Sights and Sounds of Multimedia
By George Harding
Atlantis Evolution …
This another Adventure Company game, a first person adventure. You act as Curtis Hewitt who at the beginning is coming back to New York City after a photo assignment in Patagonia. His ship is caught in a vortex at sea, mans a lifeboat, is sucked up by a spacecraft and dropped on the land of New Atlantis.
The people of New Atlantis are dominated by Cosmos, one of their gods. The people are kept in a submissive state by warriors that cause pain or death for infractions of the rules. Hewitt is at first recognized as an Outsider because of his beard, but after getting rid of it, he is thought to be Cosmos because they look somewhat alike.
Hewitt wants to get back home, but first he wants to save the villagers from the oppressive domination. He meets up with Miranda who guides him throughout New Atlantis. His adventures take him through the forest, a stunningly beautiful graphic work. The trees and plants are a palette of many colors. Birds flutter around as do insects. Plants exude steam, a stream flows gently through the forest.
The graphic work throughout the game is amazing! Colorful and lifelike are words you would use to describe it. You move around using the mouse. You have 360 degrees of view but can move in only a few directions, which you see by a symbol on the screen when you point in the proper direction.
The game requires you to perform certain actions at certain times, like pick up objects, go into a house, talk with people and so on. Some actions must be performed in a particular order. Sometimes your movement is restricted until you’ve completed an action. It’s helpful to have a walk-through at these points.
There are a few puzzles. I only got to one, which was not related much to the story. It involved firing a mortar over a wall to destroy the opposition’s hill before he destroyed yours.
When you approach a character, there is a rotating symbol indicating that you can talk to him/her. When you click, there are several boxes, each indicating a topic. When you click on one, it greys out so you know you don’t need to do it again. You generally have to exhaust all topics to proceed in the game.
I found it very confusing to move around in the forest, and I had finally to quit the game before finishing it. I should have been able to find a path and object that were essential to proceeding in the game, but couldn’t. There was no way to get around the problem.
The game comes on four CD-ROMs; a great deal of material must be copied to your hard drive, some 4 GB! Today’s hard drives can take that much without whimpering, but older ones would founder.
I liked the game, although it was a bit frustrating in spots. In one area, you get shot by the warriors if you don’t do the prescribed action fast enough, but I didn’t really understand what it was I had to do! I got shot a lot, but the game restores you to the spot just before, so you don’t really die.
Atlantis Evolution by The Adventure Company adventurecompanygames.com
ESRB rating T (Teen) with descriptors of Mild Violence and Partial Nudity
Requires: WIN 98 or better, 800 MHz P III, 64 MB RAM, 32 MB video card, 4 GB hard disk space
World Cyber Games 2004 …
You’ve probably never heard of the World Cyber Games (WCG), unless you live in San Francisco or are a hard-core gamer, but this is a popular event. It’s only a few years old. In 2000, when it began, participants from 17 countries were involved, but in 2004, over 1 million gamers from 60 countries attended in San Francisco!
The event is an elimination tournament involving several popular games. Both PCs and consoles are involved. Some of the games used were Halo, FIFA 2004 Soccer, Unreal Tournament, Project Gotham Racing and Counter-Strike. The event has not only those who play for prizes, but those who just want to watch those better than themselves.
A game is played against another player under very specific rules. If a problem arises, a referee will make a judgement about what to do, which might be to award a win to one of the players or to order a replay.
The event goes on for a week, with each day devoted to several games during specific hours. There is a general reception, a players village and prizes. The prizes are medals and money, up to $50,000! No wonder so many enter to play.
The players have computers provided by vendors, but you can play against a champion if you want to bring your own computer and equipment. Incidentally, no speakers are allowed for the computers, because of the noise that would be generated. Headphones are used by all.
This is a big event and next year in Singapore, it is expected to be even bigger!
Worldcybergames.com
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