An ambitious, fun romp through quirky lands
For reasons that become apparent if you play it, this game will forever be remembered for its funny walks. Which is entirely unfair, because there's a lot else going for it.
If you're not sure what to expect, it is a 3rd person adventure which mixes puzzle and action elements. So you have the traditional inventory, but you'll have to deal with various opponents ranging from suspicious garbage cans to parachuting hot-dog people. The game is unashamedly French, that's for sure. And I mean that in the best way possible.
The game is not exceptionally hard bar a few notable places; the action elements are usually manageable and you'll have a few spells on hand to assist. You swap walk mode (from athletic, to aggressive, to sneaky and so on) to tackle the same problem in different ways.The puzzles are often of the platforming variety but can extend to far more interesting ones such as the infamous warehouse puzzle. Even here however, you can 'buy' your way past if you get completely stuck. You can save at pretty much any time, and the game is almost always fair and very aware that you're here to have fun -- that's something the developers definitely got right.
Some people will be entirely put off by the quite frankly bizarre world of anthropomorphic elephants and talking cows, and perhaps playing it when I was much younger helped a lot. But I think you can get absorbed in this nonetheless. The strangeness of the world is never commented upon -- you are just thrown in, and come to quickly accept this is just how it is. It's immersive, it just requires a little faith and willingness to suspend belief from the player for just a while, and then you'll be away.
The plot is nothing particularly remarkable, but is plenty strange enough. It is linear in the sense you won't be making any big differences on how the game progresses -- you are along for the ride so to speak -- but the world areas are large, with exteriors rendered fully in 3D which you are completely able to explore. There are entire islands and areas which are not pivotal to the plot, but you can go and check out and grab some neat items.
The game is also a satisfying length for one that you shouldn't need to spend an excess amount of trial/error and death on.
What are the negative points? Very few. The voice acting is hardly up to the standards of modern games, and is probably intentionally, quite comical. Whether that's good for you or not will depend upon your taste. The controls will probably feel a little awkward and sluggish, particularly if you are used to more action oriented games such as the Legacy of Kain series. The game is perfectly playable as it is, just be prepared for that learning curve and anticipation necessary to pull off the tricks you want. It'll probably be a little infuriating at first when you can't get Twinsen to perform something that seems immediately obvious. It's a hurdle. The game had extreme difficulties with Windows XP and onwards due to the ancient DirectX implementation, but these have been fixed thanks to fans, which I assume have been applied on the gog.com version.
I would like to make one last point which is often overlooked. The quality of the soundtrack with this game is simply superb. While only consisting of a half dozen tracks in total, Philippe Vachey created a set of instantly memorable, quality pieces of music that surpassed so many other games at its time, and is perfectly listenable on its own. They vary from mystical, to creepy, to relentlessly upbeat (pun intended), but all of them remain faithful to that quirky, almost comic-book like nature of the game. A fine work indeed.
But yes, the walks really are funny.
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