Aye-aye-aye!
Those goofy Gobliiins are indeed back! When Sierra Online bit the
dust about a decade ago, fans of classic adventuring had cause to
despair. Gone were the Kings Quest games, the Space Quest games, the
Larry games. No one who no longer believes in Santy Claus expects
now ever to see Kings Quest IX, or Space Quest 7, or Leisure Suit
Larry 8 (I mean one made with Al Lowe’s participation). And yet, here
we have Gobliiins 4. If you recall Gobliiins 1, 2 and 3 at all, you
may not remember them as Sierra games. True enough. They were created
in the early 90’s by a French company called Coktel Vision, and distributed
in the States by Sierra. The quasi fourth game of the series, Woodruff
and the Schnibble of Azimuth, also came via Sierra, ca. 1995. Woodruff
is not an official Gobliiins game, but did stem from the same mind
and hand, writer and graphic artist Pierre Gilhodes. Well, M. Gilhodes
must be a very persistent fellow. He’s kept his rather unique vision
all these years and talked another French company, Société
Pollene, into joining forces with a Russian one, SnowBerry Connection,
to market his official fourth Gobliiins game.

You may also not recall
Gobliiins being an adventure game, per se. Certainly Gobliiins 1-3
are not traditional adventure games. They’re more of an adventure-puzzle
hybrid. You do have protagonists going on a quest, solving puzzles.
There’s an inventory. There are dialogues, of a sort. But the emphasis
is on the puzzle-solving skills of the variously gifted Gobliiins.
Each Goblin has his specialty and most of the puzzles consist of you
figuring out which Goblin does what in which order. The three Goblins
this time are named Tchoup, Perluis and Stucco. Tchoup does all the
talking, keeps the inventory and does most of the thinking. Perluis
provides what magic he can muster up, mostly moving things and animating
odd creatures. Stucco is the muscle. The plot of Gobliiins 4 has Tchoup
getting a message at his detective agency that the king’s beloved
pet aardvark has gone missing. It’s up to our three heroes to, first,
wend their way to the castle, then track down Riri, the missing aardvark.
Or maybe that’s aaardvark?

The
days of DOS are long gone and Gobliiins 4 is a good-looking modern
game, with the art once again courtesy of M. Gilhodes. It’s a very
distinctive, very French cartoon style, along the lines of Asterix.
The Goblins universe also has its own laws and citizens, along the
lines of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Vaguely medieval with
a lot of talking animals and nonstop Three Stooges-ish slapstick.
I’m not a techie so I have no idea anymore what kind of game engine
is being used. This one appears to be some sort of 3D thingamajig.
Only there’s no camera movement. At all. Each of the game’s fifteen
levels is one giant playroom, with a surprisingly large depth of field,
and the characters run around within it. It’s like playing in
15 different dollhouses. To me, they look like the sets of a Sixties
puppet television series. Supercar, anyone? Fireball XL-5? Only no
strings attached. Best of all, you can send all three goblins off
on three separate tasks simultaneously. Sometimes, the puzzle requires
you to do this, but the rest of the time it’s as amusing as it is
time-saving.

The plot is charming, but
not terribly germane. The puzzles are the main deal here. While most
objectives in the game are quite easy to accomplish, figuring out
all of them is less so. Something is bound to trip you up. There’s
a certain amount of pixel-hunting, but at least everything onscreen
is clearly labeled. Once you find it, that is. There’s also a side
quest to recover all of the large gold teeth that seem to be lying
around. Again, acquiring most of these is simply a matter of remembering
to pick them up before you move on to the next screen. But three or
four of them will give you something to chew over. The teeth later
in the game turn into your ticket to the game’s secret bonus level.
This is well worth pursuing, as the bonus level is one of the best
in the game. There’s no manual that I could see, but the game’s main
menu screen cleverly doubles as a tutorial.

It
took me about four days to make my way through the game world of Gobliiins
4, extra 16th level included. I had a lot of fun doing it. And I was
fairly proud of myself too, until I discovered, while perusing the
offical site, www.gobliiins4.com,
that the game was designed to be played by three-year-olds. I kid
you not. Up till then I’d thought the age-guide label on the CD was
a misprint. Must be 13+, no? Well, no. On one of the official site’s
web pages it goes on to say, “An average 8-year-old will take
one to two hours to get through each level.” But, uh, that’s
about how long it took me to get through each level.

I should have known. You
can always tell when a game is designed for really young children.
The more grinning, animated insects you see flitting about the screen,
the more you know it’s for les enfants. But, you know, it didn’t really
play like a children’s game. Most of the puzzles were consistent with
the ones in the earlier Gobliiins games. Not rocket science, but not
child’s play, either. I don’t seriously see a 3-year-old managing
this game by him- or herself. For one thing, they’re never going to
be able to cope with the level code you get after completing each
scene. This is a ten-letter gobbledygook word that reads a lot like
the word “gobbledygook.” You have to be very careful not
to confuse your vowels if you don’t want to get an “incorrect
code” response. The game also remembers your last level played
and takes you there when you click “continue game.” But
I was too paranoid to rely on that. I had visions of getting to level
14 and then finding out the game had forgotten my progress. It’s
times like those that an ancient DOS device like a level code feels
comforting, no matter how much of a pain it is to scribble down –
legibly.

I’m
not a professional child psychologist, but my feeling is that this
game would probably be a lot of fun for a very young child to play
alongside an older sibling, or a parent. Though I suppose an 8-year-old
could get through it without help. The smart aleck. No doubt this
says something rather profound about the human mind and aging. Does
the average 8-year-old really have the same puzzle-solving skill as
the average 28- or 38-year-old? Maybe. But if so, what is the advantage
of getting older? Well, you get to tell smart-alecky 8-year-olds to
go to their rooms. As for an adult playing Gobliiins 4 with a younger
child, I would be careful about this. It could be a positive bonding
experience for you both. Or, you might get frustrated over a puzzle
and the kid might inadvertently overhear some inappropriate language.
“Mommy! Daddy said a bad word!” Perhaps it would be best
to let the 3-year-old play the game with the 8-year-old. You can play
the game later at night when they’re asleep. The game, conveniently,
does keep track of a whole bunch of people’s progress. You punch in
a user name at the beginning, then select it when you return and type
in your last level code. At first I was a little annoyed that I would
lose whatever progress I’d made in the last level played, but it really
only takes a minute to get back to where you were once you know the
solutions.

There is voice acting in
Gobliiins 4, but since it consists entirely of nonsense words like,
“Gmooch brrrrip aaaaa wookie!” there’s not much point in
critiquing it. Actually, for an internationally marketed game like
this one, it’s a rather clever policy. You don’t have to pay a whole
lot of actors to dub the voice track into a half dozen different languages.
You just change the onscreen translated text, the way they did with
silent movies a century ago. There’s some pleasant incidental music
in the game, and it thankfully is rather unobtrusive. The sound effects
are suitably wacky. The options screen provides most of the genuinely
useful options, such as windowed or full-screen.

Gobliiins
4 is a polished production all around, very similar to the quality
of the original games, only updated technologically for Vista and
beyond. The version I played came on a single CD. When was the last
time you saw a mainstream adventure game on a single CD? 1993 maybe?
I get the feeling though, from the website, that Gobliiins 4 is primarily
intended for digital download. I did think the game was a bit on the
short side, but that may simply be that I was sorry when it was over.

Pierre Gilhodes’s masterpiece
still remains the rather unappreciated Woodruff. That is a truly wonderful
game, with the kind of elaborate puzzles that no game distributor
would ever dare let out the door nowadays. The where’s-the-walkthrough
crowd would be up in arms. As it is, I was somewhat shocked, along
with pleasantly surprised, that Gobliiins 4 does not have a help system
of any kind. Actually, there is one teensy bit of help in the bonus
level, but it’s mostly a joke, or a taunt, from M. Gilhodes. On the
other hand, perhaps they figured Gobliiins 4 wouldn’t need a hint
system since it was designed for 3- to 8-year-olds. It’s only the
kids’ parents who whine and kick and scream to the game distrubutor
that there’s no way to cheat. Your average 3- to 8-year-old knows
that the whole point of a game is to challenge one’s mental skills.

I
can’t really think of any negative aspects to Gobliiins 4. Controlling
the three Goblins can be a pain at times. They have a tendency to
bunch up everywhere, especially when you need to be able to switch
among them quickly. But once you learn to hit the space bar to cycle
through them, that’s no longer a problem. Also, the load time for
each level is rather lengthy. But since there’s zero backtracking,
this too is not a serious drawback. Really, this is a cleverly designed
and entertaining game. And no hint system! Encroyable. I would say
that if you’re an adult, it’s an A minus (a tad too cutesy in spots).
If you’re an average or even above average 8-year-old, I’d say it’s
a straight A.

System Requirements:

• Windows XP/Vista
• Pentium 4 1.8 GHz
• 1 GB RAM
• 128 MB Graphics Card
  (GeForce FX 5700 or better)
• 1.5 GB free HDD space