Introduction

At last! A game I can criticize and thoroughly trash not just because
of my personal tastes, but because it is truly bad. No need to add
disclaimers everywhere to the effect that you may enjoy it even though
I didn’t. I didn’t enjoy it and I can just about guarantee that you
won’t either.

The Arrival is a licensed
title based on a movie of the same name. In the movie, the aliens
are trying to “terraform” the
earth to make it inhabitable for them and uninhabitable for us. They
fail. The game takes place ten years later and they are at it again.

The game was released in 1997. I had never heard of the movie. I
had never heard of the game. Unfortunately, I now know why.

Installation

This is an older game,
so the first obvious question is “Will
it run under WinXP?” The answer is “yes, but not well.” It
will play for a certain length of time and then crash. As long you
save often you should be able to get back in and continue. This was
frustrating, but not a show stopper.

One other problem was
that I couldn’t get screen shots. This is the first game I have
reviewed where the Print Screen key did nothing
but grab a large black rectangle. Also, you could <ALT><TAB> out
of the game, but you couldn’t get back into it.

So you can play The
Arrival on contemporary Window systems, but
it doesn’t play well with others.

The Story

You are walking around in the desert late one night and stumble
upon a camp of aliens. They abduct you to their space station where
you discover that they are going to destroy mankind. Your mission
is clear:
1. Destroy their evil Weapon of Mass Destruction.
2. Escape.
3. Tell the authorities so that the army can take over.

On the surface, this is a tried and true plot and has been done
very well by others. Unfortunately, the entire story is given to
us in an FMV during the introduction. The entire game consists of
you trying to destroy the station and escape so that you don’t go
with it.

No story unfolds during the game itself. We already know who did
what to get us here and we know what must be done for a successful
conclusion. If we were to clip off the introduction and ending sequences,
all we would be left with is a large puzzle with no storyline.

Therefore, I must award
a “D” to the story. Or, more
accurately, to the lack of one.

Puzzles

There are lots of them and most of them are badly conceived. The
biggest problem is that you do a lot of dying and that makes it hard
to get into the game. It’s hard to relate to a situation where you
must die to learn what to do next.

Once you escape from the Detention Center you find yourself almost
alone in a huge space station. The Power Station is on the fritz
and everyone has left. Only robots and a few critical personal are
left behind. Where do you go? You have no clue, so you just start
exploring. Normally, this is one of the fun things of adventure gaming.
But this station if big. And monotonous. And big. And it really isn’t
obvious just what a particular area does, since they all look alike.
And did I mention that it is big? You walk down one endless corridor
after another with no shortcuts and no way to stop a video sequence.
And you die a lot. Some areas are deadly to visit, but you have no
clue until it is too late.

Most, heck, all, of the game is based on inventory puzzles. Find
the keys, trade with the other characters, etc. Nothing wrong with
that, per se. Except in this case you have no idea what you are looking
for. Everything is alien. You must collect strange looking gadgets
with no idea what to do with them. There are strange looking machines
with hotspots, but no idea what they need. And everything is scattered
over the entire station.

You will spend hours looking
around the station, picking up random widgets, and then clicking
them at random on different machines.
If you are lucky, you will be rewarded with another widget. This
is not my idea of fun. It is one thing to find a combination lock
and then think, “OK, I must find a series of four number.” You
have a goal. But when everything is alien and the purpose is mysterious,
just what are you supposed to do? Everything become random trial
and error.

Even that wouldn’t be too bad if everything were in one room. But
the station is HUGE and the widgets you need for one room are scattered
everywhere. So you come to a mysterious machine, click your entire
inventory on it and nothing happens. Is this because the widget you
need is still hidden somewhere in the big station? Or is it because
you have to solve another machine elsewhere to get its widget? There
just doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to these puzzles.

There are some logic puzzles
and they are fairly well done. They are used to lock safes and
consoles and are the the type of puzzles
you find at roadside diners. You know, there is a free one at the
table and they hope you will buy one at the counter. Basically, you
move pieces around to create the correct pattern. These are nice
in that you can type a “?” to get up to three hints.
After that, you can just give up and have the computer solve it for
you. So the logic puzzles will never prevent you from continuing.

There is also a maze. ‘Nuff said about that. There is also a musical
puzzle which was painful. You hear an alien singing the tune. You
go to the keyboard and the tones don’t sound anything like what you
heard. Harmonics are added or missing. Tones are taken up or down
an octave. When you eventually solve it, it doesn’t sound anything
like the clue. Maybe a musician with perfect pitch could solve it.

But whether you used a
walkthrough or just slogged through with brute force, most of the
puzzles will leave you wondering, “Just
how was I supposed to know to do that?” For that, I must grant
the puzzles a “D”

Graphics

Mediocre at best. This
game was made ten years after Myst, yet the graphics look like
something off an old Amiga 500.

The ship is all simplistic 3D rendered stuff. It’s too real to be
a cartoon yet too cartoony to be real. It just comes off as being
cheesey.

The characters are inconsistent.
The alien are drawn fairly well in a “realistic” style.
But other prisoners are drawn either amateurish or so cartoony
as to be unbelievable. You really
need to go one way of the other; realistic or cartoon. Mixing the
two just doesn’t work.

The bottom line is that
while graphics should enhance the gaming experience, these tended
to make it feel cheap. I give them a “C”.

Sound

Not too bad. Ambient sounds
only, no music. Machinery throbs, steam hisses but none of it distracts.
Nothing special, but nothing to
complain about either. A solid “B”.

Unless you consider the character voice acting. That was straight
out of the Saturday morning cartoons and cornier than a farm in Iowa.
So no, let’s not consider that.

Playability/Addictability

Sorry, but it just isn’t
there. Playability consists of wondering endless halls looking
for random things to try randomly on random
machines. It just wasn’t fun and I felt no draw to go back to it.
I give Playability a “D”.

Conclusion

It would seem obvious
what grade to give this turkey, but I am going to grudgingly give
it a “C-”.

A “C” level game is one that is well below par, but
still playable. If you are a raving fan of adventure games and just
can’t be without one, then a “C” game will hold you over
until the next “B” or “A” comes along. While
The Arrival is miserable as an adventure game, it can actually work
as a mindless puzzle. Think of it as one of those Solitaire games
that require a lot of luck and little thought to win. If you are
in the mood for some mindless exploration and note taking with the
occasional payoff, then The Arrival is for you. It is just a matter
of setting your expectations sufficiently low.

Final Grade: C-
(find out more about our
grading system)

System Requirements:

• Pentium/Windows 95
• 4X CD-ROM drive
• 8 MB RAM
• Video card with DirectX
  support
• Windows 95-compatible
  sound card