(Note:
this was one of three “short short” reviews I did for CGW
for Xmas ’94; the other two are Dragon Lore and Noctropolis)

This one comes from Legend
Entertainment, the people who gave us Companions
of Xanth. Fortunately, while using the same interface and
engine, Death Gate is a better adventure than Xanth.

Centuries ago, the Sartans
split the world into five realms: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Nexus.
They imprisoned their enemies, the Patryns, in the Nexus, in a nasty
construct called “The Labyrinth”. Your character is Haplo,
a Patryn rescued from the Labyrinth by Lord Xar, who wants to reunite
the world. With Haplo’s assistance, he might be able to do that.

So
Haplo goes off in a magic ship through the Death Gate, the only connection
between the realms, to find the four sections of the World Seal. Along
the way, he pieces together more of the story of the Sundering, and
finds that things are not always as they seem.

The game is very linear.
Once Haplo leaves a realm, he can never go back. This makes it vital
to pick up every takable item, or you could be stuck in a later realm
for lack of an important object and have to replay part of the game
(which happened to me on one occasion).

This is not a hard adventure,
although some puzzles are tricky. Most of them can be figured out
logically; it usually isn’t necessary to go through the “try
everything” routine if you think about the situation a little.

What
set my teeth on edge was the bright and bouncy, “cutesy-funsy”
overtone of the game, with its cute but gullible Dwarfs and lovesick
princes, among others. The story of Death Gate is too important
for that and should have received a more serious treatment.

I
had problems with the game crashing in VGA every time I talked to
the merchant; switching to SVGA cleared that up. Besides, SVGA graphics
are much better; play in that mode if you can.

Of the three games covered
in these short articles, Death Gate was the least irritating
overall, and the closest to traditional adventuring. If you can put
up with the “cute” stuff, you may find this one worth playing.

Just Adventure Assigned
Grade: C

System Requirements:

386/33
Graphics 320 × 200 × 256
Disk space 4 MB (5 MB maximum)