Heart of Darkness

The Good
Everything! You have pure action. The grafic is high, full of details and surprises!!! The best is, everytime they "kill" you (believe me, there are lots of;) If you fall to your death or get eaten (which is always a particularly gory event, especially in contrast to the saccharine trappings of the story), you end up at the beginning of your current puzzle area, which is never too far back. Keep getting killed and a tip will appear to help move you along, though knowing what to do doesn't always make the going easy. We have a lot of PS/PC-Games in our collection, but believe me, nothing comperes to "Heart of darkness"!

The Bad
We played more than a week, never the less it was too short, because is so damn good!!!

The Bottom Line
The game is something for advanced players!

Hidden away in the Heart of Darkness lies a terrifying world. A world ruled by the Master of Darkness whose cruel and absolute power leads an army of emaciated devils. The fiendish force scours the land in search of Andy a young boy on a quest to rescue his dog Whisky. Trapped in a terrifying nightmare only you can take Andy through hundreds of epic encounters to overcome a whole host of wonderfully weird characters and emerge triumphant from the Heart of Darkness.

The Good
Phew! Almost 6 years in the making and at last it's RELEASED! You can't get yourself asking, "why it took so long?" I don't have the answer, neither believe it's so important: If you like the game, there is no problem!

In general, I liked the game. Especially being able to find yourself again in a world similar to Another World and Flashback after all those years is a great enjoyment --just like playing the Curse of Monkey Island! So as expected Heart of Darkness improves the known quality to a incredibly lifelike experience.

The opening intro of the game is a perfect example for this thought. This stunning animated cutscene is just like watching a movie, like watching an earlier work of Steven Spielberg. It's not difficult to understand the interest of him in making a computer generated movie with the story of Heart of Darkness. Maybe, it'll be a second Toy Story affair, eh? Who knows? Amazing Studios (the developer of the game) is currently working on setting up a new company to handle CG movies.

The Bad
Although I like the gameplay, it's definitely frustrating to play. You didn't manage to cross the section you were in? The game immediately sends you back to the action and waits you perform your required skill. Unfortunately there is no alternative way to find in Heart of Darkness!!

For a 1998 game the low-resolution graphics could also be a problem. But you can't blame the developers for this because it's in the making for a long long time. So you had better amuse yourself with the 3D dimension they had filmed for the end sequence :)

The Bottom Line
One state-of-the-ART! 'Nuff said...:)

The Good
Okay, okay the opening story isn't that belevable, but one thing you better believe is that this game is great. A classic in my book and surely my favorate game of 1998. On the surface, Heart of Darkness may appear as a simple platform game, but don't be fooled because it is much much more. This game has character and is fun to play -- from the silly shadows creeping around to the flame-throwing skeletons burning you to your bones. Once you start, you won't put it down until you are finished, and once you are finished you will curse that people have to sleep because you will want to play it again.

The different levels, each with their own strengths and required skills to complete will make sure you don't get bored from repetitive uninteresting gameplay. The balance between action and puzzle solving is nearly perfect. In addition to the changing gameplay, the atmosphere changes from level to level in a fluid way that complements the story (and games as a whole) rather nicely.

Andy, the boy you control, has many movements, all of which get used throughout the game. Even though this is a platform game, he is often required to do things in places you just don't expect in a genre like this. Additionally, small in-game movies are well-placed to help give the illusion that Heart of Darkness isn't a dated platform game. All of these things have convinced me that there is much more life left in this genre. I just hope other developers follow suit.

The Bad
The main complaint I have with this game has nothing to do with gameplay, graphics or any of the other important characters of the game. My beef is that there appears to be NO way to skip past a cutscene the first time it is played. Some of the cutscenes are quite long and I'm sick of seeing them. Every time I start Heart of Darkness from a clean install, I have to sit through the cuttscenes over and over again. To add salt to an open wound, the end credits are almost 10 minutes -- let me skip them so I can start the game again! I've pounded on the keyboard, kicked the machine and cursed something horrible. If anyone knows the magic touch please let me know and I'll eat my words.

Apart from that tirade, I only have two minor gripes:

First off, the graphics or pretty low resolution and the palette rarely uses over 200 colors. Considering that this game came out in 1998 and still runs on a 486/66 I'm not going to gripe too much. But the fact that this game does run so well on low end hardware pisses me off because I could have been playing this games for the last six years with no problem -- geeze.

Secondly, the final sequence in the game is brutally hard. I think I'm pretty good at these types of games and I was pounding my head quite a bit. Every time I finish the last scene, I get the feeling that I won it by chance, not skill.

The Bottom Line
If you are an oldskool gamer and you haven't got this game run... don't walk to you nearest dealer. Get your fix while you still can becaue this is the good stuff.