Altered Destiny

The Good
The game-world is very atmospheric. It's weird, hallucinatory, and psychedelic, and has music to match (Stockhausen anyone?).

There have been a lot of adventure games set in similar fantasy worlds in which the weirdness is plain annoying (eg Goblins or Woodruffe and the Schnibble), but here it works well, and has a special, unique charm.

There's very little dialogue (that's good) and the puzzles involve planting crystals, catching birds in golden cages and similar pleasing activities (that's good too),

The Bad
Its got a parser (bit of a pain) and copy protection that kicks in on starting up the game (also annoying). I could cope with those though. The thing that got me really pissed was the point-and-click system, which was poorly implemented so that I kept falling off paths, bridges and the like and had to keep reloading. It was also difficult at times to see where to walk to get into different areas of the game.

I played this for the first time in 2005, but didn't complete it because I needed a crystal that I picked up earlier in the game and subsequently lost. I enjoyed what I played enough to think that I'll probably go back and play it again though.

The Bottom Line
This game shares the same interface as the very down-to-earth no-nonsense Les Manley games made by Accolade at the same time. Unlike Les Manley this is a sprawling fantasy epic, in which the gameplay is flawed. Even so its worth sticking with despite the problems.

I think many of these are common in games of this vintage, and died out of point-and-click adventures as they evolved later in the 90's.

The Good
Was in the same class as the lucasarts games but the animation and graphics seemed to be better.

The Bad
It was kind of hard. But to some people thats a good thing.

The Bottom Line
Wierd graphic adventure. Suitable for old EGA systems.