Inca

The Good
Inca is an interactive movie released by the same people who gave you the Gobliiins series. It is also the weirdest game that I have played so far. From what I can make of the story, there is an ancient prophecy which states that El Dorado will rise from the ashes and retrieve the powers that will make him the next Inca. The Conquistadors find out about these powers and try to prevent El Dorado from getting them. So, you, as El Dorado himself, must do battle with the Spaniards to ensure that his quest is successful.

The start of the game sees you in some sort of hub, where a digitized Huayna Capac appears inside a crystal ball and tells you the next power you need to find. I had as much fun in here as I was playing through each section; you can play the Antara (the Inca word for xylophone), access the jukebox, or log onto the electronic encyclopedia to find out more about the Incas and their technology.

The game plays similar to flight sims like Wing Commander II, released around the same time. You spend the majority of the game piloting your ship and fighting Spaniards along the way. I don't enjoy playing flight sims, but what I like is that it is simplistic. To me, it's just a matter of locking onto your targets and shooting at them. The ship is well designed, and everything blends in with that gold look.

In between the flight sim sections, you fight your way though a maze, which is viewed from a first-person perspective. You can access a map of the maze with a click of a mouse button. One thing that I like about the Spaniards in the maze is how impressive their artificial intelligence is. You know exactly where they appear and you point the little Tumi cursor over that area. But more often than not, you are forced to point it at the Spaniard on the other side. Equally impressive of these first-person sections is the way the camera zooms in on the direction that you are facing, as if you can see El Dorado walking there.

Then there are the adventure sections. More often than not, it's a matter of either clicking on everything or using inventory items until something happens. There are a few puzzles you need to solve as well. My favorite is trying to figure out how to play the ramped-up version of “Simon Says”. The graphics in these adventure sections are beautiful, especially the ones near the end of the game.

But in my opinion, Inca is more of an action game than an adventure, in the way you have to deal with lives and health. Having said that, the first person and flight sims share one thing in common: the Tumi hat. Coktel have been very creative here, as both the lives and health are represented on the hat as a set of blue beads. The five beads at the bottom of the hat indicates the number of lives you have. Your health is represented by nine beads above that, replacing the wavy pattern of the actual Tumi. When you run out of health, you see five statues on screen and the statue on the far right taken away. The game ends when you are out of statues.

The Sound Blaster music is quite good, and you can listen to each piece by accessing the jukebox in the hub. I much prefer the audio tracks in the CD version, as each soundtrack was composed with real instruments. This version of Inca also features a song called “Inca People”, specifically composed for the game. It was so good that it was even played across many radio stations across Europe.

The Bad
Much of the dialogue and what happens in Inca is based on actual events that happened in the 16th century. It's ironic, then, that the game contains a few elements that doesn't reflect that era. Why is it that you have to fight the Conquistadors in space instead of on land, beaming down to a planet when you have declared victory; and were laser guns and “Simon Says” really popular back then?

Other than that, I think the talking ship was unnecessary. I hardly understood a word it said, and it sounds like the wife of Baxter the Fly from the original version of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”. Also, the game difficulty could have been more consistent.

The Bottom Line
Inca is a strange game that lets you relive the battle between the Incas and Conquistadors, and contains a hodge-podge of genres that I enjoy, mostly the first-person sequences. There are a few nice features, such as the jukebox and the encyclopedia that lets anyone read about the Incas and their technology. The graphics, animation, and sound effects are excellent as well; and the game is worth playing more than once, in case you don't understand what was going on the first time.