Summary
A nice easy adventure that is unfortunately too shallow
The Good
The name "Road to India", the easy, simplistic controls and the 360 degree rotation view combined with 1st person perspective (and maybe also the fact this is a French game) may lead us to the wrong conclusion this game's style is similar to Cryo's well-known educational titles (such as "China", "Egypt" or "Atlantis". But as a matter of fact, "Road to India" has very little to do with the gorgeous Cryo's products. As much as the similarity of interface may be striking, it is deceiving: "Road to India" isn't an educational game, nor it is a meditative, heavy-puzzled "Atlantis" clone. While Cryo's games concentrate mostly in atmosphere, exact detail and time-consuming puzzles, the strengths of "Road to India" lie in a completely different, maybe even opposite direction.
The place of "Road to India" in our modern epoch of the adventure genre is not quite clear. It is obvious that the dominating style in adventure today is a complex, epic, story-driven kind of a game("The Longest Journey", "Grim Fandango", "Gabriel Knight III"). Those games emphasize the story, the interaction with the characters, while the puzzles themselves are less important. On the other hand, we also have various "Myst" clones and similar games (like Cryo's games), where the atmosphere and the difficult puzzles are the core of the game. "Road to India" fits, strangely enough, into neither of the aforementioned categories. It is definitely NOT meditative and not very atmospheric, but it is also not an epic tale of considerable length: the game is indeed very short and its plot and characters are anything but complex.
So, what is so special about this game? Its graphics are excellent, but no game is worth playing (let alone buying) solely because of its graphical value. No, the game is so interesting and because it tries to form a new style of modern adventure.
While story and interaction offer nothing original, the puzzle design is indeed a refreshing change. We finally take a break from the overwhelming complexity of both dominant puzzle styles in recent adventures: inventory-based madness of comedy adventure and lever/dial/combination affairs like in
Myst. "Road to India" has neither. Its puzzles are simple, elegant, and intuitive. And some of them were quite original, like the "monkey language" puzzle, which I found simply delightful.
The easiness of the puzzles combined with the natural, intuitive gameplay and a rather intriguing story makes the game very addictive for a pure adventure and gives it a strong touch of realism and a classically perfect shape and structure. The "lightness" of the game is a definite reaction on the gigantic adventures of the last years. Will this be the adventure style of the future?..
The Bad
..Perhaps not, as "Road to India" is just too shallow as an adventure game to make others follow it.
First of all, there's the problem of characters. The 3D characters are nicely rendered, and the cut-scenes surely look good - but there are very few characters in the game, and most of them play only minor role. Same applies to locations. If you expect a majestic trip through India, you should look somewhere else, because "Road to India" shows you only very few and even not the most typical places in this country. The streets of modern India, which should be heavily populated and lively, are empty and depressing in "Road to India". The dialogues are nicely and naturally written, but there's not even one conversation or phrase which will really impress you (except for the conversation with the monkey). The game feels way too modest, and sometimes I had a feeling I was playing a demo. It seems the creators of the game were too careful to show what they could do. It is as if someone constantly told them to stop and to make everything smaller and shorter. You are always expecting something to happen, but it never comes. In the end, all I could mutter was: "Is this really all?.."
The music is rather monotonous - it adds to the suspense, but I'd really like to hear more melodies in different locations. Also, there are almost no sound effects. Another unnecessary "modesty".
The game looks almost exactly like Cryo's "Atlantis" games, but there is a sad omission it it: while in "Atlantis" almost every movements of yours was presented as a short video sequence, in "Road to India" it is just jumping from screen to screen. In general, the game seems to be rather moderate in two categories in which Cryo is so generous: music and video sequences.
I'm really not a fan of endless games, and even the outstanding "Longest Journey" did make me tired near the end. But in this case, even I felt: "Road to India" is
very short. Because of it's incredible simplicity, it might seem even shorter than it really is. Which brings me to another points: yes, it is cool it doesn't contain any impossible puzzles, but the game is really too easy. If it were longer, I would probably not mind it, but it is
really not challenging and rewarding enough.
Another thing that comes to mind is the lack of a really interesting interface that allows good interaction. Like in most 1st person adventures, you can interact only with the important items. You can't look at things, try taking what you aren't supposed to take, and so on. Where are the cool interfaces of early LucasArts and Sierra games, that allowed you so much?
The Bottom Line
"Road to India" is a fine, easy-going adventure which is interesting without being frustrating. If you like linear, story-driven, not too complicated games with a good deal of suspense, and if you don't want, for a change, to break your head and to tear your hair off your head each time you face a puzzle, "Road to India" is for you. But being so poor on interaction, too short and not developed enough, it can hardly satisfy a veteran adventurer. In any case, this is a nice attempt by "Microids", who later brought us
Syberia.
