Death Gate

The Good
We hear it all the time: "The book was better than the movie." Some works of fiction don't cross mediums very well, as in the case of video game inspired movies, or novelizations of video games. Not so with Death Gate which has a great story featuring vivid, likable characters. Considering the source material spans 7 full length novels, the developers of Legend Entertainment did a good job of presenting it on the PC platform.

There are many reasons that Death Gate succeeds as a classic piece of interactive fiction; competent voice acting, beautiful music, and hand-painted scenery are just a few. I really miss the days of lovingly handcrafted graphics like that which can be found during the early to middle 1990's. Maybe it's just a perception of increased effort that's impressing me, but I am impressed by the painted scenes found in Death Gate. It reminds of the same kind of effort that went into the Indie game King of Dragon Pass.

One thing I really appreciated about Death Gate was to discover that reading the novels is not required to enjoy or understand the game. I've resisted playing other titles such as Companions of Xanth, and Shannara for this reason.

What a great story this game tells. You play Haplo, an apprentice called by your master Xar to investigate four worlds (realms of air, fire, earth, and water), and retrieve their respective world seal piece. You are given a magical ship that transports you between the Nexus and the other four worlds. As things progress you learn about the history of the worlds, and why they're in the state they are. One thing that was clear to me as I journeyed was a definite sense of tension about my role as a Patryn envoy in relation to the many people encountered. Between the races of Sartan, Patryn, Elf and Dwarf there is a social order and you must make unusual friends in order to progress. This allows the story to become real and nearly personal in a way I've not experienced with adventures like Space Quest, even if they're equally fun.

You'll acquire plenty of objects as you explore the four worlds. You'll learn magic and casts spells to survive. The characters, objects, and magic spells all work together to make coherent and sensible puzzles. The puzzles are not overly difficult and you probably won't need a walkthrough. In fact I recommend against using a walkthrough; if I can complete the game without one, so can most everyone else. Games like this are always worth that extra effort because when you figure out the tougher spots it makes you smile.

The game developers didn't take cheap shots; you never walk onto a screen and just die suddenly. Every death was anticipated because I knew I was trying a stupid, dangerous move. "Of course I can't pick up that snake". Reload. When a game has a save/restore system as perfect as Death Gate's one tends to feel free to experiment more.

The Bad
How fortunate it is that there is almost nothing to complain about in Death Gate. Not surprising since the game mechanics are simple enough with it's point and click interface, but a few things did occur to me while playing.

A screen resolution of 640x480 is used through out most of the game, but switches to a VGA resolution of 320x200 for the spell creation screen and some animations. I found that very strange. The game looks nice in SVGA, but the switch to a lower resolution made the blockiness of its graphics stand out. Presumably this was to ease the code developed for animation. Not really a big deal, I was able to get used it.

Also, but only occasionally, it was possible to trigger a GUI glitch by clicking too soon near the bottom of the screen while waiting for a book to flip open. In this state the game seems unresponsive, but was easily escaped by right-clicking the mouse. The obvious work around being, don't click anywhere until the mouse cursor is showing, and preferably in the correct context.

The Bottom Line
Overall the game had a nice pace to it, one that allowed me to play as I felt without having a ridiculously gripping addictiveness to it, but being far from boring at any point. Even if you don't care much for interactive fiction, don't miss this game, it's worth playing just for the story.

The Good
Let's start with a small confession - this is a Legend fanatic here. I played all of their games, no stretch, and adore almost each and every one of them. They are true gems in the history of adventure games, the successors to Infocom, that were slightly overshadowed by Lucas Arts and Sierra in the early 90s. At any rate, Death Gate is no exception in a legacy of great narratives implemented into even greater AGs.

Let's continue with yet another confession - I'm not an avid fan of the standard, run of the mill, dwarves/elves/dragons fantasy genre. By this I mean that I'm not very excited with such a setting, simply because in my mind it's been done way too many times. But every so often I'm pleasantly surprised when I find something, in any medium, that rises above the banal.

And Death Gate is exactly such an example.

True to its place in the category of fantasy, the game is epic. It involves events of cosmic proportion; race wars and conflicts, racial superiority, evil, clandestine guilds and societies. It also features the obligatory comic reliefs, the chance companions, the casual love story and of course - a copious amount of magic and deceit. All of this is presented in lush, colourful artwork, depicting detailed and varied locations and crisp environments. There's a myriad of characters to talk to and interact with in different ways and attitudes, all rendered in large, richly detailed portraits, all voiced expertly. You get to experience first-hand a literally sundered world, as you voyage through the different lands and realms. In each of these you will encounter various denizens and monsters, and learn more and more of your quest. Huge sources of info are also books scattered throughout the game. One thing can be said for sure - nothing is as it seems, and there are many shades of black and white here. So be prepared for lots of twists and turns.

Despite all this, the story isn't the game's strongest point. That would be the puzzles. You see, in DG you have two kinds of puzzles: One, the good old inventory puzzles. The other is puzzles which are solved utilising the magic/rune system. There's a very piquant explanation to how magic works in the game's universe, relying on the possibility that everything is possible, and so the magic-user bends reality in this fashion in order to cast magic, to put it succinctly. Spells are obtained by watching others performing them, a very straightforward and comfortable approach. This is an AG remember, so no leveling up nonsense (no offence to RPG players :P). Of course, there's actually a third kind of puzzle - the combination of the first two types.The spells have very specific definitions to them, which you must follow in order to succeed. This makes it very interesting - you run into different situations and obstacles you must solve through careful engineering of a magic strategy. There's lots of good ol' fantastical logic here, and each and every puzzle relates to a specific situations in the game. So no random sliders appearing out of thin air. Gameplay is done via a simple PNP interface, with verbs used to construct sentences with hotspots on the screen. Many of these verbs are contextual.

As a final note, DG is free of any redundant combat sessions (which plagued the otherwise wonderful Shannara) - it's pure adventure, no hybrid symptoms.

The Bad
As much as I love rich dialogues and texts, the case here is a bit extreme - Death Gate is simply too verbose. Yes, it's interesting, yes it's engaging, yes it's done well - but it's too much nonetheless. If you're going to try it, expect volumes of reading material and hopelessly loquacious characters.

While the backdrops are indeed good looking, they felt a bit too static at times.

The music, while adequate and mostly fitting, is a bit repetitive at times.

The Bottom Line
All in all, an outstanding result of a great endeavour. Death Gate certainly ranks high amongst those Legend classics, a place it most undoubtedly deserves.

The Good
Unlike other adventure game (the classic quests, especially those from the house of Sierra) this game is not so "heavy". Dying is very difficult, and you'll have to do something completely absurd to die. Most of the riddles are straight forward and require logical thinking, and you'll manage to solve them without having to resort to walkthroughs. There are a couple of nice puzzles in the game, and they're challenging, yet not too difficult.
Two things caught my attention most. One, the voice acting. All of the dialogues in the game are voice acted, and it adds a new level of depth to the game- the player actually wants to hear all of the dialogues, rather than scrolling further.
The second thing is the magic system. Although you have a list of the spells, it's fun to build them yourself from the "runes" your character can use.

The Bad
The fans of the series will be disappointed from the transition. While the original characters remained, they have completely different roles, including the main character...
Somewhere in the middle of the game, one of the characters will reveal the entire plot to you. It's not very difficult to figure it out yourself, but silly to see the designers unfold the complete story in a couple of minutes.

The Bottom Line
Get it, play it. It's fun, easy and not frustrating like other adventure games.