Game
reviewers – for that matter, all reviewers – are supposed
to be objective. And we do try. But I should admit from the outset
that I have always had a soft spot in my heart for video-based adventure
games. There was that brief period in the ’90s when a bunch of good
(or at least popular) ones were made. I really enjoyed Gabriel
Knight: The Beast Within, Byzantine,

Black Dahlia, and Ripper.
Hell I even enjoyed both Phantasmagoria (1,

2) games. And let’s not forget Tex
Murphy.

There was just something about the feeling that I was driving a movie,
I guess. That, and the fact that the best of those games took me places
I really wanted to go (Istanbul, Neuschwanstein Castle). I just ate
them up.

So you could argue that I was entering into the experience of playing
and reviewing Conspiracies II: Lethal Networks with
a chocolate heart on my shoulder.

I just wish I could tell you that the game is better than it is.
But then I’d be shirking in my duty, dear reader.

But let’s start at the beginning. As you probably know, this
is the sequel to 2003’s Conspiracies.
Like that game, it comes from a Greek development studio and takes
place in a not-too-distant dystopian future.

The opening cinematic is promising enough, though it may be quoting
a little too blatantly from Star
Wars. Still, steal from the best, I guess.

There is an enormous amount of back story to the game. You get it
through on-screen text and via the (sometimes quite lengthy) conversations.
If you like digging into a complicated political science-fiction plot,
there’s a lot here for you to chew on.

Alas, the acting is, in a word, amateurish. It may just be the very
bad translation into English, but it makes the worst moments of an
early Tex Murphy game seem like Citizen
Kane. Particularly awful is the actor who plays the lead.
He’s the player character, the one you need to identify with,
control, and root for. And the actor playing him is remarkably unattractive
(sorry, that counts in a game like this – do I need to remind
you how handsome Chris Jones (Tex Murphy) Darren Eliker
(Black Dahlia), and Scott Cohen (Ripper)
were? For that matter, Victoria Morsell (Phantasmagoria)
was easy on the eyes as well. Anyway, it counts.

But a bigger problem is his performance. He plays every scene like
he doesn’t want to be there. His default tone is a whine. He
doesn’t seem interested in getting out of bed, much less solving
a dangerous mystery. Why would anyone pick him to be a secret government
agent?! I’m frankly baffled by his casting and his performance.
Maybe he’s the CEO of Anima PPD Interactive; that would certainly
explain it.

Okay,
well so maybe you don’t care about the performance part of a
video-based game as I do. It can still be a good game, right? Let’s
see.

In the first big section, you’re wandering around a friend’s
villa. (Because for some inexplicable reason, even though you’re
a high powered secret government agent, you can’t pay your rent
and get thrown out of your apartment by your landlady.) The game expects
you to examine every room with a fine tooth comb, combining inventory
items in ways that are utterly non-intuitive (why would it occur to
me to attack a projector with a knife?).

And then there’s the character interactions. Character interaction
is good, right? Well, it might be when Tim Curry and Mark Hamill are
doing the voices. But in Conspiracies II it’s
a bit of a chore. The story has a potentially interesting setting:
Earth is a junior member in a multi-race galactic alliance, and there’s
a deadly conspiracy to investigate. However, this premise requires
an enormous amount of exposition, which the game serves up
during excruciatingly boring (and badly acted) cut scenes. Even worse
than this, there are times when the game stops dead and requires you
to ask questions. A lot of questions. There’s a scene
with your boss where you literally have to talk your way through twenty
topics. Note to the game designers: Making me ask about twenty
topics isn’t fun. And it’s not even really gaming.

What’s even more distressing is that you will need to go through
all of these topics every time you talk to this character,
or risk missing the one topic that contains a vital nugget of new
information. Again, this isn’t a fun or entertaining process.
It should go without saying that the primary job of a game is to be
fun, and it’s difficult to picture the developers of Conspiracies
II play testing these mechanics and having their testers say,
“Yeah! We love having to go through twenty-six topics over and
over again, hoping that one of them will change! Bring it!”

And then there are the environments. I understand low-budget games.
I root for low budget games. Machinarium,
from a couple of years ago, was a low-budget game, and it was absolutely
beautiful. The environments in Conspiracies II are not only unattractive,
they’re sort of puzzling. Early in the game you spend time in
a tennis club that looks and feels like no tennis club I’ve
ever been to. Now, I realize it’s a tennis club in Greece, and
in the future, but still. Since you spend so much time exploring your
surroundings in a game like this, it is a great help if the environments
make sense and feel organic.

The interface is workmanlike and gets the job done. As in many games
like this, you pick up everything that’s not nailed down. Frequently
you combine objects in your inventory interface. Look! A stick, a
rubber band and a pebble become a pea shooter! Like that.

The game is fully 3D, and you move through it the same way you would
through a first-person shooter. The real-time rendering and movement
is silky smooth, and the movement speed is pleasingly brisk, so that
it doesn’t feel laborious to cover a lot of ground when you’re
backtracking to look for something you may have missed.

The
game is pretty shaky on the feedback it gives you regarding your environment.
It can be very fussy when you’re trying to combine objects or
use an inventory object on the environment. It can be tricky to determine
what objects are “live” and which are just part of the
environment. There is a patch which adds moving arrows to the screens,
theoretically pointing out important hotspots. But this mechanic is
unreliable and inconsistent, so it’s of limited value.

The puzzles in the game are quite traditional. Look for passwords
and clues. Improvise lock picks and biometric workarounds to get doors
open. Make sure you talk to everyone about everything and then talk
to them again when new information or developing events could trigger
additional responses.

Another warning: The game does resort to the dreaded “timed
puzzle” mechanic. Yipee!

Here’s the thing: If you have the patience to deal with the
endless exposition-filled dialogs, the dreary and unintuitive environments,
the fussy interface, and the bad acting, there’s actually a
lot of game here. The adventure is long, features many varied planet-hopping
environments, is rich in content, and has a complicated science fiction
mystery story to explore. How you might grade this game would depend
on if the things that irritated me about the game irritate you to
the same degree. If they don’t, you could get a lot more bang
for your buck than I did with Conspiracies II.

Note from Anima ppd-interactive:
In the past 15 days we have developed a new & very sophisticated
Hint system for Conspiracies II. The hint system will be released
on May 20th & will have five new symbols: hotspots, combine, examine,
search, and move to help the gamer.

System Requirements:

Minimum:

• Windows XP/Vista
• P4 1.8 Mhz
• 512 MB RAM
• 8 GB free HD space
• 128MB graphics card support for Shaders 2.0

Recommended:

• Windows 7
• Intel Core Duo 2.4 Ghz or AMD Athlon 64×2
• 2GB RAM
• 20 GB free HD space
• 512MB graphics card support of Shaders 2.0 and above

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.