Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
This one is pretty interesting, a game from 1992 that has:
- Three different paths through the game that have different solutions to many puzzles: Wits, Team and Fists
- Randomized puzzles that differ a bit from game to game
- Three different endings, bad, not too great and good determined by your actions at the end
Wits has Indy solving puzzles by himself, Team has you cooperating with your partner Sophie and Fists is a low puzzle/high action style with simplified puzzles and more fists fights and apparently even chase scenes. I say apparently because I've never once played the game in Fists mode as I like my complicated puzzles and fist fighting in the game is not particularly amazing. Though their presence in a point and click adventure is kinda funny.
This is the earliest game I know that offers this kind of content altering replayability and I find it pretty damn impressive and forward thinking. But I'm afraid it came with a cost. I don't know was the deveploment team short on time, or is this another case of a secondary team trying to do their best or bit of both, but after replaying it now I have pretty mixed feelings about it.
First of all even though it's pretty short game there's a lot of padding, which can be seen even in some puzzle designs. In one you need to get a random item from a merchant by exchange until you find the item that another merchant would accept in exchange for another item you need. In another puzzle you need to find a specific person on a street by randomly stopping passersby. Fly a hot air balloon over a desert with janky controls stopping to ask directions until you find your destination. Things that are not hard but take time. The last area of the game is the worst of it, it's less of a test of puzzle solving skills and more of a test of patience.
There's also two fairly large labyrints in it, which in itself isn't anything new since both their previous games Monkey 1&2 had them, the difference is that in both Monkey Islands there's directions through them which you need to find and figure out, while in Indy there's no directions. You have to do them the hard way, with time and trial and error. It's not what I would consider fun.
The general quality of the puzzles in the game can also be a bit all over the place, ranging from good to WTF.
I know I'm painting a fairly negative picture here, but even with its faults it's not a bad game. I believe it reviewed very well at the time and I personally really liked it back in the day. I still enjoyed parts of it like the part where you muck about in a nazi U-boat. Also even though the game is not exactly the high point of story telling it still manages to feel a bit like Indiana Jones at times.
So as a game from 1992 I do think it's a good game, it just hasn't aged as well as some of its LucasArts siblings in my opinion. But I can see a lot of untapped potential through the cracks, if someone were to completely remake one of the LucasArts adventures I think this would be an excellent choice.
Recommended to be served with a healthy dose of nostalgia. Supplement with a full pint of patience and season with "it's a videogame from 1992, don't worry about it" if required.
