[ADVENTURE-RAIDER]

“Largo Winch: Empire Under Threat” was developed by Dupuis and released on September 2002 by Ubisoft Entertainment. Based on a comic book character, Largo Winch was also a TV-Series for a year, (2001-2002) mostly known in Europe.

You play the role of Largo Winch, the son of billionaire Nerio Winch who after dying under mysterious circumstances, left you as the heir of “GROUP W”, a multinational corporation based in New York City. You’ve just announced the launch of a humanitarian operation for Drinavia, a small Eastern Europe country. At the reception that follows you learn from one of your communication officers that a scandal’s about to break out involving your company. You must take control of the situation and journey all-over the globe to uncover the plot that’s hatching.

This is a third-person adventure game, with some mini-games and combat sequences, which I enjoyed so much, because of their simplicity and the way they were incorporated in the story as it progressed. Even if the game is not point-and-click, but keyboard-based, it is very easy to control your hero and interact with other characters and items. The developers incorporated a help/hint system which helps you in the beginning stages of the game to understand how the whole interface works. During basically the first few parts of the game, a little help box appears every time you approach someone or something that you can interact with, telling you what you can do and how you can do it using the interface, a very helpful feature for beginners. Experienced gamers have the option to turn this feature off.
The game progresses every time you uncover a clue or a situation. There are moments in the game where you have to make business decisions for your company, involving investment opportunities and stocks. I thought that this was a great addition to the game. It gives you a break from the plot and even if those decisions are not difficult to make, you will have to research in order to make the correct decision.

The graphics of the game are 3D and reminded me a lot of the graphics in “Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon”, even if it was released a year earlier. A very good job was done by the developers, throughout the game and the cut-scenes. Where I thought was an area that needed improvement, were the facial expressions of the characters. I know it’s too much to ask, but you can’t be tied to a chair with two big Russian dudes beating you and be smiling!

There are cut-scenes during the game, including the introduction. A couple of them involve some spicy/erotic scenes. They are not long and a lot of times have clues that will help you later in the game. That is why after you watch a cut-scene for the first time, it gets saved automatically and you can replay it from the “Options” menu. The same goes for the mini-games and the combat sequences.

The majority of the puzzles are easy and mostly you use the items in your inventory to solve them, items that you can find in close proximity at the time. The combat sequences were the ones that impressed me. They are turn-based, meaning that you and the enemy have to take turns trying to hit each other and take-off health points. You have to develop a strategy during the combat sequences in order to kill an enemy, which makes even the combat sequence a puzzle! Sometimes you (Largo) and one of your associates/friends combat against 3-4 enemies, which makes the sequences even more interesting and sometimes hard to beat if you do not develop the right strategy.

The game is long, and in long games it is very difficult to make the player pay attention and keep up with the plot without getting bored. The developers succeeded in this by incorporating the mini-games and combat sequences and by avoiding somewhat repeating actions and moves/scenes during the game.

The voices are crisp and clear and a huge success was made in catching each character’s background through the accent. There are moments in the game where you talk with Russians, Mexicans and Italians and let me tell you, as soon as you hear the accent you know of which background the character is.

Overall “Largo Winch: Empire Under Threat”, in my opinion, is a very good action/adventure game. Even if long and very easy puzzle-wise, I suggest for every adventure gamer to play this game. It is a nice experience and the developers succeeded to keep the attention of the gamer combining nice 3D graphics in a game with an intriguing plot and smart/easy interface. And to make things even easier the game was released for PC, PLAYSTATION 2, XBOX and GAMECUBE!

You can see screenshots of the game here.

I give this game 8 out of 10.

[Manhunter71]

Hi

That was a good review of a game I thought had potential.
I quite enjoyed the combat sequences, and up to a certain point in the game I had no problems with the puzzles.

It was only when I got to the slider puzzle that I became frustrated
I tried about 5 times to rearrange the tiles to form a picture but eventually became disillusioned and sold the game on ebay.

If only there had been some kind of way to bypass this puzzle, either by using a walkthrough or a cheat system, but I think the puzzle solution as generated randomly so you had to solve it right there!!

[KamisoriX]

If you're talking about the Hacker mini games: Yes, i hated it. i stoped playing the game and it collects dust sinse then

[ADVENTURE-RAIDER]

Originally Posted by KamisoriX

If you're talking about the Hacker mini games: Yes, i hated it. i stoped playing the game and it collects dust sinse then

I did not find the "Hacker" mini games hard to beat. The most it took me for one was around 15 minutes.