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'