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
*Though the story-line was greatly altered from the books (there being seven of them, they had little choice but to trunicate) the writers managed to preserve the basic plot and even gave the game some new interesting twists. I half expected the game story to seem choppy and inadaquate compared to the books, but I was presently surprised to see that it flowed quite nicely, even if gameplay seemed a bit short.

The game designers also came up with an extraordinary idea: spell creation. Instead of the typical 'find spell scroll - read spell scroll - know spell' play, in Death Gate you discover spell runes* through various means. The runes can then be placed into certain patterns that allow spells to be cast. Another great idea that never caught on.

The art work is quite nice by '94 standards, I recall being quite impressed the first time I played through. Though most scenes are static, there are a few cinematic cut-scenes through the game.

The Bad
The static scenery is kind of drab, though I think the exceptional art work helped keep it from being monotonous.

*Unfortunately, despite being great, spell casting was not developed as much as I would have liked to see it. Your character's entire spell repitoir is limited to just a few spell runes and patterns. It would have been nice if there were a wider range of combinations and more opportunities for spell creation.

Gameplay was a little short, but perhaps I only feel this way because I was a dedicated reader of the books.

The Bottom Line*
If you have read the Death Gate Cycle, I would greatly encourage you to try out the game. The story is much more simple, but fun nevertheless. The gameplay is very similiar to many Sierra games of the time, being static and puzzle based. I recommend this game to anyone else who enjoyes interesting games with intricate plots and puzzles.

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.