[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

I offered this review to Adventure Gamers last year, but I never heard back from them. On the theory that it might be of interest to some anyway, here it is, slightly rewritten.

It is also available, in a more aesthetically pleasing form, at http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~simoaalt/review.html

ATLANTIS, THE LOST TALES (1997)

Developer Cryo Interactive Entertainment
Distributor IQ Media AB

Audiovisual feast marred by flawed design

Atlantis, The Lost Tales is an aural and visual delight. The acoustic-sounding musical score played throughout the game comprises some of the best soundtrack music ever heard, and there is plenty of it. The world is alive with all the sounds of the varied locations - from the rolling thunder and animal noises of a Celtic forest to the fast approaching footfalls of your pursuers. The visuals are similarly impressive. There is a real sense of architecture and design to the world's structures and an equally convincing feel of natural growth to the forests and landscapes. Atlantis itself is a lush green idyll in the ocean, its boat-like, crystal-powered wooden flyers creations of awesome beauty.

The heady sense of immersion promised by the beautiful introductory sequence fails to quite materialize when one starts playing. The blame must fall on the limited gameplay. The player is offered a first-person view through the eyes of young Seth. The world is three-dimensional, but only to a point: you can look around 360 degrees, but movement is restricted in each area to going from one "hot spot" on the ground to another. In most areas the change from one spot to another is an animated dolly shot, not a jarring, instantaneous jump. That is at least some comfort.

Next the player is likely to notice the shallowness of the dialogues Seth can engage in. Most of these consist of a simple one-line question from Seth and a rude one-line reply from the other party. The topics are picked from a menu of icons - the choices varying according to situation and character - but the exchanges are highly unrewarding. Pity, since there was potential for so much more in this area: the voice actors are professional and well-matched for the roles, and their efforts do make the rather minimalistic dialogues more of an incentive to keep playing.

The characters too are simplistic. Queen Rhea, visually a magnificent creation, is aggravatingly prissy and possessed of the most lightweight of intellects; Creon the royal consort is but a bullying schemer. The ubiquitous guards all look and sound alike, and the regular folk of Atlantis are spineless cyphers who go along with anything their rulers tell them.

Seth himself would be perfectly fine if he was not forever either dying or getting caught - the reason frequently being a timed puzzle. These, alas, are plentiful. So are sliding-block puzzles, switch puzzles and all the rest of the ilk that I so dislike in adventure games. Most frustratingly, the automatic-save feature, which cannot be turned off (there is no regular save feature), means you have to keep repeating the same sequences of actions, doing the same puzzles and the same timed tasks over and over again until you get them right.

The sketchy design and clumsy gameplay will make many adventurers give up in disgust long before they even get to the second CD (there are three in all). But there are rewards for the patient. The aural and visual treats certainly cannot be faulted, nor can the attractive packaging, which includes a wonderful printed guide to the world of Atlantis.

SURFACE ****
IMMERSION **

P.S. When viewing the closing credits, look for the line about the number of cups of coffee drunk during the making of the game. See if you can spot a neat little trick to do with that line... Thanks to Jem for pointing this out to me!

Special commendations for

• Stéphane Picq and Pierre Estève (music and sounds)
• Jean-Marc Delon and Jean-Baptiste Merland (sound effects)
• the entire graphics team
• Eliane Fiolet and Alexandra Boulard (packaging)