Atlantis: The Lost Tales
      (ADVENTURE)


   If you'd asked me what I thought of Atlantis: The Lost Tales after my
   first couple of hours playing it, I'd have said it was the best
   graphic adventure I'd played in a long time but only later did I realize
   that it wasn't exactly how I expected it to be.
   
   Set on the mythical island, Atlantis it puts you in the sandals of an
   orphan named Seth who's been chosen to serve as a Companion to
   Atlantis' queen, Rhea. Companions normally get to gallivant around the
   island with the Queen on foot or in huge airborne boats called fliers,
   but as soon as Seth arrives he learns that Rhea has mysteriously
   disappeared and nearly all her Companions have been murdered by
   parties unknown while on one of those jaunts.

   The Palace guards are under the Queen's consort Creon and are in charge 
   of the investigation into the Queen's disappearance, and when Seth tries
   to do a little sleuthing on his own he's warned by Creon to mind his
   own business. It doesn't take very long to figure out that Creon has
   his own ideas about how Atlantis should be run. It's up to you to find
   Rhea, uncover Creon's plot, and stop him from carrying it out.
   
   The graphics are awsome and the plot well put up and the music sets the
   mood quite nicely. The interface is based on a technology called Omni 3D,
   which lets you look pretty much anywhere you like so long as you're not
   moving. 

   But after oohing and aahing at the graphics and enjoying interacting
   with several characters in the game - something that's been sorely
   missing from many recent adventures - I began to learn the downside to
   being a Queen's Companion. The first is that there are no saved games:
   Your progress is stored automatically in "episodes." What this means
   is that you might have to travel through five, ten, or even a dozen
   screens over and over again to get back to the place you left off.

   Next up on the boo-boo list: no pause function. Once I had to answer
   the phone while Creon lectured Seth, but the only way to stop the
   dialogue was to skip it entirely - so when I returned I found that I
   had to answer yes or no to a question I hadn't heard, which meant
   playing the episode from the start again !!!! 
   
   The frustrations don't end there, though. There are several time-based
   puzzles that use the "go the right way at the right time" design
   philosophy, most of which lead to death or captivity for Seth at least
   the first four or five times you try them because things are happening
   so fast that you have to use trial and error rather than logic and
   observation to figure out which way to go. They are so obtuse that
   this is the first time I've seen a company post the entire walk-thru
   for a game on its web site as soon as it hit store shelves.

   But the apex of bad game design comes near the end with the notorious
   Crab Race. Here's the deal: you pick a crab and race another guy's crab
   in a best-of-five series - and you MUST watch every race from start to
   finish because if you don't you'll lose even if you picked the right
   crab!

   Atlantis will undoubtedly garner a few fans, but don't let that fool
   you into shelling out money for this game - unless you're working on a
   new graphic adventure and want some pointers on what not to do.