Infernos
Reviews
Fables & Fiends: Hand of Fate (DOS)
Worthy of a place amongst the adventure game greats
The Good
Westwood Studios are most known for the Command & Conquer games but RTS is far from the only genre they tried out.
In 1992 they released a point and click adventure game called The Legend of Kyrandia.
Though it wasn't a terrible game it was clearly their first effort in designing an adventure game and leaned more toward Sierra in terms of gameplay holdovers, and this often included the more dubious game design choices of that era: react quickly or die situations, items that are required for later puzzles can be lost or destroyed, others can be left behind after traveling beyond a "Point of No Return" while some items have no use at all,
plus random trial-and-error puzzles with no hints to it in-game and one particularly tedious maze.
One noteworthy novelty when Kyrandia was released in 1992 was its single cursor. Back then LucasArts was still verb building, while Sierra had introduced the rotating cursor only the year before.
Hand of Fate is an improvement in just about every way. You can't get stuck because you missed a necessary item and can no longer go back to obtain it, as here the main hero Zanthia loses almost all of her equipment at the beginning of each new part of the game. Anything that can be carelessly discarded will usually respawn near where you picked it up the first time. The amulet from the first game is replaced with a magic cauldron and Zanthia’s spellbook lays out all of the necessary ingredients for everything you need (occasionally with some word play). Inventory space is also much larger than in the first game.
Puzzles have improved as well. There's numerous puzzles with more than one possible solution. For example, early on, you need to get reptile tears. You can tickle the crocodile with a feather until he cries from laughter or make him cry with onions. Forgot the color memorization sequence in order to unlock a door? You can break the lock with a pair of scissors. There's even a couple optional things you can do like save Marco or open some letters. And here's something you won't typically see in adventure games from this time period - a hint system... sort off. You see, the one item that stays with Zanthia is the Alchemist's Magnet which draws gold from lead, but when used on most living beings it will make them tell Zanthia their innermost secrets. There are still several ways to die in this game but no cheap stuff here. The game doesn't kill you without warning and at any rate you should know better by now than to neglect to save frequently.
This game is absolutely gorgeous, featuring lush hand-painted background vistas showing a lot of imagination, rich colors and solid animation. And while the first one wasn't a bad looker at all, the forest areas re-used its backgrounds several times over, but in this game each screen is unique. The game's music, courtesy of Frank Klepacki, doesn't disappoint either, providing suitable and pleasant atmosphere for the many locations.
The first game was odd in that the tone slipped between deadly serious and slightly silly. For Hand of Fate they dialed back the seriousness of the story a bit while also making the world feel a lot more distinct and less like generic fantasy. No doubt there is a quirkier sense of humor here. The voice acting really brings a lot of personality to the characters so definitely get the talkie version. My personal favorite moment is the two nincompoop guards who won't let you in the city and start making up ridiculous reasons why: "No pedestrians on Tuesdays", "No women without goats", "No strangers in groups of one or three" and "No magicians without a note from a donkey". There's a pub full of reformed pirates who just sit around drinking root beer and hosting Pirate Poetry Nights, Petrified forest, a Yeti and his love pad. Center of the Earth is a sleazy tourist trap, filled with sham guides where the inhabitants are clearly wasting your time, playing with the frustration of the player.
Also what is evident straight away is that Zanthia is a far more interesting and likeable character than Brandon from the first game. Almost nothing she encounters escapes a witty word, a poignant pun, or an astute assertion.
She's still feminine, illustrated by her desire to wear the perfect outfit in every situation, but this is dealt with in the same tongue-in-cheek manner that really sets the tone for the entire game.
The Bad
If there's one thing that drags Hand of Fate down for me it is the end game.
The last puzzle is an inverted Tower of Hanoi (called Anoi in-game) and believe me annoy it will. That is followed by an ill-advised action sequence - react quickly or die.
The Bottom Line
You'd think that after getting so many things right with this game that the third and final one would be the same or even better. Unfortunately that is not the case, Malcolm's Revenge is a very inconsistent game, on one hand the game's first chapter is fantastic freeform design, that gives you six different ways to accomplish the goal, while the mid-game is a mess (maze, needless randomness, trial and error) then the game picks up again towards the end.
One Westwood game that you should definitely check out is Blade Runner - a superb reinterpretation of a classic film franchise that not only manages to maintain the feel of its source material yet still stand on its own. When you start a new game, it randomly decides which of the principal cast are humans or replicants, including the main hero. The choices you make, and the timed events it’s possible to miss, will result in one of thirteen different endings. Very ambitious stuff for a game from 1997.
By Infernos on October 4, 2019
Burnout (Xbox)
The humble beginning
The Good
The best version of the first Burnout is this one on the Xbox. 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, progressive scan support, bump mapping on all of the road surfaces, true volumetric shadows on the environment and other vehicles, real-time cubic environment mapping, anti-aliasing, tri-linear filtering and other tech lingo means it looks and sounds the best.
Though its a short ride it is definitely a fun game while it lasts. There's a great sense of speed and weaving through traffic, chaining burnouts really gets the adrenaline pumping. (Note: boost works a little different than in later Burnout titles, here you have to fully fill the boost meter before it can be used. But unlike the second game you don't have to use it all in one go).
Controls are tight and responsive, and the frame rate is rock-solid even when there's a lot going on. The crash physics engine is undoubtedly the star of the game and very impressive for the time.
Plus after races you can watch all the crashes in slow motion with 360-degree control of a camera and even save them to hard drive.
The Bad
As the Xbox and GameCube ports came out 5 months after the PlayStation 2 original, you'd think Criterion add some extra content and not just improve the graphics. Unfortunately that is not the case. As it stands the game is way too short compared to other racing games released at the time, not to mention its sequels. Complete 6 championships (14 races in total) and 4 Face-off races and that's all there is to do. Sure, you can try and get the record times & scores in all courses but what's the use if it doesn't unlock anything. There's also Time Attack, Free Run and Survival modes.
Survival is by far the toughest mode in the whole game where you have to do three laps on a track without crashing once. For all the effort it could have at least unlocked extra paint jobs for the cars or something.
Speaking of cars, there are only 9 vehicles to choose from, including special vehicles like the bus and tow truck. And none of them go over 150 mph (when boosting). The game features 16 courses in total which might sound decent on paper but when you take in consideration that more than half of the tracks are either reverse/different time of day versions or "marathon" tracks (where two or three courses are combined), the actual number of unique tracks is just 6.
Burnout employs a semi rubber band AI, but I personally found the opponent cars unable to put up much of a fight, always crashing in certain scripted spots. As long as you drive without crashing too much you don't even have to boost and you'll still win. Hell, most of the time if you crash a lot it will be the time limit that will be your main nemesis and not the AI. In the sequel Point of Impact the AI was much more competitive without sinking to ridiculously abusive rubber-banding like in Takedown.
Music is rather dull and there's no custom soundtrack support. Another minor gripe is that pushing the left (and right) analog stick sounds the horn. It's not like there's a lack of buttons.
The Bottom Line
The first Burnout is still a fun game but compared to later games in the series this one won't hold your interest for very long because of its limited number of cars, tracks and stuff to do.
There's very little reasons to go back to it as the sequels pack way more content and perfected the formula in every way.
For a much better introduction to the series check out Burnout 2: Point of Impact (the Developer's Cut for Xbox packs 15 additional crash junctions and 21 new car skins so it's the definitive version).
By Infernos on August 25, 2015