Heart of China

3 out of 5 for me! I only beat this game recently, but remember it well from my younger years, seeing it run on display computers at a local computer store. The graphics are the highlight, they used real actors, hand painted backgrounds and in the manual it is mentioned that the artwork had to be redone twice because it was challenging. They used staff and relatives mostly :) The game is actually very short. There are exotic locations: Hong Kong, Chengdu, Tibet, Istanbul, Orient Express and Paris. However Orient Express there is only a dialogue sequence and an action sequence and in Paris you arrive to see the ending, that's it. So really there are just 4 locations. Each location has a few rooms to explore, but the puzzles are quite basic. Once you know the puzzles and discuss options, the actual game is really short, I would say you can finish it in less than half an hour. I feel they realised this so they added this concept of story branches to add depth or replayability but I don't think it works well. You get this big warning about a plot branch and the manual tells you that this shows that you could have done things another way but it doesn't tell you if what you did was bad or could be done better and it doesn't tell you if you are going down a dead end, having missed an item or something like that. Reading the documentation is important to get hints for the game and it will make everything much easier. The two action sequences are annoying. They can be skipped, BUT only at the beginning. Once you try to play a sequence, you are stuck and cannot choose to skip it. You either beat it or load a save game. Save often and multiple save files! Most choices are through dialogues, sometimes you need to be polite, sometimes aggressive, there is no pattern. Some moves will cost you time and that will reduce the final amount of money you win. The romance aspect is sort of nice but also very cheesy. Good graphics but not much of a game...

Of the three Dynamix adventure games, ‘Heart of China’ is my favourite. It’s a globetrotting adventure with an exciting story and great pacing. I also find its puzzles and level of challenge to be most balanced, though some parts – typical of 1990s adventures games – are unfair and require plenty of trial and error. Yet to this day, I still find ‘HoC’ to be thoroughly satisfying and entertaining. In the game, you’d be travelling with a companion most of the time. At certain points, you may need to switch characters and share inventory items to solve some puzzles. While there’s usually one correct or optimal solution to these problems, the ability to make choices and swap characters adds complexity to the game. This complexity was really something back in the 1990s. Seeing the story branch off in different directions based on your choices, and having the story set in different cities around the world make ‘HoC’ feel grand. Of course, this also means there’re plenty of ways to mess up, if not die. Thankfully, the game is not very punitive, but instead offers different endings to be discovered based on your choices of dialogue and action. Because of this, ‘HoC’ is very replayable. As much as I love this game, I still can’t get over the game’s questionable portrayal of Asians after all these years. For example, although the game’s printed “travel guide” explains how your in-game Chinese partner became a ninja, it’s disrespectful and unnecessary to clump the two Asian cultures into one. The story would have worked just fine if your partner were simply a kung-fu master or a Shaolin monk. While ‘HoC’ is by no means perfect, it’s still a very fun adventure game. Your race against time has the right balance of urgency and freedom to explore; the ability to play as different characters adds freshness to a tried-and-true genre; and the globe-spanning adventure is simply exciting. ‘HoC’ is an easy recommendation to anyone who enjoys or curious about classic adventure games.

While not in the traditional 3rd person of the best P&C, this works well, a thrilling tale with multiple branching solutions. Story is enjoyable Also the bonuses that come in this (Hint book, which has a lot of background material on the game's production) are really a nice feature. They have some arcade elements that don't age very well, however there is an option to skip those parts, a really nice feature for a 30 year old game. If you like Point and Click Adventures at all... Pick this up... but pick it up cheap, as you'll be able to finish it in an all day Saturday session.

Picked this up for about $2 and got plenty of fun out of it. Played it way back when at age 10, got frustrated I kept failing in Hong Kong and quit. Wish I'd stuck with it. Nice cheesy pulp adventure. It has a Tex Murphy/High Road to China with Tom Selleck vibe throughout, especially with the dialogue options and action comic cut scenes. Graphics are a bit rough, but I was surprised how easy it was to see which items were hot spots. Fast paced story, logical, straight-forward situational puzzles and it was neat to be able to swap characters to open up different solutions to problems. There are several plot branches which don't seem to lead to dead ends necessarily, just different scenes/paths to victory as the story progressed. There's actually a couple combat sections (one vehicle based and one character) you'll have to either grind hard to figure out through trial and error or just watch how the controls actually work on youtube, which is what I ended up doing, but you can also just skip them if you can't be bothered. I'd recommend this to anyone who loves old school point and clicks and pulp adventure, but keep in mind it's only going to be a short (2-3 hrs) afternoon of play at most, even if you go back and try some of the different branches, so judge the current price accordingly.

The game uses a series of dialogue trees to control what's about to happen to you - and the results are often quite fun. This game reminded me very much of TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY in so many ways and how it looked, felt - even the main character's personality seemed to have a touch of the show. Having replayed it not too long ago, it wasn't AS fun as I remembered it being; but I still managed to enjoy myself.