[ragnar]

Road To India Review by Ragnar Ouchterlony

About the game

This adventure title brings you to India (surprise, surprise) and more precisely to New Dehli. You are going to have some time with your fiancé Anusha at her home and discover this country with her. On the flight to New Dehli you have a very strange dream where Anusha is abducted into the Taj Mahal and when you finally have got to the home of Anusha you see her being kidnapped. You as the American hero is naturally going to rescue her at any cost. You will also fight an over used sect, called the Thugs which worships the goddess Kali.

Gameplay

In the game you look in first person view, but you have not complete freedom of movement though. You have just some fixed positions you can be at and then you change your position by clicking when an 'go in that direction'-icon appears. Even if you can't move yourself very much you can look in any direction. This system is not very good, especially since there is very often a significant load times between different locations making movement very slow.

The puzzles have very mixed quality, some are pretty good but other seem just ridiculous. It often seems that they had a distinct lack of puzzles and just took the first idea someone got.

There is also a distinct lack of dialogue. In the dream sequences there are no talk at all, even not when you try to interact with different things and the dialogue is very sparse when you are awake. Since I often enjoy the dialogues very much in adventure games I think this is not at all good. The voice acting holds adequate quality but not more (and you don't hear them that much anyway).

The graphics are very nice, and all of the backgrounds and places you go to are beautifully rendered. You get to see Taj Mahal, Indian temples, New Dehli back streets and other nice places.

My thoughts

Well, it is a very short game with a pretty standard story which doesn't take me to any higher levels and since there are very little dialogue which I think is a very important part of an adventure game I don't find very much to be interested in. True, the graphics are very nice, but if I want to see the Taj Mahal there are always pictures which are probably better. The rather obscure way of moving plus a not very good interface makes it a rather dull game. This said I will that it has some good points, though they are not many you can buy the game if you have played all other games and want something from a different environment.

Ratings

Story: 2 / 10
Puzzles: 4 / 10
(Voice) acting: 4 / 10
Graphics: 8 / 10
Sound: 5 / 10
Originality: 1 / 10
Overall: 3 / 10

[pleto4_ryan]

I think you are a little harsh on this...

Yep, it is an easy and short game, finished it in a day. But the story isn't that bad. At least a 6/10 it takes, the voice were bad at the hero but was quite good to the others...as for the riddles. What i liked in this game were some of the riddles being made with modern "items" like the cd-player and the car-keys...I am not sure, but i don't think we have seen other such "modern" riddles...and the atmosphere was really good, giving you the mystical or muxh-populated india
anyway a 3/10 is harsh for a decent game...i would put it over the 5/10...

[ragnar]

That was what I thought after I played it a year or so ago. I haven't replayed it since. Perhaps my views will change after I replay it again in the future.

[BUTTERFLY]

i think this has to be one of the worst adventure games I have played to date, and not only that but i wish i would have read your review before buying because i could have saved myself the cash