I Knew Someday You’d Come Walking Back Through My DS
Posted by Carachan on December 16, 2009 | Permalink
My friends, I’m truly sorry we’ve all been away: our respective lives have been unforgivably busy. One of us even got engaged, which I am hoping is a good enough excuse to absorb even my own laziness. Actually, I’ve just been visiting the far mystic corners of Japan, which basically warrants a tongue-lashing because I could have written novels on the amount of bullet-train time wasted.
I again visited the Tokyo Game Show this year, which, if I am so diligent, may feature in a future post. But for today, we’re going back through the mists of time…
Since we’re heading back to the Old School Shizzle these days, what with the return of a) Monkey Island, b) Tim Schaefer, and c) the Steam re-releases of Everything That Was Important In Adventure Games Ever (apart from Thrillville, which Lucasarts themselves know is shit and are putting it in for laughs), I thought I’d cast a critical eye over a favourite. It is indeed, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Through the wonders of my R4, shrewdly bought before retailers realised that the R4 was the perfect medium for piracy (thanks Hong Kong!) I managed with a little help (see: Jack Potter) to get the SCUMM engine working on the amiable DS platform. The DS, by the way, is perfect for Lucasarts point-and-clicks. It seems like it’s just built for it. Indy in a queue, Indy on the plane, Indy on the train, on the bus, on the toilet, in class, up Tokyo Tower, on the Osaka subway line… Away with the mouse! Grab your stylus and listen up: the bottom screen is full screen Indy, where of course you can click stuff, and the inventory appears there too with the commands, as usual. But the top screen is a zoomed in version of the game, so you can seek out those pesky little clickable things that the small screen is obscuring from you. It’s perfect, and it means you don’t have to stay in the same darkened room all the time getting frustrated because you haven’t seen sunlight for days. (My childhood.)
The first thing that struck me about Fate, which, although it’s probable I played when I was a kid, I can’t remember any of it, was how stunningly in-keeping with the Indy movies it is. The plot is impeccable; it fits in with everything we know about the movies. The dialogue is witty, punchy, ironic even. Sometimes the lines even make a dig at the movies. The situations created and locations evoked are all classical IJ – you can imagine a movie in which this stuff happens (although without all my stupid mistakes). If only Spielberg had asked Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein to write IV huh? (Please ‘Bergy, don’t let Lucas write anything again.)
Allow me to embroider. The way the opening of the game is constructed creates a ring of the cinematic, even though it’s a blocky adventure point-and-click that no one even back then got really excited about. When the title swings up and John Williams kicks in, even though it’s in horrific midi form you get a swell of the sentimental. The way the game reaches for, and mostly bullseyes the spirit of our favourite archaeologist is really admirable. Dropped into Barnett College, I felt like I was being treated to an Indy I’d only see backstage – the place where Indy is Dr Jones, and that kind of brought a nice (if totally geektastic) thrill to the exploration. The idea that the College could have an attic full of forgotten artefacts was and still is a cool idea.
The lines. Oh, the lines. Some of my favourites include Sophia’s “We’re not dating Jones; this is not a date, if it was a date, I would’ve stood you up!” And a nice nod to the Last Crusade when, looking at a battered old cup, Indy remarks, “It’s no Grail.” And at one point, after Indy has received much injury, Indy kisses Sophia by surprise (a lovely mingling of skin coloured pixels) – Sophia, surprised remarks: “What was that for?” Indy replies, “To ease the pain.” It merits a demure chuckle even when in public.
A little on the game’s faults. Due to the action parts of the movies being pretty hard to recreate in point and click form, even the action-styled path of the story is a little shy of fights and is slightly repetitive (punch, kick, repeat, you know the drill), and so the game leans pretty hard on humour to carry you through. This works, happily, and served as motivation for play even when the going got tough.
Hello, pixellated puppies.
Of course the other hard thing, as always with these kind of games is the repetitive aspect and the difficulty of the puzzles. Picking up what seemed like a million batches of orichalcum in Atlantis (and getting lost on the way in the maze) was highly repetitive and annoying, which I’m guessing just served to give the game more length rather than enjoyment. I’m also not dumb (you can argue here, people have) but some puzzles took me freakin’ aaaaages to figure out, and more than once was tempted to ‘walkthrough’ it. Sometimes it was due to that wacky point-and-click logic – please refer to Discworld games for this – but sometimes it was just due to general click arsiness or not noticing something in the background. Both of the latter could have been because it was in DS format, but I had those problems on the PC point-and-clicks too. For example, on Full Throttle (PC) I think I missed several objects I could pick up because they were blending in with the background, like the ramp I was supposed to move into the road in one part of the story.
But those are completely forgivable, because the game is so damned charming, a bit like Indy himself.
My conclusionals. In comparison to SCUMM Indy, 3D adventures of Indy have lacked the kind of candour and spirit that Indy really needed (Perhaps you could argue that about the Indy IV movie? – ooooh controversial). I remember playing Infernal Machine and thinking it was a kind of even more terrible Tomb Raider. My inner child says: It wasn’t paced at all well, had no atmosphere, the gameplay was a jerkface… and Indy’s voice was stupid.
Fate of Atlantis’ voice (added later in life) on the other hand, is great.
I miss the character that this subgenre, adventure games, gave videogames at large. It is hard to see the wit, intelligent plot, and even pacing, of Fate of Atlantis in any game that came out in the last seven years, never mind this year. I think this is why we’re seeing a revival in irreverent writing these days, what with the fantastically written Ghostbusters, and of course the remaking of Monkey Island, Sam and Max, et al. A lot of games today aim for seriousness, grit and violence, though games are for most people, about play, not hard work. Where is the irreverence of these old Lucasarts games now? The rebelliousness against reality, the cheeky kick-in-the-crotch-and-run-away silliness is for the most part hard to find. We could argue that this is because gamers aren’t children any more, but don’t adults still watch movies like Anchorman and run out to buy games like Ghostbusters? The investment in good graphics these days is taking away time spent on story and character, and I’d say these are important motivations for a player to pick up a game, and are even more important for making a memorable game.
Ah… Fortune and glory kid, fortune and glory.
December 16th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Also congrats on the engagement lady!
December 20th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
No more hiatus! Hurrah. For you know that I sit here of eight to ten hours a day hitting F5 and hoping for more.