Lost Horizon Review
Almost before he gets into stride, Fenton is attacked by a vicious gang of bloodthirsty Triad thugs in Hong Kong and only narrowly escapes from a watery grave. F & K set out from the Far East on a travelogue style mission to rescue Fenton’s close friend Richard, and simultaneously discover how he got mixed up with an ancient spectacular Tibetan power house called Shambala. Obviously the Führer’s soldiers, led by the formidable Countess Hanna von Hagenhild, are trying to grab it first in order to harness its infinite energy to dominate the whole world – Familiar?!
Did I say long? Yes – very long indeed: There are very many satisfying and pleasurable hours of questing in Lost Horizon… and not one single technical hitch from the introduction through to the final credits. The game is completely mouse-driven point & click. It is a 3rd-person game and often both main characters are on screen at the same time, and sometimes others as well. There are sequences where they both have to operate in tandem and assist each other. In these cases, control is easily passed back and forth from Fenton to Kim and vice versa. The interface is simple and effective and there is an absolutely unlimited number of save slots. The graphics are excellent and in places magnificent. The music is good background stuff and never drowns out the speech. This quest-adventure consists of a short prologue, a modest-length introduction, and 7 hefty chapters. Each chapter is self-contained and you can’t proceed to any one before having completely concluded the previous one. Inside each chapter there is a certain (limited) degree of non-linearity.
There certainly is a LOT of dialog, but it is nearly all short and to the point: Paddock continuously belts out his particular brand of cynical mild humor, occasionally overdoing it somewhat, thereby irritating some players. There are absolutely no long diaries, voluminous journals, pages of boring letters the player is compelled to read through or miss vital hints &/or essential clues. In addition, there are full clear subtitles, and miracle of miracles, I did not notice even one single spelling or grammatical error throughout the whole very long game…very rare indeed!. But language is a living and breathing thing, and quite a bit has changed during the past 75 years. Due to this there are a few verbal anachronisms and figures of speech which did not exist in 1936!
There are only about a half dozen standalone puzzles during the whole of the lengthy game which is chock-full of inventory and ‘hot-spot-action’ puzzles…and there lies the rub!! The majority of these inventory puzzles are reasonably logical, but some are quite ludicrous. Unfortunately, a large number of such puzzles can only be solved by clicking every inventory item on every other inventory item, and if that doesn’t work, onto each and every hotspot. This process gets old rather quickly and is a tangible drawback. It is not too harrowing, however, since there are generally not more than about 4 or 5 inventory items, and never more than about a dozen!
In conclusion: This is a real fun game and I thoroughly enjoyed it despite some minor flaws. In some respects it is reminiscent of the Lucas Arts classic masterpiece Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. A welcome change from the gloomy, sinister 1st-person so-called horror games! So sit back and ENJOY a fictional romp through pure lightweight and lighthearted “adventure-land!”
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