Review: Atlantis Redux (Parts 1 and 2)
Score:
75%
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0
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You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
>Look at the mailbox.
The mailbox is closed.
>Open the mailbox.
Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet.
>Get the leaflet.
Taken.
>Look at the leaflet.
"WELCOME TO MY ATLANTIS REDUX 1 & 2 REVIEW!"
Can anyone spot the reference? Sure you can. The reason I made it was to bring up text adventures. These painstakingly crafted interactive stories of the 80's are now but a pleasant memory as genres go but they were very much the ancestors of the graphic adventures that still top the charts today and in a very real way paved the way for Myst, 7th Guest, and TetraEdge Games' surprising little The Adventure Company team-up Atlantis Redux.
Atlantis REDUX, like all graphic adventures, sits in a unique gray area between books and movies, leveraging interactivity to set itself apart from either and, in this case, doing it quite well. Atlantis REDUX Players assume the role of a young female archaeologist searching for Atlantis across 4 episodes of puzzles and plots.
The first episode starts your adventure and sets its tone with some hints at the darker plot beneath the surface of things. It also gives you your first taste of what game play will be like through the series. Like most graphic adventures Atlantis REDUX uses pre-rendered frames for each location within the game but in a fun twist on the idea gives you 360 degree viewing freedom within them. So in episode 1, where you start in the rocky deserts of Egypt, you can happily spin in circles looking for a change of your cursor to indicate interactivity which may be an item to pick up or a path to take. If such a change occurs you just click your action button and the appropriate action will be taken: for a path you will walk forward to the next area, for an item your inventory will open and the item will be taken in hand to either be dropped into inventory or carried. All in all the game plays perfectly on my QD and I would wager would be one of the rare S60 games which would be equally fun when played one-handed on say a Nokia 6600.
Sadly, for all the eye candy and slickness of the controls on episode 1 it is amazingly short. My first time through, I played it all in just about an hour. The second time through it took me less than 6 minutes to complete. If TetraEdge Games expected people to pay for that I would have given them a very harsh review but that is not the case. In fact, they openly admit the first episode is far too short and actually sell episodes 1 and 2 together for a very reasonable 7 USD.
All in all episode 1 feels like a demo where episode 2 really feels more like a game. The puzzles become more interesting, involve multiple locations and items, and the story begins to really unfold for the player. Oddly, I have no idea what much of it means by this point and know only that I now have an odd Pyshopomp (did I spell that right?) companion who is guiding me through this adventure without apparently knowing clearly where we are going or what we are doing and there is some evil bald guy who likes relics and seemingly not me (I believe he may be Peruvian, but don't quote me). Mind you I'm not saying that this mild confusion is bad. Quite the opposite, I find the mystery of the whole thing is very strong and by the end of episode 2 left me with the feeling that I had just scratched the surface of this one. It sort of has that Harry Potter hook to it where you want to jump into the next chapter to see where it leads you.
In short, Atlantis REDUX Episodes 1 & 2, while a little short in length and lacking in replay value, are fun and at the price asked really are worth considering for graphic adventure fans and casual gamers because they represent a nice level of interactivity and an interesting story that you can invest 5 minutes or 50 minutes in at your leisure. For Atlantis REDUX Episodes 1 & 2 I say 75% and with that am off to conquer Atlantis REDUX Episode 3. See you soon.
Reviewed by Chris Rydberg at