bleepnikPrivate Detective
Posts : 544
Joined: 13 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | [size=16]Part 1 of 2
Technical Overview
My system configuration:
Athlon 1800xp, 512mb ram
ATI Radeon 8500
Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! Value
WinXP Pro
Installation was a breeze. The setup program misbehaved a little bit, but nothing that caused any problems in running the game. I told it to create its program group in \games\amerzone; it did so, but the only shortcut it placed there was a shortcut to the shortcut on the desktop. It also created its "default" group in the main program section of the Start menu. Very odd behaviour.
I was disappointed that I wasn't offered the option of a minimal, custom or full installation. Add/Remove programs in Control Panel reported that the game took up about 4mb on my hard drive, meaning just about everything was read directly from cd. Perhaps I'm too impatient, but I found this a bit irritating. Even when reading from my 48x cd-rom drive, I found reading of the data to be slow, and consequently the transition between scenes as well. Again, nothing intolerable, just a bit of an annoyance that detracted from the overall experience. I tried creating an image of the cd and using Daemon-Tools to mount the image and play from there, but Amerzone complained that the cd wasn't in the drive.
I didn't have to use any sort of compatibility mode to get the game to run in XP, and it crashed not once. I encountered no graphics or sound glitches at all. Both of these were a most pleasant surprise; I must admit I've gotten used to having to tinker a bit with my computer for every game I play.
Presentation
The graphics in Amerzone are beautiful, but not exceptional. I was expecting to be blown away by the game's beauty; I was impressed, but not in the way I was expecting. I've always been a fan of 3D environments, but not usually of characters. My experience with Amerzone was quite the opposite; the characters - both human and animal - were beautiful creations. The environment, however, detracted from the game's overall experience for me because it was so pixelated and grainy. I found the colours to be somewhat muted, but realistic nevertheless.
I would like to take a moment to reiterate just how much I loved the characters in Amerzone. A lovely imagination shines through the varied animal species, and the texture maps used on both the humans and the animals reminded me of the sort of computer-generated imagery used in animated feature films.
One aspect of the game that I did find to be most exceptional was the sound. Indeed, the background music is already fading from memory, it was so unobtrusive (on the other hand, that means it wasn't altogether memorable, but that's ok.) The environmental sounds, though, stole the show. I was so completely immersed in the world, that I didn't even notice the passage of time as I played, much less have the opportunity to get aggravated by the music.
It's a relative, subjective thing, I know. I'll tell you right off the bat that I've played very few games, and even fewer adventures. However, in my limited experience, I thought the voice acting in Amerzone was far above average. There wasn't much of it, but I thoroughly enjoyed what little there was.
I have only one gripe about this game's presentation, and that is about the written translation. I honestly see no point in using sophisticated vocabulary and eloquent prose (of which there is plenty) if an editor isn't going to find the simplest of grammatical errors and other obvious mistakes. Since I know that I'm far more anal about the subject than most, however, I won't dwell on it, nor will I allow it to taint my opinion of an otherwise marvelous gem of a game.
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