Review written by Eric Pankoke

Buy Atlantis Redux from Clickgamer

"A young archeologist searches for the existence of a metropolis built, according to myth and legend, by the ancient Egyptians...." So start your adventures in the worlds of Atlantis: Redux. From the Sahara Desert to the icy plains of the Paleolithic, you'll travel the world in search of the fabled city of Atlantis.

For the most part the graphics in this game are wonderful. The cut scenes are excellent, and quite refreshing to see on a Pocket PC game. The characters are all well rendered, though the main character does have some cheesy facial expressions. The backgrounds during gameplay are often vivid and always very detailed. Unfortunately, at times the scenery is a bit too dark and it's hard to tell what all you are looking at. My biggest complaint is with inventory items, because often the only way you know there's something to pick up is when the cursor changes to a hand. This is a fairly common trend with adventure games, so it's not too much of a concern.

The sound is a mixed bag. The music is nice for the most part, though sometimes it seems little more than a rhythmic beat in the background just for the sake of having something there. The voice acting is generally top notch. The one voice that has really bothered me so far is the main character's, which reminds me an awful lot of the program SAM on the Commodore 64 (sorry for the ancient reference, and kudos to those who actually know what I'm talking about). A majority of the lip syncing seems on cue, but there are times where I felt like I was watching a foreign film. In game sound effects were there at times, but most of the action happened during the cutscenes, which were often oddly silent unless characters were speaking. I'm not sure if this was mainly a result of the need to conserve space on a small platform, but it often left sequences feeling incomplete.

This is where I had the biggest problem with Atlantis: Redux. I admire Tetraedge's attempts at creating an interactive full motion video experience, but they didn't work in the 90's and for me they don't work now. To their credit, there is a lot more to do in Atlantis: Redux than in most other FMV games I've played, but often it felt like the puzzles were simple fillers to get to the next video.

To break it down more, let's start with the interface. You're provided with a panoramic view of your surroundings, much like the highly lauded game Myst. Clicking the stylus in the upper left or right corners of the screen is supposed to move you left and right, respectively. This didn't seem to work very well for me, so instead I choose to use the second option, which was right and left on the D-Pad. In theory this works fine, but my D-Pad tends to be sensitive, so often I would accidentally hit up (action) or down (inventory) when I was trying to move. Annoying, but livable.

On the other hand, the path finding itself is not so livable. As you spin around your environment, a red arrow pops up whenever you can move in a certain direction. Often, within the course of a 90 degree turn, the arrow might come and go 3 times. This is not a graphical glitch, but rather 3 separate paths you can take. Once you select a path, you don't always end up in line with where you came from. In other words, one would assume that if you select an arrow, then rotate yourself 180 degrees once you've arrived at your destination, you'd get another arrow to take you back where you came from. Instead, you might only have to rotate a few degrees to get that arrow. Some areas are nearly impossible to map as a result, and more than once I grew increasingly frustrated when I couldn't find my way back to a certain spot.

To bring up your inventory you press down on the D-Pad or the A hardware button. You can only carry five inventory items, but that's okay because very rarely do you have the opportunity to have more items than that. It's a good thing, too, because often you receive no explanation as to what the items are that you've picked up, so when you get to a spot where you can use an item, you pretty much have to guess at what you should use. This is another point of contention with me, because they were very inconsistent in providing you with cues as to when you should use items. What's worse is that on occasion you'd have an item in your inventory with nothing to indicate how it even got there!

The final part of the interface consists of interaction with your environment, both with other beings and with non-inventory items. Generally speaking, if there's something for you to do, you will see a set of gears spinning in the middle of the screen. If the action simply requires you to acknowledge that you want to do it, pushing up on the D-Pad (or clicking on the gears) will cause your character to perform the action. If an inventory item is required, you must call up your inventory window, and drag the item you wish to use onto the spinning gears. Here's the caveat: there are times when there is something to do in the area you're at, but you don't get the gears to let you know that there's something to do! I personally feel the spinning gear gimmick should have been an all or nothing effort.

Interacting with other beings is probably the least painful part of the interface. If you can talk to something, a set of lips will appear on top of the being you can talk to. Pushing up on the D-Pad (or clicking the lips) usually provides you with a small video if it's the first time you've talked to the being. If there's more to say to them, you will be presented with a series of images representing the topics you can talk with them about. My only quip here is that you can't skip videos, but most of them are short enough that it doesn't matter.

Now that the interface mechanics are out of the way, we can discuss the puzzles. After all, that's what adventure games are all about, right? Have no fear, though, because this won't take long. There really are a couple of innovative puzzles in this game, and you'll know them when you see them. Many of the puzzles are of the “find object there, use here just because” variety, and there was 1 puzzle (the first one, in fact) that I didn't realize was a puzzle until I read a FAQ on the game. Over all I felt the quality of the puzzles was lacking, and that most of them were added for the sole purpose of allowing TetraEdge to be able to call this a game instead of an interactive video.

Pros:

• Excellent graphics

• Interesting story (when you can follow it)

• Couple of decent puzzles

Cons:

• Often puzzles felt like filler between videos

• Videos felt incomplete because of sound issues

• Interface was well attempted but felt awkward

I love adventure games, but this quest for Atlantis still left me searching for the game that could bring the same sort of excitement that Zork and King’s Quest did. You might consider trying the PC version of this product, which hopefully retains much of the story and gameplay that was lost in this translation. Atlantis: Redux receives a score of 6 out of 10.

Overall Score: 6/10

Many thanks to Tetraedge for providing us with our review copy.

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