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 Heart of China is not your run-of-the-mill adventure game.
For one thing, there are no spaceships and not even the a slightest
hint of Atlantis or Knights Templar. The story in fact takes place
in the "real" world (but I use quotation marks because it is not
a true story, or at least I think it isn't) around the year 1930,
although the "Heart of China" thing is a lie for the most part
(I'll explain later). Since 1930 is technically the last millennium
and China is distant from the intended target audience, I suppose
this qualifies as "long ago and far away", which is always a good
setting for an adventure.In the opening sequence we meet the attractive Kate Lomax, the (only?) daughter of a Hong Kong millionaire, E.A. Lomax. Surprisingly, instead of enjoying her dad's hard-earned money (actually, he earned the millions through questionable business practices), she is working as a nurse somewhere in the heartland of China. Unfortunately, her exotic beauty has caught the eye of the local crime lord, Li Deng, who has her kidnapped so that he can add her to his "collection". Kate's father soon learns of this atrocity and being a man of action, wastes no time before he starts spreading terror and violence himself.  The object of this violence is none other than our hero, "Lucky" Jake Masters,
currently not living up to his name at all. Lucky is an American air-ace of the
Great War, presently making his living in Hong Kong as the owner of a small air
transport company. But the business isn't going terribly well and Lucky's debts
have been bought off by Mr Lomax - because Lucky is going to rescue Kate Lomax,
whether he wants to or not. Mr. Lomax also has his thugs destroy Lucky's sampan,
just to drive the point home, and sets up an interesting arrangement with Lucky:
the rescue effort pays $200,000 but for every day it takes to bring Kate home,
twenty thousand are subtracted from the total.Which means that you, as "Lucky" Jake Masters, have no time to lose. You start at the Hong Kong docks, with a nice view of floating debris that until recently was your sampan. And you will immediately notice the unusual game interface. While Heart of China is more or less a classical 2D point-and-click adventure, unlike most of its contemporaries it does not show you your hero - everything is first-person view. Also unlike most other adventures of the early 1990s era, the interface is very clean - the view covers the entire screen and there is only a small icon of your character in the corner. As you move the mouse cursor around the screen, it will change shape and allow you to travel, talk to people or manipulate objects. This is, of course, standard nowadays but Heart of China is a 1991 game, and it sure wasn't standard then.  But I'm digressing. So you stand at the dock and have nine days to rescue Kate
if you want to make any money. You can go straight to the airport and fly to
the
mainland but you don't have to. And this is another area where Heart of China is
different. It does not try to steer you along a predetermined path. In fact it
will let you do nearly anything. But not every possible action leads to the solution.
You can die in an an amazing number of fiendishly clever ways, so save early
and save often (you know, Dynamix is - or should I say was - a Sierra company
after all). There are also several possible outcomes of the game - yes, you can
get the girl but you have to play your cards right and that might not be easy.OK, OK, I'm digressing again. Before taking off for the mainland, you should visit the town and try to recruit some help. There is a ninja called Zhao Chi who has bad memories of Li Deng and wouldn't mind a bit of revenge. There's just one problem: you'll have to convince the ninja that airplanes (or "arrow-planes" as he keeps calling them) are a safe mode of transportation. After that, it's off to the airport and to the heart of China.  You manage to land near Li Deng's fortress and now must consider your options
on how to penetrate the defenses (which are quite strong). There are several
possible solutions and your ninja friend will help. At this point in the game
you can play either Lucky or Zhao Chi. The ninja can move around undetected but
Lucky has a
.45 so you'll need them both.Finding Kate actually isn't very hard, but rescuing her and escaping from the fortress alive is a lot harder. Especially since that involves a 3D action sequence driving a WWI tank. My aversion against action sequences in adventure games is well known. But that's not the problem. The problem is that even on a very slow (by today's standards) 166MHz Pentium which I'm keeping around expressly for the purpose of playing older games, this action sequence is way, way too fast. You'd need the reflexes of a cat to win. Actually this scene might be winnable even by a very patient human but there's another one later in the game and that is not. But to give credit where credit is due, the game designers realized that many people play adventure games because thay are not interested in action and included the option to skip the sequence. You can either skip it right away or you can try - and after several failed tries you'll get the option to say "I'm frustrated, skip this". So I did, because I was frustrated (and angry at the foolish programmers who failed to include a speed limiting device in the game). Thanks to that little button, I'm able to write this review.  If you thought that rescuing Kate is the end of the story, you were, of course,
completely wrong. In fact that's where your troubles are only beginning. Before
the adventure is over, you will have crossed the entire Asian continent (fortunately
on a plane) and half of Europe (this is why the "Heart of China" is a scam, because
only about 25% of the game actually takes place in mainland China). You will
incite a revolution in a small Himalayan country. You will also get to play as
Kate for a bit when Lucky's past catches up with him. And, if you're lucky, you'll
get
your business back and even (as Lucky) make Kate your wife. But to do that, you'll have to defeat your greatest enemy - "Lucky" Jake Masters. You see, a lot of the game is based on conversation. And Lucky is an awfully loud mouthed, rude and obnoxious American. Which is frowned upon in many foreign countries for some odd reason. Lucky isn't really a bad person, he just really doesn't want to let anyone know. When you talk to other people, you must try very hard not to insult them. But if you manage it, they'll help you. And maybe Lucky will even become a better person. Maybe he will even get lucky! Let's take a look at the technical side of the game now. The graphics are standard VGA, 320x200 in 256 colors, but the artwork is quite good, most of it obviously based on photos. Considering the vintage of the game, the graphics are excellent. In many ways Heart of China has the same "look" as many other Dynamix games of that era.  Unfortunately, it also shares some of the same problems, viz., digitized sound.
Just like all the other Sierra and Dynamix games of the same era, Heart of
China refuses to recognize a Sound Blaster when it is running on a fast machine
(where "fast" means anything over approximately 150MHz). I know exactly why that
is but I doubt anyone's interested in the gory details (I know Sierra isn't).
Anyway this means that I cannot comment on the sound quality. I did get AdLib
style music however, which was okay - not great but then that's no surprise given
the hardware limitations.I have already mentioned the game's interface, which I thought was pretty good. So now I should talk about the puzzles a bit. There are some inventory-based ones, but not too many, and some of them can be avoided. A lot of the game difficulty is concentrated in the dialogs as I explained above. The game is also fairly nonlinear. It is split into several disjointed locations, but within one location you can perform the necessary actions in pretty much any order, although some sequences are better than others. There is also more than one path through the game and from time to time a screen designating a "Plot Branch" (with a nice crossroads graphic) will pop up on you. This makes Heart of China interesting and replayable. Heart of China is a somewhat untypical adventure game. Apart from several glitches not unique to this particular game (and to be honest, not very relevant at the time the game was published), it is very well done technically and sports some quality artwork. The gameplay difficulty is easy-to-medium and the game is not outrageously long, a skilled adventurer should be able to finish it in about half a day. The story isn't Earth-shattering but it certainly has several unique points. All in all, it's an adventure worth playing and it gets a B+ from me. Final Grade: B+ System Requirements:
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1991 (CGA/EGA/VGA;
5.25/3.5)
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1991
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1992
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1994
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