Gift

The Good
At first glance, Gift surprised me. The gameplay is completely different with other games that Cryo designed (like the Atlantis series). What first catches your eye would be the goofy and rather funny intro movie that already lays the humoristic pattern of the whole game. When you travel across the different worlds, you can often see devices or attributes referring to several other games, which almost makes you play the game to discover all the Easter eggs hidden within.

I found the graphics to be excellent; even an older computer can perfectly handle them while you still can enjoy the outstanding lighting effects and textures without any slowdowns. The enemies are rather simple in design, but this gets compensated by the fact that most of them react on several factors, such as light or shadow. In combination with some puzzles, the player will need to find out how to assail them and get to another level.

The Bad
One of the few lesser points i want to discuss is the duration. Although there's plenty to do in the levels, you often need to go back to pull a lever, or just to pick up something you've forgotten on the way. This can create gaps between the actual gameplay and the 'detour' part. This can be very time-consuming, and - in the end - very boring.

Some puzzles in the game can be very frustrating to pass by, merely because you can't save in between. When you die trying to solve a puzzle, you almost always return to the beginning of the level, forcing you to do the whole process all over again.

The Bottom Line
Not much people are familiar with Gift, since it never really saw the daylights beyond France, Cryo's native country. This is a shame, since the game is very amusing. It contains steady doses of humor, good graphics and a lot of puzzles to keep the player busy for a long time. Despite the fact that some parts of the level and the saving system could use improvements, it still remains a very nice game nonetheless.