Early in the 16th century, the legend of a city of gold made its way from a virtually unexplored interior area of South America to the civilized world. Legend was that a primitive tribe lived in a region where gold was so plentiful that they used gold dust to coat the body of their priest from head to foot. The explorers of the time, made optimistic and greedy by their success in plundering the riches of Mexico and Peru, found it very easy to dream that even greater wealth awaited them in the interiors of South America.

In particular, many Spanish and German expeditions made there way to South America and into the interior regions in search of El Dorado, the gilded one. All endured torturous treks through tropical jungles and experienced immense hardship and heavy losses of life.

The search for El Dorado would continue in earnest for the next 300 years, but to no avail. Even Sir Walter Raleigh would lead a tragic exploration to Guiana, where his futile hunt for the city of gold would only result in the death of his son and the final loss of his fading reputation.

And so ... the legend of El Dorado continues, even if only as stories, movies, and now video and computer games.

The Story's the Thing

At the end of March 2000, Dreamworks SKG released its newest animated feature movie, The Road to El Dorado, which told the story of two Spanish con men who unwittingly become stowaways on a ship under the command of the explorer Herman Cortes and end up finding the mythical city of El Dorado.

Now ... remaining very true to the storyline of the movie, Revolution Software (best known for its wonderful development of the Broken Sword adventure games), along with game publisher UbiSoft, has brought us a fun-filled adventure game version of the story, which is available for GameBoy, Playstation, and the PC.

The story begins in a seaside Spanish town, where a pair of bumbling con men, Tulio and Miguel, discover their faces unceremoniously featured on a "wanted" poster, which even they can figure out means it is time to move on. Tulio is a schemer with an overactive imagination and lust for fortune that makes him the perfect partner for Miguel, who is more the adventurer looking for glory before gold.

As the player, you will alternately assume and control the characters of Tulio and Miguel, who often require you to work with them in a sort of teamwork approach in order to meet the many challenges and avoid the numerous traps in the game.

Starting in the Spanish town's marketplace, where you will need all of your guile and luck to escape capture by the town officials, you will come into possession of a map that seems to illustrate a route to El Dorado.

Well ... the fun, humor, and discoveries are just beginning as you move on to new worlds of adventure from the brig aboard Cortes's ship to the jungles of South America and eventually stumble into the magical city of El Dorado, where you will find that life is not as simple as you might have wished and you are drawn into the scam of a lifetime.

Along the way, the lives of Tulio and Miguel will be complicated by other characters that they meet, including Altivo, a proud war horse, Tzekel-Kan, the high priest of El Dorado, and Chel, a beautiful native girl, who's a bit of a con artist herself. There is always a lot of humor to balance the nonstop challenges of the puzzles and the traps that you will encounter, and it is evident that in order to succeed you will need to have the skill to play as Tulio and Miguel in a teamwork fashion.

So ... as Tulio and Miguel strive to fulfill their dreams of gold and glory, their friendship will be tested, and they will eventually discover that the fate of El Dorado will be determined by their stealth, wits, and actions.

Can they outwit the schemes of Tzekel-Kan and the fierce Stone Jaguars? Will they save El Dorado from the plundering of Cortes? What will happen to the treasured gold of El Dorado?

I found the story to be captivating, and there are many features in this game that made it a real joy to play, but I would be remiss if I did not report that Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado is easy to moderate in difficulty and also quite short in the time that it should take the average gamer to complete the game. I consider myself to be a plodder when it comes to game play, and I was able to finish the game in about six hours, clearly a personal best for me with regard to brevity of game play.

The Gameplay

El Dorado is played from the third-person perspective and, thankfully, the camera angles are always appropriate and give the player a consistently good view of the surroundings. As you move off-screen to another scene, the transition is smooth, and you will never have to be concerned about adjusting your orientation in order to figure out where you are, what direction you are heading in, or what paths you can choose to take.

The game interface uses the keyboard to control movement as well as all other in-game functions. Normally, I prefer the mouse for movement and action, rather than the keyboard, but I must admit that for El Dorado the keyboard was very easy and comfortable to use.

When you interact with objects or other characters in the game, you are alerted to the opportunity to interact by virtue of the fact that the character or object will brighten and blink when you approach it. So ... as you move about the scene on the screen, it is normally pretty easy to discover those things and people that you need to interact with. However, there were a few instances where you needed to move your arrow keys to remote areas of the scene in order to find the action item.

Besides interaction, the keyboard is also used to perform special functions in the game, such as crouch, run, sidestep, and use your inventory. Hitting the Esc key brings up the main menu and pauses the game. The main menu includes save, load, continue, options, and quit game choices.

If you are really impressed by the animated video clips, then you can also choose to replay them at any time during the game play, just for the sheer enjoyment of them.

The Graphics, Sound, and Music

For those of you who are familiar with Revolution's Broken Sword games, it won't come as a surprise that the graphics and animations in Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado are just spectacular. As with George and Nicole, Tulio and Miguel work best as a team, and the presentation of the characters in real-time 3D romping about on beautifully rendered landscapes is about as good as it can get ... graphically. The graphical presentation is clear, clean, and colorful, providing the game player with a visual experience that will cause one to stop at many places along the way just to marvel at the beauty and vibrancy of the artwork.

If the normal activity of game play isn't enough and you like cartoons, you will be really impressed by the cinematic action sequences and the animations that I found to be thrilling. I just sat back in my chair as my heart rate increased and awe and amazement set in.

The music, sound effects, and voice acting are equally excellent and add to the pleasure that you will experience in playing this game. Whether it's the creaking sounds of the ship at sea, the boiling heat of the lava lakes, or the background crescendo of music in support of a moment of danger, the music and sound effects are always appropriate for the story and the situation. The voice actors may not have the reputation of Kenneth Branagh (Miguel), Kevin Kline (Tulio), Armand Assante (Tzekel-Kan), or Rosie Perez (Chel) from the movie, but they were all very professional in their presentations and enhanced the player's experiences in taking on the roles of Tulio and Miguel or having dialogues with the other characters in the game. The voice actors were able to convey and sustain humor in their roles, which was essential to the overtone of the game's story and is often very difficult to project.

The Puzzles

Plentiful ... that's the best word to describe the puzzles in El Dorado. Always fun and occasionally very challenging are other ways to recount the challenges and traps that constantly get in the way of your progress through the story.

The puzzles are always integrated smoothly into the evolvement of the story, and it seemed to me that there was a pretty equal balance of stealth-and-wit-type puzzles, which often require you to find and use inventory objects, along with puzzles that required you to perform some sort of action in order to get past an enemy or unpleasant circumstance. Do not fret, however, in your consideration of what I mean by action, as it doesn't mean fighting, but rather avoiding predators such as snakes, spiders, and stone jaguars by performing some sort of action activity such as running and/or sequentially manipulating certain devices.

The City of Gold Awaits

In spite of the fact that El Dorado was very short on playing time, it still was a gaming experience that was long on fun and adventuring. The story is riveting, the characters are interesting, the graphics and animated videos are spectacular, the puzzles are varied and challenging ... so that was enough for me ... I enjoyed El Dorado.

If you've seen the movie by Dreamworks or if you've appreciated the Broken Sword games by Revolution, then you probably will also enjoy Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado.

When you've inherited a winning story formula from the movie and the game developer has a recognized track record of achievement, then don't mess with it. Thankfully, UbiSoft didn't stray away from past success, and the result is a wonderfully charming, humorous, and fun game to play.

Final Grade: A-

Minimum System Requirements:

Windows 95/98/Me
Pentium II, 233 MHz
32 MB RAM
8 MB 2D graphics card
640x480 and 32-bit color
DirectX 7 sound card
4X CD-ROM drive
466 MB hard disk space