Guilty

The Good
I'm not keen on repeating games, so therefore, same game can never have repeating value high enough for me. However, in certain games, like this one, or games such as Blade Runner, where the whole story is different, the character you play with, or the ending, there's a thing that make me finish them on more then just one way. When the intro to this game started, I thought I'll acquire the role of that thief, but all of a sudden I was given a choice to choose weather to play as Ysanne Andropath, the arresting officer, or as Jack T. Ladd, the jack of all trades ;)) Well, after playing in both ways, I must say they pretty nicely combined both stories, even though they are not exactly the same and only through the different point of view (like it's a case with Half-Life and Opposing Force).

I have a CD version, and I usually prefer voice version of the same games (like I have Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis CD version, Dune CD version, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers CD version, Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos CD version), so I figured I'll have privilege of enjoying the speech as well. Heck, I couldn't accomplish that at all... what's even worse, I couldn't accomplish to play sounds neither. All I was accompanied throughout the game was midi music which suddenly brought me feeling like playing some Amiga old game with C64 music. That ruined my game atmosphere for at least 60% :( Still, this wasn't just a bad attempt to copy so famous LucasArts' SCUMM adventure type of games. Heck, you can play with a beautiful redhaired chick ;)) But still, I wouldn't say that's just enough.

One thing in the game was reeealy amazing, and that would be animation sequences. Animation sequences consist only of animations with the Federation ship you're flying and the planets around, but are really nice for 8-bit color mode. They're even nicely intersected with static 2D backgrounds, even though it's obviously seen you're ship is 3D animated.

The Bad
Story does have a certain potential, but it's not that well developed. It lacks on many points, and holds some illogical and silly puzzles. Also, as much as it's obvious that development team wanted to add a certain touch of humor, but instead they made a big whoop in humbug. Also, dialogues are on the level as if some base school kid wrote them. And just to read the dialogues between your two main characters, it's not hilarious, but plain dumb. Throughout the game they show no feelings whatsoever, and then at the end they go all like mushy and yet not, yeah right! The ingame text sucks, and that's the fact.

Interface is somewhat annoying, and the usage of items is more then just that. You never know weather you must pick the certain item and place it to use it, or just click on 'use' button and then on it, or in which order, etc.. Also, with dialogues, on many places sentences you've used are left there so you can ask again, but to get exactly the same answer. I hate that with games. If they don't know how to make the response vary, then they should just remove the same sentence.

As for the music, there are some okay tunes, but mostly they're high midi tones that drives you crazy. I doubt they would sound much better if wave or mod format, though.

The Bottom Line
This is 2D point-and-click adventure game with some addings of 3D animations, but not the one that could be a competitor to any of the LucasArts' games of such genre, nor Westwood's Kyrandia Legends. Still, it's interesting to compare and observe how different companies and countries make different games of a same genre, and I'm glad to have it in my collection. If you can find it for a cheap price, and you like such adventure genre, it shouldn't be a NO-NO to buy. You just hope you'll have more luck in setting speech and sound if you get a CD version of a game ;)