, and just from gathering information I can already begin to form an opinion of what I'm in for. But first? A little bit about the name at the dead top of the manual.. Jeff Tunnell.






Or as you all probably better know him – 'the guy who made The Incredible Machine'

Les Manley in: Lost in L.A. - Final Rating!

written by Aperama

A harkening back to the best part of the game – the down-right impressive Boris Vallejo box art

Les Manley was a terrible game. Les Manley 2? I'm honestly not sure. The game had issues that weren't actually the same as the first game, so that's definitely to be considered a plus. I read over Trickster's comments as to the problems he found with Search for the King – sure, there were more than enough of them in their own right, but this game manages to skirt around them for the most part. The puzzles were illogical, but rarely actually 'difficult' – the game was very big on hand-holding towards the more difficult set of puzzles anyhow, so it passes the 'sequel' test there. The graphics are 'different' – not better or worse, just 'different'. In fact, I'd struggle to give Lost in L.A. any worse points than Search for the King in anything – but that's exactly why I'm not going to be comparing directly. Why, you ask? Well, the reasons here to my mind are two fold. Firstly, this game has technology to its credit that Search for the King couldn't dream of. The 'digitised actors' inserted into the game were always going to look better than the comparative chicken scritch of Les Manley 1 and some of its less than appealing screens. The target audience might be the same, but this feels more like a game where they've actually tried to target to that 'adolescent teenage boy' market a touch better than simply making a game that felt to be the clone of Leisure Suit Larry which Les is oft accused of being. Secondly? I'm a different person, and things affect me differently to Trickster. I have a particular (perhaps somewhat odd) feel that when puzzles have a certain range of feasibility they'll frustrate me – something where I feel like I could have gotten it without help had they explained things better hits me way harder than 'touch the lizard, win the game' on a personal level. I'd have asked for assistance if not for clicking like a crazy person over the screen at one point, and that just drives me bonkers on a very deep level. So without further adieu..