Review written by Eric Pankoke

Buy Black Core Logic from Clickgamer

Sometimes I'll try and come up with my own overview for a game. At other times, it makes sense to let the developer speak for their game before I give you my analysis. Here's what Concrete Udder has to say about Black Core Logic: “It is the dark, dystopian future. Corporations now run what is left of a once egalitarian cyberspace network. New corporation built software monitors and inhibits every move made on the net. Nobody is safe. Even you. Rumours of a revolutionary new kind of Logic bomb are rife. One which will once again bring freedom to the virtual world, which will end the tyranny of the corporations and bring them to their knees. The rumour has a name. Black Core Logic.” Sounds like a George Orwell novel updated to reflect modern technology. In my book, that makes it worth giving a try. Unfortunately, the experience was quite a mixed bag for me.

The graphics are the highlight of the game. They are very consistent and very well done. The only problem is, I don't feel as though they were optimally designed for the small screen of the Pocket PC. You can tell a lot of detail was put into the artwork, which was all rendered in 3D. However, there are times where there is so much going on in the framework of a given room that it's really hard to know what you're looking at or for. This causes you to rely on the hunt-and-peck nature of the modern graphic adventure. I will delve into that more in the gameplay section. The other problem was that the overall atmosphere of the imagery was dark, and the ability to gamma correct only seemed to wash out the images instead of making them better. For the most part this wasn't a problem, though.

The sound effects were pretty much limited to actions like picking up items, entering into your inventory, and clicking somewhere on the screen that was interactive. I don't recall there being any sound effects that were specific to certain items or environments. That's a shame, because it really detracts from the feeling that your surroundings are “alive”. The other big issue I have in the sound department is that there was NO music. Since this was basically a thinking game and not an action one, music sure would have made the experience a lot more immersive. When you have a lot of time where nothing is happening, it's a lot more noticeable when there's nothing playing in the background. 2 or 3 tunes would have been enough, but the lack of any music basically destroys the sound rating.

According to Concrete Udder's description, I live in a future where “Big Brother” is following my every move. To be honest, I think Big Brother was out at a frat party and forgot all about me. As I wander about the game's many environment, it seems like everyone could care less what I'm actually doing. This is especially odd when I get to the corporate buildings, since these are the people who most want to see my pursuits come to an end. In fact, for the most part there are very few people wandering around these environments.

When I finally complete my mission, it's no big deal because I didn't really have to work to get there – or at least there wasn't any opposition. It was some work, however. Most of this work came in the form of 3 things: not knowing what I was looking for, not knowing where to click to find what I needed, and having to traipse back and forth to get things from point A to point B. This game really needed an overhead map that could let me skip a lot of my traveling. Of course, this option would have substantially decreased the overall gameplay time, which was pretty short as it is. There were two or three times where I had to seek out answers to puzzles on the internet, and I didn't even go “duh” when I found the answers because they were things I never would have thought of. I often had to give items to individuals even though I had no idea why they wanted them, and many objects had no logic reason for being where they were. There were quite a few locations that I think were thrown in just for the effect of having many locations, and when I got done I had too many items in my inventory! Just because it's an adventure game doesn't mean I want to have an excess of goods that I can't use.

My biggest gripe with the environment that they were trying to create is that they didn't take advantage of it. Throughout the game you collect items called Icebreakers and Trojan Jacks. Throughout the different areas you visit there are a number of “decks”, or Black Core Logic's version of terminals. It would have been a lot more interesting if the game had let me “hack” into these decks to gain more information about what was going on or what I needed to do. This was a huge opportunity that was missed, in my opinion.

There were a few good points to the game, however. I could save wherever I wanted – but with no death traps this was little consolation. The interface was easy enough to use, consisting of clicking until a menu popped up, at which point you could select from a range of 2 to 4 actions to perform on whatever you had clicked on. I also give them kudos for trying something different. It takes a lot of work to create a believable Blade Runner type future, and they tried really hard. It wasn't awful, but not very fulfilling, either.

Pros:

• Excellent Graphics

• Interesting Concept

• Simple Interface

Cons:

• Sometimes graphics facilitated “click everything” scenarios

• Few sound effects and no music

• Too short, some odd puzzles, atmosphere was lacking




I love adventure games, so I’m trying not to be biased towards saying “run out and get this game”. Fortunately, they’ve made that somewhat easy for me. If you’re a fan of the genre, and you’ve extinguished some of the other options (Atlantis Redux, Gilbert Goodmate), then you might want to give this a shot. If adventure games aren’t your passion, I’d let this game pass into Cyberspace and wait for a System Shock port to the PPC – we could only be so lucky.

 

Score-by-score breakdown

Gameplay:  20%
Graphics:  80%
Sound:  40%

Overall:  50%

Please note that the overall score is more than simply an average of the individual ratings.  Many thanks to Concrete Udder for providing our review copy.

You may wish to search for more reviews of games from Concrete Udder. Alternatively, you can view all the reviews written by Eric Pankoke.