Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

The Good
Boy, if only every licensed cash-in was made by LucasArts, right? I mean, here they go, making what's essentially a spin-off from an in-house gaming classic, sort of like Westwood churning in a brand new C&C, but guess what? Where others fail by blatantly trying to squeeze the last penny of a series, Lucas gives a masterpiece by simply putting effort and dedication in it. Indy's latest adventure game is without a doubt one of the finest adventures ever made, it has a great plot that mimics the fast-passed action and adventuring you see in the movies while offering a completely new storyline involving an ancient and powerful force long lost to the seas. The game also sports some of the most devious puzzles that have ever graced a computer game, and manage to be challenging yet rewarding (and that also make sense, not the "use-the-pinnaple-with-screwdriver-to-get-grenade" kind of puzzles). And the ending sequence alone is one of the coolest ones I've ever had the pleasure of playing in an adventure game.

To top it off you also get wonderful graphics and sounds courtesy of LucasArt's always impressive production values. But the real icing on the cake was something that really blew me away when I first played: different game modes!! That's right, after a brief introductory sequence you are given the chance to play the game with the aid of your brand new love interest, go at it solo (which gives you COMPLETELY different puzzles) or play in the "action mode" which has simplyfied puzzles and is instead filled with one-on-one classic Indy fistfights. Save for the beginning and the final act, the entire game plays differently depending on what choice you make, a refreshing and much more lasting experience than what you get on most adventure games.

The Bad
It always sounds extremely cheesy and fanboyish, but at the risk of sounding like a Lucas-loving whore, I got to admit that Indy & the fate of Atlantis has nothing wrong with it. The only thing you could throw at it is the faults and shortcomings of the adventure genre, but that only works if you don't like adventures. If you do, then you'll find that this is as good as it gets. Yeah, I'm dead serious.

The Bottom Line
Incredibly good no matter where you look at it. Indy 4 stands the test of time as one of the best adventure games ever made, sell your soul if you have to, but GET IT. They just don't make games like this with so much attention to detail and fantastic gameplay.

The Good
(the Bad)

Due to conceptual reasons revealed later on in the review, I have decided to discuss the bad things about the game first.

1) the graphics aren't that good; if you consider that Sierra remade Quest for Glory this same year (and Kyrandia 1 was released as well), the backgrounds in this game just seem grey and dull and unimaginatively photo-realistic (though without such advantages of photo-realism as high resolutions and lots of colors) in comparison. The color palette in this game makes me want to ask a question: why hasn't there ever been a b/w adventure game released, ever? Also, the backgrounds aren't very detailed either, and the characters are pretty small, and mostly with no close-ups either.

2) you could die in this game, and quite easily; what happened to the LucasArts philosophy?

3) upon replaying it recently, I found it kinda short; sure, it has that advantage of having the middle-section in three different versions (you bet I was thrilled when after finishing the game for the first time I suddenly found out that there were practically two more somewhat smaller games there yet remaining) but if you play the whole story through, you get to play only one of those versions, and then you're smack into the last third (more like last half) which is always the same. And the middle-section isn't that long either - only a half-dozen locations (2 very small in Atlantic, 2 not-so-large in the Mediterranian, the large but not-so-exciting dungeons of Crete, optionally a mining site in Africa or a small island near Crete (both virtually unpopulated) and the sub, and that's it) and only a half-dozen characters with more than a couple of sentences to say or a fruit-on-a-stick to give you. I think that if they would've concentrated their efforts on one single definitive middle-section, they would've made a much more fulfilling game - but then again, that is what is always think regarding "non-linearity" in plot-led games.

4) the last section (Atlantis) is extremely questionable. First of all, the graphics go totally down the drain here - it's all a big muddy dungeon. Second, no characters to talk to (which is a big drawback because some comic relief would be very welcome here). Third, most of it takes place in a sort of a maze-like contraption, which thankfully doesn't involve any actual labyrinth-navigating (in fact, the top-down view makes it more like that handheld-game where you have to navigate this little ball through this little maze), but there are soldiers chasing you and it takes a pretty long time to get from anywhere to anywhere. Fourth, the actual gameplay in this section is kinda, er, I think "anal" is the word that describes it best: the thing is that some of the rooms in this maze just HAPPEN to be blocked off in some way (cave-ins, that sort of thing), yet there also just HAPPEN to be some chutes through which you can stick something into that room and knock something over, which just HAPPENS to have the effect of cracking open some door or starting some machine (which just HAPPENED to be standing there) which just HAPPENS to kill the two guards standing in that room. But why did I have to get into those rooms in the first place, I can't help asking (excepting the one which had Sophia jailed in it)? What, is it the ONLY room in the whole world to contain a stick, or a ladder, or some cogwheels I don't even yet know why I need? Have you ever seen an Indiana Jones film where he spends most of his time running back and forth from one room to the next, and to the next, and the next and then back again to the first one to see if the pile of crap he pulled out of the ancient Atlantidian garbage cans in those three "next" rooms just MIGHT switch/break something in the first one? WHY, tell me, why is it that if a robot breaks down in ONE room, his insides end up splattered across the whole goddamn underwater city? Or again, did the ancient super-advanced Atlantidian race have no conception of a "spare parts" shop/"room"/whatever and when something broke down they usually stole replacement parts from the robots/machines in the next room? When a computer at your workplace breaks down, do you usually sneak into the next room and break down your collegue's PC and steal parts from it? Don't answer that question.

And anyway - of course I'm not in any way suggesting that making the maze section even bigger would be a nice design idea (exactly the opposite), but it does occur to me that barely a hundred Atlantidians could fit in that "city", and even then they'd be very uncomfortable, there being no beds/toilet facilities anywhere to be found. And what did they eat anyway? Did they just open the window and fish? I just bet they did, because Indy certainly doesn't have any problem just barging in with his sub and then opening some door and getting inside (no diving gear/contact with water involved at any point). But then again, he doesn't have any problems being fired out of a sub's torpedo launch, so I guess he's just of a hardier stock than most people.

And what's worse (getting back to the mazes), once you get past the first biggest maze-circle and into the second one (smaller), the gameplay suddenly turns into "stand on the back of a mechanic swimming turtle (how aptly chosen!), and wait like 5 minutes until he transports you across the 3 desolate screens to the one which contains, again, a stick or a cogwheel". Then take the express back (I'm speaking ironically here), run across the whole of the bigger outer maze to some room where you can get some freaking beads you need to operate the machine which needs the cogwheel you just found. Look adventure game designers - having makeable/gatherable objects in a game which take a load of repetitive actions to make/gather, and the quantity of which is unlimited and the REQUIRED quantity is unknown (unless you're reading up on the walkthrough as you go along) = WRONG WRONG WRONG! What happened to the Monkey Island rope which you could never burn to the end? If LucasArts wanted to make Indiana Jones and the Legend of Kyrandia, maybe they should've included the option to EAT the goddamn beads by clicking them on yourself as well!

5) the Crete dungeon isn't that hot either; the puzzles are a bit funner here (particularly in the solo brawn version) but the top-down view has been removed and replaced with a regular multiple-screens maze. And the mineral-seeking fish-on-a-string is sure no match for the navigator's head! (Though the cool graphic effect of Indy climbing down a waterfall made up for it. In 1992, that is.)

6) character interaction generally left a lot to be desired: there clearly wasn't much effort put into branching out the dialogues, and aside from very flatly asking for the information that you need ("Have you seen any suspicious people digging around in the desert anywhere around here?"), the only thing Indy does is make some occasional off-hand one-liners ("I'm selling these fine leather jackets") or make some passably funny off-hand "I'm a big oaf" comments about the story ("uh, then they all died?" kinda stuff). There's little or no non-essential (to the plot) speaking going on - esp since Indy's witticisms usually end up with him either boxing with somebody or just plain being killed - which leaves the game world kind of bare, not fleshed out with little details like Sam and Max or Day of the Tentacle.

The Bad
(the Good)

Well. Those there were the drawbacks. The good thing is - this is the best single example of the "traditional", classic graphic adventure game. This is what adventure games where about until their surviving members sought refuge in cartoons (Tentancle, Sam and Max), or (intentional) self-parody (Monkey Island), or horror (Alone in the Dark) or film noir (Grim Fandango) or just simply much much more involved, "serious" stories, dialogues and plots (Gabriel Knight). The conceptual reason I put "the bad" first is this - though I KNOW this game is great, a classic, furthermore a classic I knew to be a classic way before anybody told me it was a classic (because I simply loved it so much when I played it), yet upon replaying this game a couple of months ago, I was unable to pinpoint the reason why I thought it was so great. Therefore I simply am unable to put anything constructive in the "good" section. Suffice to say that the drawbacks I have listed, and the rest is simply a defining chapter in the history of computer games.

But in the way of personal recomendation I CAN say this - when I first played this game, sometime around 1993 and 1994 (I was 12 at the time), I wrote it down as "my favorite game of all time". I hadn't played that many games at the time, but the game Fate of Atlantis stole the crown from was Dune 2, so it does say something. It held the title for about a year, until Gabriel Knight took over (and another year later, Ultima 7, pt 1). And about 7-8 years after I played it originally, I replayed it, and found it to be a mere shell of its former glory - the locations, the puzzles were all there but the magic wasn't. Why? Is it simply because I have come to expect much much more from a game, to expect film or cartoon-quality graphics (and original graphic design), top-class voice acting and witty, involved, surprise-filled dialogues? I guess you could say that I, like most gamers, have become lazy and don't use my imagination anymore (since there is much less need) - to which I would respond, true, but I would also rather prefer to have a modern car/computer/TV/whatever rather than have an old one and "use my imagination to make it come alive". Wouldn't you? And games are no different. If my imagination made the game "come alive", then I should sing praises to my imagination, not to the game. I certainly don't think it's true that games like Fate of Atlantis just gave an inferiour presentation of their content and therefore are now obsolete - I think that they weren't just pieces of mud your imagination made something out of, I think that the games of that time WORKED the imagination, were specifically made FOR the imagination, thus as to excite the imagination, to guide it and so on. Much like games today are made for 3d graphic cards and suchlike - games of that day were made for the imagination, some used it better, more efficiently, some worse. Obviously, Fate of Atlantis used it best of all - but. It doesn't work anymore. The naivette is gone, the belief that this game can "take me places" is gone. I can take the game apart like I couldn't before, I can note all the mechanisms that were supposed to drive the imagination, but they don't actually reach their target. It's as if I could print out some program's source code, read it and imagine how it was supposed to function but couldn't actually run it since it was written for some specific piece of hardware that nobody produces anymore.

There. I've exhausted THAT metaphore.

The Bottom Line
Play this game if you want to find out what was so great about the "classic" adventure game. Play this game if you want to find out why the classic adventure game became extinct.

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.