Lure of the Temptress (1992)

I remember playing this back in the day on my Atari ST, and replaying it now, I find I really don't remember any part of the actual game at all. The story is ultimately unremarkable and this game does not qualify as a classic by any stretch. Still, for free, you might want to waste and afternoon on it. I remember it being much hailed, at the time, for it's "virtual theater" system, which allows NPCs to wander around the game and engage in conversations with each other, but in practice, it's mostly annoying when your conversation with an NPC is interrupted by two other NPCs talking, or an NPC steps in your way when you are trying to move around. I won't criticize a 17 year old game for poor graphics and sound, which some reviewers seem to insist on doing, it was pretty good for the time, but obviously hasn't aged well. Note: This version does have a bug near the end of the game that prevents you from completing it, but it can be fixed with the latest snapshot of the ScummVM (see the GOG forums).

What a delight to get this on GOG - for free no less! Just what GOG was made for... I must admit its now terribly dated although I loved this game in the day and spent huge amounts of time on it without ever finishing it - so I was delighted to have the opportunity to finally lay it to rest. It is exactly how I remember it - full of character, funny sometimes, but difficult. Well, I say difficult but actually its quite easy up to a point then finishes with a couple of harder puzzles. I genuinely enjoyed playing through where I had played to before but I must admit I googled the ending as I simply don't have as much patience these days for old school unforgiving games. That is why the mediocre score - if you remember this then its a great memory, but it is probably expecting too much home mapping for a new player to bother to finish it (without cheating like me :) ) - observe the new hints system they have had to put on the new Monkey Island remakes - and though I like LOTT, its no Monkey Island...

Lure of the Temptress is a simple point-and-click adventure with some interesting mechanics and a rather silly and inaccurate title that probably helped sales. VISUALS and AUDIO: Low-res, low bit-depth, this is not a pretty game, but you can see what's going on and there isn't much pixel-hunting. You and various NPCs move between static scenes with limited ambient animation. The limited palette is used reasonably well, and scenes are scaled to provide a decent level of detail in character graphics, but it won't be winning any art contests. There are a few ambient sounds, and some actions have appropriate noises. A few scenes have low-bitrate music that is nothing to remark upon. CONTROLS and GAMEPLAY: The control system definitely shows the legacy of text-driven adventure games; you click to move or look at something, but clicking to perform an action brings up a verb menu, which brings up further menus to construct a command (eg use knife on pouch). As your inventory grows, this becomes a bit unwieldy. You can use this system to give detailed, multi-part commands to companions (and need to do so several times over the course of the game), but while interesting, the process gets old by about the second time. This game introduced the "Virtual Theater" engine with much fanfare, showing off a world in which all characters are active at all times, present and moving about in some area. Unfortunately, in their eagerness to showcase this concept, the designers gave a lot of freedom of movement to many NPCs in a non-linear town - it is not enjoyable running in circles, checking every building trying to find someone, knowing that they're probably walking along the south side of town as you check the north and vise versa. Worse, there exist characters who will only speak to you in one location, and you may only be able to enter said location as they are leaving. I probably spent half of my total play time chasing people around town or just waiting, neither of which are enjoyable tasks. There are a few quick combat sections, which operate in 1 dimension - you can move forward and back, and attack or block high, medium, or low. You and a single enemy trade blows until someone dies. These are not particularly difficult, but they feel a bit contrived in a point-and-click adventure. STORY/ACTING: There is no voice acting. Opening and closing animations tell a standard-fantasy-fare story to set the scene (via text screens), and NPCs are happy to tell you about goings-on in town. You can listen in on conversations as well, although the extra text boxes floating about can be a bit annoying, and waiting for the town gossip to finish chatting with someone you need to speak to is quite irritating. If you care to, you can learn a bit more about characters and the history of the plot by chatting with NPCs again while under a certain magical influence, but this has no bearing on the quest and isn't at all surprising. DIFFICULTY: You can save anywhere, and there are only a few opportunities to die. You are generally prevented from doing anything quest-breaking, so other than a few un-prohibited stupid actions (eg walking into a fire), you just need to survive the above-mentioned combat segments and a few timed tasks. The former are not too difficult and can be won in a few tries by just attacking repeatedly, so don't waste time being strategic. The latter merely involves knowing what to do and not delaying about it, although one requires a series of actions and some pixel hunting and will therefore probably take a few tries to complete in time. It is at least obvious when you're under time pressure. There are a few puzzles as well; some involve asking a companion to assist you or do something you cannot, but one requires either a bit of logic or a few rounds of trial-and-error ordering a companion around, which could be an irritating time-sink. These are kind of obligatory for the genre, and are tolerable, although none are particularly fun or exciting. LEVELS, STRATEGY, and OTHER ELEMENTS: This game is quite short; I finished it in an afternoon (without ever consulting a guide), despite repeatedly reloading in order to explore different dialog options and death sequences. The correct way forward is not always clear - as with many old adventure games, the immediately obvious solution may not work, and you then have to just try everything until something works. Fortunately (given the unwieldy verb menu interface), you don't have to do the "try every inventory item on every other one" thing here . . . unfortunately you often have to try talking to everyone until you get useful information, which is a royal pain when some people move around. If you aren't a veteran of classic adventure games, this discovery process may take more time, but it will still be a short game. THE VERDICT: The occasional tedium in the game really takes away from the neat mechanics (and in the case of NPC-chasing, is directly attributable to one), and even with that, there's not much to the game. It may be a decent diversion for an afternoon, but it wouldn't be worth getting if it weren't free. I prefer to rate games on their merits alone, so it gets no credit for being free; therefore it fails to manage a neutral three. 2 stars - it could be fun if you like this sort of thing, but most nostalgia trips on GOG are better.

An early, clumsy graphic adventure. Lots of silly fetch quests, seemingly pointless actions. For free, it's worth it to dedicated fans of the genre and historians, but I recommend everyone else skip it. (In comparison, the company's next game: Beneath a Steel Sky, I highly recommend! And it's free too!)

It's not a bad game. It's just not a particularly good one. The graphics are fine for it's age, but the audio is mostly annoying. You'll hear the same two or three seconds at the start of the main background "music" over and over again as you walk through the town. When you stay in one screen long enough to hear more of it it's not much better though. Some of the design choices puzzle me too. It's interesting (and more realistic) that characters will wander around town, but when you need to find someone it becomes frustrating and seems to have been added to lengthen a very short game. Speaking of which, you can probably finish it in four or five hours if you have any sort of point and click adventure game experience. Two to three if you use a walkthrough. I never played Lure of the Temptress when it originally came out, so outside of the graphical markings of it's age there really isn't any nostalgia trip for me. I didn't hate it. I just didn't love it.