INTRO: This mild game
turns San Francisco into a moody, watercolor world. Is it worth the
trip?

Golden
Gate contains two features that I hadn’t yet come across on an
adventure game. The first is the graphic style. The game’s backgrounds
are created with a series of beautiful watercolor paintings. When
looking at them for the first time, I had the same reaction I had
to The Neverhood‘s claymation look: “Hey, what a great
idea! Why haven’t other games tried this?”

IT’S A WATERCOLOR WORLD

Using a medium as visually
pleasing as watercolor is a brilliant stroke in a game that takes
place in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It makes sense,
really — with its mist-swept hills, San Francisco often appears to
be a watercolor painting in real life.

The
other extremely interesting element to Golden Gate was that,
for the first time ever, I was exploring locations in an adventure
game that I had actually explored in real life! As I wandered through
Fort Point, Golden Gate Park and Cliff House, I sat at my computer
with a stupid grin on my face: “Oh, yeah, go up these stairs
here . . . right, oh, and here’s where the Sutro Baths used to be
. . .” I even ran across the exterior of a movie theater that
I had been to! This really added to the intensity and delight of the
gaming experience.

THE GAME IS WAFER THIN

Golden Gate has
the heftiest backstory for any short game that I’ve ever played. This
is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of
view. My considered opinion is that a game needs to be as self-contained
as possible. The perfect game is one that is so well designed that
I can simply install and start playing.

The story involves a mysterious
box with an ancient curse on it. The game involves you wandering around
San Francisco finding clues to the box and the curse. At different
points you see video clips from the past that flesh out the story.
For whatever reason the city is, with one exception I’ll discuss below,
completely unpopulated.

THESE PUZZLES PRETTY MUCH
SUCK

Golden
Gate is easy to play, interface-wise, but there is this weighty
backstory, much of which is supported by a “diary” that
is included with the game. No, I don’t mean a diary you FIND while
playing the game, I mean a little booklet that comes with the game.
This irritated me a little bit. Reading every word of this messy diary
would have taken about as long as playing the entire game. Perhaps
if the game were longer, or more complex – but the actual GAME of
Golden Gate is paper thin. I mean, it makes Qin and
Beyond Time seem exhausting and long.

The game features lovely
background music that complements the surroundings nicely.

There aren’t very many
puzzles, and they aren’t particularly inspiring. Again, if I have
to read twenty tedious pages of a separate document to figure out
the logic of a puzzle in a game, someone isn’t designing the game
very organically. A few of the puzzles were just bad. For example,
one puzzle requires you to set the musical notes of a jack-in-the-box
so that it correctly plays the tune “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Now, this is a fine idea for a puzzle, and I always do well with music
puzzles. However, in this case, the designer had a tin ear – the answer
to the puzzle isn’t even the correct series of notes!!

COME BACK CHRISTOPHER WALKEN,
ALL IS FORGIVEN

Golden
Gate also suffers from one really obnoxious performance by the
actor who has the largest role in the story. I noticed in the credits
that he was also the director of the live action sequences. Big surprise.
I can’t imagine who else would cast him. This is a shame because he
plays a very important character, the one live person you meet in
an otherwise completely empty city.

Despite these problems,
I enjoyed Golden Gate simply because of its beauty and atmosphere.
It is absolutely the shortest game I have ever played. Considering
the game’s shortcomings, this is probably a good thing. If the game
had been longer I would been more irritated with the uninspired or
simply bad puzzles, the aforementioned bad acting performance, and
the bottom-heavy story.

As it is, Golden Gate
is a moody romp through one of the worlds most exquisite cities. I’m
not sorry I played it.

PROS: Beautiful,
unique watercolor backgrounds; a chance to explore a very explorable
city.

CONS: Thin story
weighed down by an inappropriately heavy backstory; uninspired and
bad puzzles.

CONCLUSION: Not
a bad choice if you have any affection for the City By the Bay; just
don’t expect Riven!

Final Grade: C

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Windows: Windows
95, 486 DX2/66, 16 MB RAM, 2X CD-ROM drive, DirectX compatible SVGA
video card, DirectX compatible sound card
Recommended: Pentium 75 or faster, 4X CD-ROM drive

Macintosh: 68040
25/50, 16 MB RAM, System 7.1, 8-bit (256 color) display, 2X CD-ROM
drive
Recommended: PowerPC Macintosh, System 7.5 or higher, 4X CD-ROM
drive

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.