No Hope, no Crosby, not even Dorothy Lamour in a sarong. No singing,
no punch lines, no double entendres. Just rats, dark alleys, murderous thugs,
and mysterious religious cults. Thank goodness Road to India is a short
game or I may have sacrificed myself to an eight-armed deity just for the comedic
relief.

While it is nice to become immersed in a game world other than the
usual exotic locales of Atlantis, Egypt, and Pittsburgh, it is also necessary
that the gamer truly feel as though he is exploring and absorbing these foreign
cultures, and this is where Road to India falls woefully short. For numerous
reasons, what could have been a memorable and vivid gaming experience is instead
just another run-of-the-mill adventure game.

Road to India immediately
grabs the player with an excellent opening as a bomb planted in a New Delhi marketplace
serves as a cover to allow an underground cult to kidnap a popular Indian actress.
We then watch as Fred, an American college student, bids farewell to his Indian
fiancee, who is returning to India to visit her family. The student soon receives
a “Dear Sahib” letter from his fiancee and, unaware that she is now
involved with a cult, takes to the friendly skies to confront his true love face-to-face.
As with the actress, an ancient cannibalistic sect that worships the goddess Kali
has abducted the woman in preparation of offering her as a human sacrifice.

The
supreme goddess Kali has been the subject of numerous books and Hollywood films.
She is usually depicted as having an awful, frightening appearance with disheveled
hair, a girdle of severed arms, a necklace of freshly cut heads, earrings of children’s
corpses, and a bracelet of serpents. She has long, sharp fangs and claw-like hands
with blood on her lips. I’m sure many of you are at this moment shaking your head
in disbelief and bewilderment at how precisely I have just described your wife
from your first marriage, but Kali is also the goddess who threatens stability
and order, so I shall not even jest about such a matter.

This prologue and
all of the following cutscenes are gorgeous and establish a malodorous Indian
atmosphere. But these third-person scenes are so evocative and involving that
maybe it is inevitable that once the game switches to the first-person playable
portions, the game seems almost devoid of life. The cutscenes are full of touches
of culture and teeming life, but when the player has control, the streets and
alleys are empty. Other than the occasional street urchin or rodent, there is
very little evidence of humanity, and the game loses much of its impact. In a
country like India that has severe overpopulation problems, a game like Road
to India could have much more of that stranger in a foreign land feeling of
hopelessness if the main character were always surrounded by, yet unable to communicate
with, the teeming populace. But in all fairness, such intense graphics would probably
have been cost-prohibitive. Everyone and everything is extremely detailed and
modeled, but it is what is missing that attracts more attention than what is present.

Yet Road to India still manages to maintain a sinister edge, much
of which can be attributed to the game shifting between dream sequences and real-life
situations. These dream sequences are presented as though through a soft filter
and are always initiated by a realistic occurrence such as the main character
being knocked unconscious. They also allow for the developers to take some liberties
with reality, such as Fred’s easy admittance (well, easy after you solve a few
puzzles) into the Taj Mahal and an intelligent conversation with a monkey. While
sequences like this are forgivable, as they are presented as part of a dream,
it is strange that the “waking” sequences are so void. As you walk the
streets of India at night, then only other persons you see are a street urchin
and eventually a bum. When you finally find the Kali worshiper’s house that is
used as a front for their illegal activities, there is literally no one around,
and when you stumble upon their secret hideout where the sacrifices are conducted,
there is one, count ‘em one, person guarding this age-old cult with thousands
of members.

Most of the puzzles are nicely integrated into the game and
are fairly easy, but there are a few that are totally nonsensical, such as a Hellraiser-type
puzzle box that is found late in the game. The solution to open this box is to
simply click repeatedly on it until all of the pieces slide out and reveal a hidden
key. What kind of puzzle is this? There is no rhyme or reason to the solution.
Probably the worst puzzle, though, is one where you must wake a sleeping bum who
has stolen your wallet. While the solution itself is not difficult, finding the
necessary item becomes a ticklish nightmare. Yet other puzzles are well constructed
and require some forethought and reasoning.

As for the other major gaming
components: the voice acting is noticeably weak at times, as are some of the inane
translations from French to English. The music is often appropriate to the setting
but does begin to loop if you are stuck in certain areas for any length of time;
but considering the linearity and ease of the game, this is not often a problem.
There are also some unforgivable load times that do detract from the suspense.
Finally, navigation in the mouse-driven, point-and-click atmosphere is a breeze.

Though
Road to India is to be commended for presenting a different and welcome
culture to gamers, it is also a game that can easily be completed by experienced
adventurers in one afternoon. Even a newbie though should be able to fly through
this game in under ten hours. In today’s marketplace, you should not pay more
than $20 for this game if you are to get any entertainment value for your gaming
dollar.

Final Grade: C+

If you liked Road to India:
Read:
The Song of Kali by Dan Simmons
Watch: Gunga Din
Play:
The Scroll

System Requirements:
Windows
95/98/00
Pentium II 350 MHz
3D video card
64 MB RAM
16x CD-ROM
Direct
X 8