Publisher: Tsunami
Developer: Tsunami
Year: 1995
Platform: Windows, DVD Players
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Syberia
Publisher: Microids
Developer: Microids
Year: 2002
Platform: Windows, XBox, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS
Labelled as the adventure game of the year for 2002, many accolades were given to this unique adventure and some have called it the best adventure ever. While I have no strong feelings about that (the list of great adventure games in the early aughts are pretty slim), I fear Syberia has been given legendary status in the gaming community for the wrong reasons.
Cruise For a Corpse
Publisher: Erbe Software
Developer: Delphine Software
Year: 1991
Platform: DOS, Amiga, Atari ST
A decent mystery wrapped up in sloppy game design, the only corpse to be cruised for is the shell of a game that’s been left rotting on the promenade. On board a cruise, invited by the wealthy owner, you’re soon knocked out cold after coming upon the dead owner’s body. When you wake up you have the rest of the day to interview all of the suspects (read: everyone on board) and pin the murderer.
Because there are so few positives, let’s start with those. Delphine Software introduced their vector graphic engine that became popular in the Alone In The Dark series. While it is impressive, it is unnecessary (especially in an adventure), and the more polished sprite-based artwork of the time would have been sufficient. Some cut scenes add good flavor to the story. The dialogue is fairly banal, but it is translated from French so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt. The plot itself is also fairly deep, with each suspect having a motive. At the end of the game, you have to accuse the perp, with the ending changing based on who you pick (with one ideal ending, of course).
The game itself has a Gabriel Knight time system, with the clock advancing every time you do something important. This is fine, and actually a system that I prefer, as I become frustrated when I miss a clue because I didn’t happen to be in the right place at the right time. However, the logic the game uses to advance the clock is ridiculous beyond compare. For example, you can ask a lady about a topic at 2:00 in the afternoon and nothing happens. But talk to her about the exact same thing a half hour later and the clock advances. Perhaps even worse, every time the clock advances, characters and items get distributed seemingly at random throughout the ship. Check that drawer and 10:00 and there’s nothing in it. Go back to that drawer at 12:30 and you’ll find a key item you need. Why is that item now in the drawer when it wasn’t before? That’s an even greater mystery than the whodunit.
What these failures in logic amount to is tedious and aimless wandering throughout the ship, ruining continuity and interest in the story. Thankfully, you can bring up a map of the ship to warp to any (unlocked) place you like, but that’s little consolation. Even playing with a walkthrough did little to relieve the boredom of this meandering investigation. Unless you have completely run out of games to play, don’t touch this corpse with a ten foot pole.
Runaway: A Road Adventure
Publisher: Dinamic Multimedia
Developer: Pendulo Studios
Year: 2001
Platform: Windows, iOS
I think I am going to write a review now of the game Runaway: A Road Adventure. Yes! That is what I am going to do. I’ll put my fingers on the keys and type out words that describe my feelings about this game! For starters, I will tell you about the plot. Runaway was originally developed in Spain, by guys who obviously like Tim Schafer’s work on Full Throttle. I also liked Tim Schafer’s work on Full Throttle. This game emulates that one in style and graphics. However, what this game has is a stripper! Yes, a real live one, who escapes from the mob after watching her father get killed. However, during her escape, she gets hit by a car driven by Brian, a college student on his way to Berkeley. After helping her escape the hospital, she convinces him to let her tag along and solve a mystery as to why her father was killed. Sounds like fun, don’t ya think?
I really liked the concept of this game to begin with. And I’ll tell you why I liked the concept. There’s a nerdy college student, a stripper, and the mob. Though, I probably already told you that, how could this game not be great with that formula? You control Brian (that’s the main character played by you), and you get to pick up lots of random items and use them to solve puzzles! However, I didn’t like the puzzles. I’ll tell you why I didn’t like the puzzles. There are many objects very hard to find, so you spend a lot of time searching pixels instead of solving anything. Also, sometimes Brian will (realistically) not pick up an item until he has a use for it. But then sometimes, he will just pick up a random item (like a poker) hoping he can use it sometime later. I will tell you one more reason why I didn’t like the puzzles. Brian will often have an item that would easily solve a particular problem he is having, but when he tries to use that item, he is not able to. Not only that, a reason isn’t given! So Brian must find the really bizarre solution to the problem that involves tricks MacGyver wouldn’t even try. Wow, who would think one could write so much about puzzles!
The stripper–by the way her name is Gina–is cute and nice, but unfortunately, I didn’t like the way she is used in the game. I bet you want to know why, too. I didn’t like the way she is used in the game because she never actually does anything except get in trouble or get injured. So what I am trying to say is that she was just eye candy, a plot device to make the game more appealing. And, if I’m being perfectly honest, she didn’t really have that great of a personality. So that is what I think about Gina.
I will tell you one thing I did like about the game, and that is the cut scenes. I really liked the cut scenes because the graphics were nice and the underlying plot was kind of fun. But that’s all I have to say about the cut scenes.
Finally, I should summarize my feelings about Runaway. So, to summarize, I will tell you that an interesting plot is made boring by uneven and mostly uninteresting puzzles along with uneven and mostly poor acting. Those are the feelings I have about this game, so you can probably guess that I will not be rushing out to play the sequel any time soon! Well, that was fun writing that review. I sure hope you enjoyed it too!
Disclaimer: The entire review was written exactly the way Brian talks, which may be the primary reason I loathe this game. Unfortunately, I don’t know whether to blame the original script writers or the translators. Amazingly, I seem to be one of the few people who feels this way, as this game is generally held in high regard.
The Lurking Horror
Publisher: Infocom
Developer: Infocom
Year: 1987
Platform: Every computer ever and now smartphones
Review: One of Infocom’s most overrated titles, The Lurking Horror is essentially the company’s only foray into the horror genre. Unfortunately, it feels more like a Zorkian dungeon crawl then an atmospheric mystery (not surprising given it was written by Zork’s author). While there are some creepy parts to this college campus caper, it is mostly a disjointed puzzlefest with a smattering of Cthulhu mythos. But what really sent my annoyance through the stratosphere was a hunger daemon, illogical walking dead situations, and unrealistic inventory restrictions. Coupling that with NPCs that aren’t fleshed out and a rather abrupt and unsatisfying ending, I can’t really recommend this to those looking for a good fright.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity
Publisher: Spectrum Holobyte
Developer: Spectrum Holobyte
Year: 1995
Platform: DOS; Macintosh
With characters, actors, visuals, and sounds straight from one of my favorite television shows, I figured this game would have a hard time displeasing me. But it missed on all cylinders, and probably needs a new warp drive to boot.
In A Final Unity, you find the Enterprise unwillingly involved in a Garidian civil war and later in a race with the Garidians and Romulans to discover the power behind the mythological Unity Device. Several missions await, and on the way you run into Ferengi, Klingons, Vulcans, and a few new alien species. The plot is dished out slowly and effectively in gameplay and cut scenes, culminating in a satisfying end game reminiscent of Judgement Rites.
Sadly, the plot is the only redeeming quality of the game outside from what the show itself brought to the table. The ship interface is downright maddening. The battle station and engineering are simultaneously slow and confusing, let alone uninteresting. While you can leave the controls up to Worf and La Forge, respectively, I was left yearning for the system in the Interplay games, which says a lot. Navigation is damn near impossible when the game doesn’t automatically set the course and speed for you. You’re given a three-dimensional view of space, and discerning between sectors, neutral zones, and nebulae is a puzzle in itself. Finally, Starfleet gives many vague orders that are misleading at times. Sometimes, the plot advances simply by waiting for an indefinite period of time, with little clue that waiting, is in fact, what advances the game.
If that were all, I could forgive this section of the game. But away team missions are not much better. You can take any member of the crew on your away teams, and who you take matters very little, most of the time. Each crew member is given a ton of generic responses to every possible action and are not always in character. Who you control on the away mission is also usually irrelevant, and more or less is up to whose voice you’d rather hear at that moment. And while there are some conversation trees, there are rarely consequences for saying the wrong things until the end game, where you must control Picard. The puzzles themselves are fine, with some creative and original ideas and some clunkers. Regardless, some of the puzzles simply involve, again, too much waiting.
Yet, all of these faults pale in comparison to the most glaring atrocity in A Final Unity. The series was a veritable joy to watch week in and week out for two reasons. The first one, intelligent and engaging stories, is present. But there was hardly an episode of TNG where I wasn’t laughing out loud on several occasions. There was a sense of humour underlining nearly every story, and sadly, there is absolutely nothing worthy of a laugh, or even a smile, in this game. Riker makes no mention of his exploits with women. Data doesn’t ramble off his thesaurus nor makes any social faux-paus. Worf doesn’t even get to say, “Klingons do not play video games!” In short, the characters, while having the voices of their original actors, had none of the charm or personality. A significant reason for my enjoyment of 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites was how well the writers embodied the characters and integrated them into the story. The rivalry between Bones and McCoy was there, as well as Scottie’s pleas in vain about the damage to engineering. And William Shatner’s overacting was funny enough on its own accord. I was hoping that perhaps Wesley Crusher could make an appearance so Picard could belt out, “Get the boy off my bridge!” But, alas.
If you are a hard-core fan of Star Trek, you will probably enjoy this game, at least to some degree. But I found this adventure, despite the few positives, an insult to the fans.
10 More Terrible Adventure Games (Non-Sierra Edition)
December’s proving to be especially busy so I’m going to go simple and throw up some reviews I had on my old site. Sierra certainly didn’t have a monopoly on awful games; they just had a lot of the more expensively produced ones. Over the next two weeks you can get a little taste of ten horrific games I sat all the way through so you don’t have to.
Then after that Death By Troggles will be taking the rest of the year off and hopefully come back with a fresh new site design!
Director Series Wrap-Up
I enjoyed this exercise, if nothing else because I was able to educate myself on some directors I was only vaguely aware of, and discover movies by directors I like. I don’t have any statistics for you today, but if you’re so inclined, give me your thoughts and feedback. Maybe drop down a list of your top five directors? Did I miss a director you love? I’ve loved what I’ve seen from Sidney Lumet, but I haven’t seen much.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by. News about what’s coming up to come this weekend!
Every Subtitled Film I’ve Seen
I know this doesn’t really fit in with my theme about directors, but there’s at least one director here I’ve seen three movies from, so I figured while I was honoring him I’d throw in the embarrassingly short list of other foreign films. Recommendations, please!
Three Colors: Blue
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Language: French
The French flag has three colors that stand for liberty (blue), equality (white), and fraternity (red). The following three movies address modern French society focusing on each of these ideals. Each movie is also washed over in their responding color. As for Blue, Juliette Binoche shines in this overbearingly depressing (but surprisingly hopeful) movie about how she copes with the death of her husband and son. The use of music and color is my favorite of the three movies.
Grade: A-
Three Colors: White
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Language: Polish
As opposed to the other two movies, White is primarily a comedy, albeit with strong dramatic elements as well. A Frenchmen connects with a Polish immigrant whose wife wants to divorce him because of poor performance in bed. Critically considered the weaker of the three films but it’s easily my favorite. Not only was I laughing quite a bit, I also found it quite touching and spirit-lifting.
Grade: A
Three Colors: Red
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Language: French
A model discovers her neighbor, a judge, taps into other people’s phone calls purely for his own amusement. Generally considered to the best of the series and it holds a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. My least favorite, however, as while it’s exceptionally crafted and splendidly interweaves characters from all the movies, I found I was unable to connect with it emotionally like the other two.
Grade: B+
[Rec]
Director: Jaume Balaguero, Paco Plaza
Language: Spanish
Short, powerful horror movie for those who can deal with shaky camera. A reporter goes on a ride-along with the fire department and while on a call to an apartment to help a sick lady, winds up quarantined along with the firemen. Remade as Quarantine in America, though the original is better acted and thus more intense.
Grade: A-
Il Mare
Director: Hyun-seung Lee
Language: Korean
A man moves into his new place and finds a letter in his mailbox asking him to forward mail to the previous owner. He soon learns that he and this woman are separated by two years in the time continuum but are able to communicate through the mailbox. Fun premise, but ends up be very predictable and schmaltzy. Well-shot. I almost prefer the American remake with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Almost.
Grade: C
Rashomon
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese
Brilliant concept, as we witness a horrific crime from three different perspectives of those involved. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into it. I’m not sure if it’s a cultural thing, an era thing, or just a personal thing, but despite being very intrigued, I was more or less bored out of my skull from start to finish. Certainly can’t complain about the acting or the camera work, though.
Grade: C
Seven Samurai
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese
A poor village under attack by bandits hires seven samurai to help defend themselves. It’s long, epic in scope, and takes a little bit of patience to get into. But Kurosawa unravels powerful characters, emotionally intense battle scenes, and stunning cinematography.
Grade: A
After Life
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Language: Japanese
After people die, they spend a week with counselors who will help them recreate one memory from their life that get to relive for eternity. Filmed sort of like a documentary. Slow at times, and not as insightful into the human spirit as I would have hoped, but amusing and occasionally poignant. Never feels trite.
Grade: B-
Timecrimes
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Language: Spanish
A man accidentally gets into a time machine and goes back one hour. The consequences of such a short time jump soon become disastrous as he soon finds out. Intriguing, well-acted, and never insults the viewer. Easily my second favorite time travel movie after Back to the Future.
Grade: B+
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Language: Spanish
A women gets terminal cancer and is left by her husband, so she throws caution to the wind and embarks on a journey of self-discovery, picking up two teenage boys along the way, just for fun. That premise doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enjoyable and heartwarming. A little sexy, a little funny. Beautiful cinematography. Not sure if it was just our copy, but the subtitles were in yellow, and being as this was shot in Mexico, that color often was the same as the scenery itself, which made for some annoying moments that I had to quickly rush to the screen to read what was being said.
Grade: B+
Pan’s Labyrinth
Director: Guilleromo del Toro
Language: Spanish
A beautiful and dark fantasy movie about a girl in 1944 fascist Spain who is sent to live with her stepfather, a captain in the army and kind of a monster. She meets a fairy and a faun who send her on a gruesome quest to prove her royalty and be reconnected with her father, the real king. I don’t typically like fantasy, but I found this extraordinarily moving.
Grade: A-
The Lives of Others
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Language: German
We follow an interrogator for the East German police who is sent to spy on a playwright who is suspected of writing anti-East German scripts. In the beginning, he’s cold and calculated, but slowly begins to become disillusioned with his job and his country as he spies on the playwright. The most moved I have ever been while watching a movie. Donnersmarck hits all the right notes, gets an exceptional performance out of Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, and leaves us with an absolute perfect ending. My second favorite movie. Flawless.
Grade: A+
Steven Spielberg
Possibly the most recognizable director in the world, Spielberg is certainly one of the best at making blockbuster movies really entertaining. He almost never goes for straight comedy, but his movies almost always have good laughs. Some of his worse movies have been sequels, suggesting he may have a weakness for resting on his laurels, though being okay with sequels gave us Last Crusade. He’s great at casting, not always finding the best actor, but almost always someone who fits the role. And since most of the roles in his movies don’t require significant character depth, it works. And while he’s not generally groundbreaking with camera techniques, he’s not afraid to take on really difficult projects with epic scope or heavy drama. He’s definitely earned his reputation.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park: Dumb, pointless sequel that does a terrible job of building off the first movie. I don’t know how much of that is on Spielberg vs. Michael Crichton, but I’m pretty sure this movie doesn’t need to exist. Love the scene in the field, though.
Grade: F
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial: I’m most definitely in the minority here, but in general I’m not a fan of movies that glorify children and make adults mean and/or stupid. Perhaps because of this I didn’t find it as moving as everyone else does. Some amusing scenes.
Grade: D-
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Somewhat enjoyable in the theater, but upon reflection is just really insulting, going for cheap and easy laughs while poorly developing every character. Spielberg’s inability or unwillingness to take control of this project and let George Lucas call all the shots really killed it. Spielberg liked Frank Darabont’s script. Ford liked Darabont’s script. Spielberg was quoted as saying he wanted no CGI. But Lucas likes David Koepp (who is decent, but also wrote Death Becomes Her) and Lucas likes CGI. In fact, this movie is responsible for the phrase “nuking the fridge”, usurping the similarly meaning “jumping the shark” from over thirty years earlier. It was probably never going to be as good as the hype, especially with the decision to cast Shia Lebouf and Sean Connery bowing out, but we’ll never know how good it could have been had Spielberg had full reins.
Grade: C-
Saving Private Ryan: The first half hour is brutal, gutsy filmmaking, which unfortunately activated serious PTSD symptoms for a lot of men who lived through D-Day. For people like me who barely know which end of a gun the bullet comes out, it was refreshing to get a honest depiction of war, even for a little while. The rest of the movie is a drama about Tom Hanks finding this private (Matt Damon) who has lost all his siblings and is being recalled home. It’s fine, but didn’t do much for me, especially with an ending that has Mr. Ryan asking a very poignant question to the audience, but before we can even mull it over, Ryan’s wife answers it for us. Gee, thanks for that.
Grade: C+
Catch Me If You Can: Based on a true story, we have Tom Hanks chasing another person, Leonardo DiCaprio, a young man who has made a career out of forging checks and his identity to stay one step ahead of law enforcement. Not terribly gripping, but a lot of fun. DiCaprio is perfect for this role and he nails it.
Grade: B-
Minority Report: Tom Cruise works for a futuristic law enforcement agency which has the ability to see murders before they happen, then intervene before the perpetrator has a chance to commit the crime. However, the perp still gets prosecuted as if he committed the crime anyway. This is all fine and dandy until Cruise gets seen murdering someone; of course, he can’t imagine he’d ever do so, and before he gets apprehended, goes on the lam, desperate to clear his name. Engaging premise and a lot of fun. Cruise is capable in the role. I wish it were more than just an action movie.
Grade: B-
Jurassic Park: Crichton’s famous book about a dinosaur park gone bad is pretty thrilling with occasional corniness and some plot holes that are easy to ignore considering the ride. Really tense in some parts, and convincing dinosaurs (other than, you know, the non-existent mutant raptors).
Grade: B
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Gets kind of a bad rap among the original Indy trilogy, though I hear less and less about that since Crystal Skull came out. Completely lacks depth and character development, but it is a prequel that visits Indiana Jones before he began to have feelings, so it’s not entirely unintentional. Casting his then wife as the heroine (Kate Capshaw) was a bad idea, as her sexy to annoying ratio is quite lopsided compared to Karen Allen, though the script is largely to blame for that as well. But the movie is still fun and has many action-packed scenes, which is kind of the point. Jonathan Ke-Quan does a great job as Short Round, and the special effects work is amazing. The final scene on the bridge is a fantastic example of creative film-making without the help of computers.
Grade: B
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: While I find the movie’s finale a little bit of a letdown, Richard Dreyfuss is simply masterful as the line worker who encounters a UFO and gets drawn into the wilderness to discover the truth. I haven’t seen this movie in about twenty years and I can still vividly remember those tones.
Grade: B
Jaws: While I found this a bit frightening as a kid thanks to the music and the shark, I find this even more haunting as an adult as I have a greater understanding of the isolation and emotional trauma these men experience. Dreyfuss is great again, as is Roy Scheider, but the knockout performance comes from Robert Shaw, who is probably scarier than the shark they’re hunting.
Grade: B+
Lincoln: A truly epic look into Lincoln the man and his motivations to end slavery, only briefly touching on the more famous historic events such as Gettysburg and his assassination. Daniel Day-Lewis is exceptional as Lincoln, and I found myself laughing way more than I thought I would. Watches more like a good history lesson than a good movie, but it’s a really good history lesson.
Grade: B+
Schindler’s List: Based on the life of Oskar Schindler who, while working for the Nazis, secretly rescued a bunch of Jews. One of the most emotionally powerful things I’ve ever seen, which is marred only by a completely fabricated Hollywood feel-good speech by Schindler at the end. Shot entirely in black and white and it works. Superb cast. Ralph Feinnes really stands out as one of the bad guys, and Ben Kingsley and Liam Neeson are great as well. Excellent touch at the end to have people who were personally rescued by Schindler honoring him at his grave.
Grade: A
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: A bit disjointed at times, feeling like they had a bunch of great ideas for scenes and just glued them together. But they work on their individual merits, despite how preposterous most of them are (an underground tomb in Venice!) The camerawork is really excellent, providing (along with John Williams) the thrills an adventure needs. But what really helps this movie is Sean Connery, who plays Indy’s father perfectly, giving significantly more depth to Indy’s character. The opening with River Phoenix as young Indy is unnecessary, but it’s fun enough that it was worth keeping in.
Grade: A+
Raiders of the Lost Ark: The perfect adventure movie for those who like anti-heroes. A simple, coherent plot that quickly assigns good guys and bad guys, but gives the bad guys motivations other than just being bad, and the good guys motivations other than being good. Karen Allen is a perfect love interest for Indy, and John Rhys-Davies is wonderful as his convenient Middle Eastern friend. The only significant fault I can find in this movie (and it applies to Last Crusade as well), is that Indy fails at overcoming the bad guy both times and can only idly stand and watch as their arrogance gets themselves killed. Talk about anti-climactic. But more than making up for it is the duel between Indy and the swordsman, which was Ford’s idea as he had dysentery and couldn’t engage in an elaborate fight scene. A lot of brilliance comes accidentally; Spielberg had the insight to see it when it fell in his lap.
Grade: A+
Other Steven Spielberg Movies You May Have Seen
War of the Worlds
The Terminal
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Munich
The Adventures of Tintin
Hook
War Horse
Empire of the Sun
The Color Purple
Amistad
The Twilight Zone: The Movie
1941
Always
The Sugarland Express
Death By Troggles 
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