First of all, let me say it loud and clear: this game will be an
instant CLASSIC adventure game. I have not been so absorbed by a
FMV (Full Motion Video) adventure game since Tex Murphy: The
Pandora Directive. Despite some minor issues which I will explain in detail,
this game has the story, characters, and puzzles that make a great
adventure game.

‘Fears for the future
of mankind are overflowing. Society, in the middle of the 21st
century is threatened by a devastated natural
environment, overpopulation, crime and an increase in different
kinds of depression and nerve related illnesses. Nick Delios, a
top medical
software student of University of Thessaloniki, has been back-stabbed
by his own scientific research leader. Dimitris Argiriou claimed
Nick’s project as his own, threw Nick out of the team, and broke
Nick’s marriage with his sister. In his frustration, Nick abandoned
his study and became a private detective specialized in solving
cases of industrial espionage by using his medical studies and
acquaintances
of the underworld.

When Thanos Pekas, Police
Investigator and old friend, asked him unofficially to help him
solving a murder case of a small time
crook, Nick, who needed the money, accepted the case without
suspecting where he is about to get involved. This simple case
will lead him
into a complex case of multiple conspiracies, where nothing is
what
it seems to be and which surpasses the borders of our very planets.’

Sounds interesting? That
is the subject of this great adventure. Believe me, after the first
1-2 hours of your gaming time, you
will forget everything about your time, surroundings, and maybe
even family.
This is a highly addictive adventure game. The simple case
will evolve into a big spider web of conspiracy that will keep
you
on edge until
the conclusion. In fact, this is one game that I did not want
to be over. The developers lived up to their promise to provide
at
least 230+ puzzles, 30 characters, and 20-25 gaming hours.
By any means,
this is definitely not a short adventure game. I do not remember
the last time I spent more than 12 hours to finish an adventure
game since The Longest Journey.

There is only one solution
for each puzzle, but they can be solved in any order you like (most
of the time). The puzzles
are mainly
logical, mechanical, inventory-based, code-solving (you will
see a lot of this) and of course the inevitable (but easy)
maze. The
puzzles range from easy to extremely tough. Almost all of
the puzzles are integrated to the story and quite logical. At first,
I thought
there are one or two puzzles that are some kind of being
forced
to be there. I will not give any spoiler within this review
(you’ll have to wait for my walkthrough), but the Rania’s
barrier and
Professor Prokopiou’s laptop key codes are difficult puzzles
and they did
initially
seem to be illogical. But, once you understand the overall
story, everything fits into place. Still, beware of these
two puzzles
as they are headache inducing.

Other puzzles are relatively
easy as long as you pay attention to conversations and your surroundings.
If you do become
stuck in the
game, then you have likely missed some important clues
during a conversation. At one time, I spent almost 2 hours to try
to figure
out what to
do next because I missed a small clue from a previous conversation.

The developers of Conspiracies claim that it is a non-linear adventure game. Supposedly, you could
solve the puzzles
in any order you
want, but I still think this game as a non-linear adventure
game in a ‘limited’
way. Why? It is true that some puzzles can be solved
in random order, but often the game will not allow you to
progress
until you first
solve a specific puzzle or accomplish certain actions.

Navigation is quite easy
and is very similar to Tex Murphy games. The mouse is used to control
your view and the
keyboard arrows
to walk. Using the ‘Shift’ button in conjunction with
keyboard arrows
will increase your walking speed. The right mouse button
brings up item descriptions and also accesses the 3D
inventory item
close up
view. This is where one of the minor issues that I
mentioned above. It is sometimes very difficult to use your left
mouse button in
conjunction with the ‘Ctrl’ button to rotate the item
in a 3D view. I had a tough
time during one of the puzzles rotating torn papers
for
a better view.

The other thing is your
mouse cursor will not change when it go over usable items on the
screen. Usually
I really
dislike this
kind of
feature because it will tend to lead players to pixel
hunting. Fortunately, the items that could be used
most of the time
are very easy to spot.
Anima-PPD told me that they did this intentionally
to make the puzzles harder to solve – and it worked!
We
hope that
this
feature
will not
make players avoid this game because it is really
an enjoyable game that encourages you to pay extra attention
to every
scene.

To combine items in your
inventory, you need to click the first item and then click it on
the second item.
Beware
though, Conspiracies uses a one-way combination system. That means it
works only in one
direction. For example, if you want to write something
on a piece of paper, you never put a paper on your
pencil. Instead,
you
must place the pencil on the paper. A coffee puzzle
early in
the game
is meant to introduce players to this concept.
So when you want to combine items, make sure you know
what
you want to
do or at
least
try both ways as the ‘combine everything with everything’
way of thinking will definitely not work.

By the way, the inventory
has limited slots. You can only carry 27 items maximum at any time.
This
is not
a problem
most of
the time
because an inventory item will automatically
disappear when it is not useful anymore. This is a neat feature
as you do
not have
to
carry around useless inventory items. But the
game
will not allow you to go to a certain area where
items are
automatically added
to your inventory if you do not have an open
slot for them. This useful
feature might present a problem though if you
are not aware of it. I got stuck for a long time once
because
all of
my
inventory slots
were full. I thought that I’ve done everything
to be able to reach a hotel for an appointment
but the
game
would
not allow
me to enter
it. Accidentally I figure it out after I drop
an item at Nick apartment and try to proceed to the
hotel again.
So
in case
you
are running
out of inventory space, just go to Nick’s home
and drop some items there for future use. Be
careful on where
you click
on the screen
when you have your inventory item on the cursor
because
you might accidentally drop the item and do not
realize it. I
lost one
of my important inventory items because of this
so that I have to
restore
my game again.

There is no difference
whatsoever between the DVD and CD versions. The CD version includes
only the
Greek
version of the game,
whereas the DVD includes both the Greek and
English
versions. If you
choose to do a full installation, you only
need to use the DVD for starting
the game. Once the game starts, everything
will be run from the hard drive. If you have extra
space on your
hard
drive
(around
2 GB),
this is the recommended setting because it
could speed up the game.

Conspiracies graphics
are above average graphics quality. Even though sometime real images
and
3D background
do not blended
nicely, it
is still very colorful and neat. Seems that
the pictures of the real actors are placed
on the
background as
a poster instead
of as a 3D
object. You could see them as flat objects
from the side. Voice acting is quite good
but not
top quality.
One or
two characters
have very
annoying accents but they are still bearable.
The voices are dubbed in English language
so that the
lips movement
does not
match the
voice. I enjoy the acting more when I play
the Greek version even though I do not understand
the speech.
I wished they
use subtitles
so that we could enjoy the ‘real’ voice acting
of the actors.

The conversation tree
could be better with a minor adjustment. A ‘gray out’ feature
for exhausted
conversation lines
would be very
helpful so the player knows when a line
of questioning has been exhausted. Sometimes
you need to ask
a
question again
when Nick
learns new information.
So do not hesitate to ask a question again
and again if you are stuck at some point,
but occasionally
I would have
to
go through
the conversation
tree again just to reach the interrogation
mode. A conversation should only need to
be initiated
the
first
time we talk
to the person. Fortunately
you could skip the speech by pressing your
mouse right button but this still became
redundant. Also, some
of the conversation
lines
could lead to a game over situation, some
might give different paths and some do
not affect
anything
at
all.

The game ran smoothly
without any single crashes on Windows 98, 2000, or XP. This
is really
almost a bug
free product.
In rare
cases you
will see some 3D clipping problems and
occasionally the screen will be out of
sync or your character
may become
stuck in
3D spaces (in
my case the bug appears at the university
main frame room). The developer explained
that this
might happen
to players
using an
AMD with low
resolution settings. Hopefully they will
soon release a patch. The developers
spent a lot
of time testing
this product before
making
it available to public. This should be
a philosophy for any game developers
out there.
We do not
want to waste
our money
to buy
buggy products.

Finally, I have never
experienced customer support as good as Anima PPD: all email
requests were
responded to in less
than
24 hours.
Like us, they are also hardcore gamers
and recognize the value of good customer
support.
This is a
big plus for
them. They
are aware
from experience what kind of games
or puzzles that gamers
demand.

Despite some minor issues
here and there, this is a MUST have for any
adventure
lovers. Conspiracies deserves
to be placed
in the
‘A’ adventure games list. It is almost
included in
the
elite ‘A+’ games
such as Gabriel Knight, The
Longest Journey or Monkey
Island. So order
your copy
now and prepare
to experience
one the
first ‘A’
rate adventure titles in 2003. Hopefully
there will be a sequel in the
future. Oooopps.. did I say a sequel?
You should be able to see a possibility
when
you see the
ending. As for
now, just
enjoy
this brilliant adventure game.

Final Grade: A

The English version of
Conspiracies will be release on August 15th and can be ordered
directly from the Anima
PPD website.

System Requirements:

• Intel Pentium II 400 MHz or Celeron 466 MHz (1 GHz processor recommended)
• 64 MB RAM (256 MB
  Recommended)
• DVD-ROM
• 16 MB AGP DirectX
  8 Compatible Video Card (64 MB recommended)
• DirectX 8 Compatible
  Sound Card
• Windows 98, ME, 2000
  or XP
• 3 GB free hard drive
  space (30 GB recommended for faster level loading)