by ALIKART; BIGFISH GAMES
FASCINATING SCI-FI!
Story: The crew of a marooned spaceship must uncover the secrets of an unknown planet to survive. After a crash landing on the lost planet, you’re left with many unanswered questions. What was the mysterious force that seems to have pulled your ship into the planet and what are its intentions? The journey to answer these questions will be challenging but you cannot give up, because if you fail the crew will never see their home planet again!
Explore beautiful landscapes on your journey – visit the islands that float in the air, underwater worlds and alien jungles. Traverse mysterious caves and damaged spaceships to learn more about this world’s amazing inhabitants.
Bonus! Play the game on hard to meet a survivor of a previous spaceship crash and learn about his extraordinary survival story. (Big Fish Sales Blurb)
Options: Basic but good. Full Screen is not Wide Screen. You can change these during the game.
Main Menu: Read HELP in this to get clear instructions.
Music: Eerie, and really suitable.
Voice-Overs: None – the Dialogue is all done in Text-balloons.
Desktop: PDA – Tasks , Info (Left); Inventory (Centre); Hint, Home/Menu (Right).
Play Modes: Casual; Advanced; Expert. You need to complete the full game in Expert in order to meet the Extra Character – he is not within the Expert Game. You can change Modes during the game.
Map: None, but Mini-Map into PDA.
Tutorial: You activate the Interactive Tutorial in the Options. This is quick, efficient, as Texts.
Graphics: Good, clear in places, atmospheric in others, dark in others; HOPs Graphics tend to be a bit too gloomy to see clearly. But they are excellent Sci-Fi Planet Graphics, with great attention to details.
HOPs: Interactive Lists in general sites, some with Mini-Zoom sites for extra Items to use within the HOPs. You also pick up Items from around sites, some of which you place into Key Object circles to gain a Key Object once complete. The HOP Hint is rechargeable.
Puzzles: A few of these are really good – such as the Maze Puzzle – but many of them are tedious, have poor instructions, refuse to complete, and are totally Skip-worthy!
Game-play: A bit slow-moving, rather like MYST in that you are left on your own to wander around collecting Items with little Instructions other than via Hints. Active Hotspots are not obvious and it’s rather hard to find where to use Items. You need to Mouse-Over the screen to find Sparkling Hotspots. Also as you clear a site it is then Locked so you can’t return to it.
Player Participation: You actively use tools rather than it being done automatically, so this is good.
Frustration Factors: There is a degree of Frustration due to the lack of Instructions/Directions, and also due to the annoying Puzzles which you can Skip after it unlocks.
Satisfaction Factor: Despite not knowing what you are doing most of the time, except for in-depth, careful, continual exploring – as in the MYST Series of games – this is fascinating. It has a great Opening Movie sequence – you know you are in Space for a SciFi game immediately.
I recommend this game to all Sci-Fi fans.
Jud House 2/04/2015
* * * * *
judsartwork
Jud's PC Game Reviews & Problem Solving 