Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

The Good
Well, it uses the SCUMM engine adventure game system. That's a GOOD thing. You know how sometimes companies have an engine and make a ton of repetitive games that are almost the same? Well, now that the adventure genre is (almost) dead, I wish they've made more. Beautiful system, practically flawless ease of gameplay.

You're Indiana Jones and you have to find Atlantis. On the way, you visit Crete, Egypt, Monaco, Iceland, Atlantis itself, and more locations. You can play as both Indiana Jones and his archaeologist female companion. You can play an adventure or action mode. Thus, it seems like you have more options available than in the usual adventure game.

The game is a tad more serious than most LucasArts adventures, but not as dark as its predecessor, Indy 3. While there is a sense of urgency and drama (the cutscenes whenever the evil Nazis do something, etc.), there's also the usual witty Indy humor. Also, Indiana Jones looks remarkably like Harrison Ford in this game.

The storyline is EXCELLENT. As a matter of fact - you know how they often make computer games after books, movies, etc.? They made ANOTHER computer game (the Indy 4 action game) and a 4-book comic book series (by Dark Horse Comics) after this game, THAT'S how good it was. Sure, nowadays when Warcraft has its own Paperback series, that's no big deal, but for ten years ago it was.

On a side note, this was the first game that I owned that actively supported Windows (it actually had a little .jpeg picture for the Windows desktop shortcut, something that games only slowly adopted).

The Bad
I hated all those dumb dial-a-wheel copy protections, but thankfully if you buy the game today (CD version on a compilation, or so) you won't have to do it.

The Bottom Line
Get it. Graphics and sound are not too outdated, and the storyline's worth it. I WISH the following Indiana Jones games (Infernal Machine, etc.) had still been SCUMM adventures and not Tomb Raider clones.

The Good
What is good about this game? Everything comes to mind. The sounds are authentic and realistic. The graphics aren't good when it comes to raw power, but it has a certain style that endears you to the feel of the game. The controls are simple and too the point and the puzzles are all logical. The voices are also excellent, even Doug Lee who does Indiana Jones. You can really believe who these people are and their dialogue will bring you into the Indiana Jones world.

The Bad
Not much except that occasionally there is a lot of walking back and forth between areas.

The Bottom Line
Some games have a near mystical quality. Like X-Wing, Jedi Knight, Star Trek 20th Anniversary and Star Trek : Judgment Rites. This game is right up there with them. Buy it.

The Good
Fate of Atlantis is unique in the Graphic Adventure category. As others have said on this site, it has 3 different endings, and 3 different paths to get to those endings. Most Graphic Adventures up until that time had one ending that you strived towards.

The Graphics are classic 16-bit graphics, but they conveyed the fact that you were guiding Indy through the different locales in the game.

The Sound and Music used LucasArts' proprietary iMuse system which changed the music as you made decision, and the music change was Seamless. No stuttering of the sound card, no OBVIOUS change in music styles.

The gameplay itself was highly intuitive. The S.C.U.M.M. interface (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion... no kidding that's what it means!) was used for the basis of talking to people in the game. And if you are lucky enough to own the CD-ROM version of the game, you could hear the spoken text (instead of reading it), and... get this... it was also available in 5 languages. Inventory is easy to manipulate, and the puzzles were on the hard side, but not to difficult. A few leaps in logic were needed, but not that many.

The Bad
There really isn't a lot to dislike about this one. Aside of LOOM and Secret of Monkey Island, Fate of Atlantis is probably LucasArts greatest Graphical Adventure to date.

The Bottom Line
If you can't run Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, your tapes of the movies are worn out, and you can't wait for INDY 4 to be relased in theaters, then Fate of Atlantis is right up your alley.