Lure of the Temptress (1992)

I love adventure games. I don't care if they're old, new, point and click, keyboard or typeface, I'll give them a shot and probably end up with something good to say about them. Lure of the Temptress was a short, so-so game with a slightly different layout than a typical SCUMM game. The basic idea of this game is that you are Diermot, a handsome, buff blonde dude who was recently incarcerated in the dungeon of the Skorl, an orc-like race who have most recently taken over a small, insignificant town at the demand of their manipulative sorceress leader, Seleena. Once you've escaped and successfully released some little jester boy who'll follow you until you go consult the local dragon (whose in a cave on the edge of town: small world, right?), you help the more tenacious of the townsfolk overthrow Seleena. The gameplay is mostly point and click with a few different steps to it (you can "tell" somebody to "go into a room and pull a switch"). There is also a dialogue system you get to play with, but it's nowhere near is perfected as the ones you see from Lucasarts, the Ankh series, or even the last couple Space Quest games. The game, being of Revolution studios, incorporates a "virtual theater" type of setup where the NPCs are walking around and interacting with each other in scripted exchanges. I like this concept, and I especially like the fact that they play these over and over after a while so you don't accidentally miss something relevant (although, most of them aren't important to the game progression). The story itself seems alot like one from an 80s/90s fantasy film (i.e. Willow, Dragonslayer, etc.): a young man must help overthrow an ultimate evil by meeting and working with several interesting characters along the way, only considerably less complex and based entirely in a very small town. For instance, I think it's pretty laughable how an ancient dragon who knows all AND the final resting place of an ancient deity are a stone throw away from the grocery store and a couple pubs, but I'll allow it. The dialogue seems like it was imperfectly translated from a different language because of how bland the lines sounded which shocked me further when I found out that Revolution was a British based company. Most of the game's puzzles involve getting an item so you can trade it for something owned by somebody else and so on. Most of these puzzles shouldn't be too complex for veteran adventure gamers (although I'm pretty veteran and I had to look up the walkthrough once or twice) and there are two arcade combat sequences as a breakaway from the adventure game format which I thought were pretty fun (alot like the Nukem Dukem robots bit from Space Quest 3, only easier). Now the part that I really hated about playing this wasn't really the game itself so much as the glitches that came up as a result of the emulator that was added to the game. This caused a few glitches that either made me restart the game (a minor inconvenience considering how short the game is) or just stop playing the GOG download. At about the halfway mark, I was supposed to find a character (Mallin) and get a book he had stolen from some monks, but I couldn't seem to find him ANYWHERE. At first, I thought this was a negative aspect of the "virtual theater," but I finally found that Mallin had somehow been trapped in a walking in motion type of glitch just off screen in one of the alleys, so I couldn't interact with him. Also, near the very end, you're supposed to get a boy to lure a guard into a wine cellar so the guard can drink himself to death. The problem is that, although the boy does interact with guard, the guard doesn't follow him back to the cellar like he's supposed to and you basically have to sneak past the guard, which the game doesn't seem to want to acknowledge. Overall, if you really want to play this game (there are better options), I'd recommend that you download the version on the SCUMMVM website which is also free. I only hope that Beneath the Steel Sky download doesn't have the same glitches.

I played this on the ST when it first came out (only as monkey island was out of stock) As you can imagine your virgin adventure game always has a special place in your heart. The end left it for a sequal and i waited for years for the 2nd game to come but it never did.. will they ever surprise me?

"Lure of the Temptress" was an earlier game released by the makers of "Beneath a Steel Sky" and the latter game clearly shows how much the company improved in their quest of game-making. LOTT is a clumsy, short, slow-moving and ultimately boring game with convoluted puzzles. In this game you are a Wasshisname hero on a quest to save the Kingdom from the aforementioned Temptress Selena and for that you will have to solve some muddled puzzles. Seriously, those all follow a "Go somewhere, do something" pattern without any clarity and more often than not you will feel confused, lost and frustrated about what you should do. Plus all the personages you meet in the game are as interesting as turnips, main character included. The programming is horrible as "Revolution Software's" flaunted Virtual Theater technology most of the time works against player than in his benefit. All the characters on screen speak at the same time, interrupting your speech and it's almost impossible to go anywhere as the terrible pathfinding has the other characters bump into the main char, impeding your progress. Sometimes it gets so bad, that Mr. Wasshisname starts walking in circles, inciting in you a desire to bash him over the head. To top with a laughably anticlimactic ending and you already have a bad game, but that's not the end yet, no, sir. GOG has introduced a fatal bug in their build that prevents you from finishing the game. Namely they used an old version of ScummVM that doesn't fully support LOTT. Only after I have downloaded a new version of ScummVM and played the game through it, only then I was able to finish the mercifully short game. Final verdict: do not bother unless you have too much time on your hands. Some things aren't worth your time even for free.

The graphics are very good. i just love this classical style. The story and atmosphere are very dark, which is fantastic... But the gameplay itself is not so good, as the Virtual Theatre engine (despite being very interesting) is far from perfect. Too many lags, mixed conversations, and that Ratpouch guy always on your way, ends up making the overall experience... Horrible. Try it, as it's for free and the short story is interesting, but, just don't put too much time playing "LOTT": there are better games to be played.

Life is good for Diermot. Everything is at peace and while the king visited his village he even ends up making some cash helping out. News soon arrives of a woman called Selena who has rallied a horde of Skorl, inhuman monsters, to do her bidding and has taken over the town of Turnvale. While everyone rushes off to help Diermot is caught up in the excitement and ends up riding with them. Things turn out for the worse though and after being knocked unconscious he wakes up trapped in the Turnvale dungeon. Now Diermot must save his own arse and try to beat the forces of evil as well. Since this is Revolution’s first foray in the Point & Click genre I was actually surprised by how much they actually got right. Graphics are detailed and show some imagination. Unfortunately you are mostly confined to the town and a few surrounding areas so there isn’t that much variety. You’ll also soon tire of the place since you spend most of the game just wandering around looking for the people so you can ask them something. Having the characters in the game move around certainly enhances the realism but chasing down people soon becomes tedious and is a poor substitute for having real puzzles. The game has a few animated scenes to further the story and these although not very long are nicely done and look really good. The audio doesn’t fare very well and apart from some uninspiring tunes and barely existent sound effects you’ll hardly notice it. Gameplay is pretty straightforward point & click fare but this time there’s no lists of verbs to choose from at the bottom of your screen. Instead left clicking on something will examine it while a right click will bring up a list of available actions. A new feature is the addition of a sidekick that tags along and can help you out in certain situations. This feature is quite underused though and for the most part you can ignore your companion. Puzzles are pretty straightforward and like I said the game mostly involves a lot of walking around and talking to people. The game also has a few buggy areas and I experienced at least one fatal crash. I had to restart at one point after a vital item just disappeared. Woe to those who doesn’t notice this and keep on struggling on. In the end Lure Of The Temptress was a interesting game to play through once but didn’t really grab my attention. The storyline is pretty straightforward and there’s no real plot twists to keep you guessing. If you take away all the wandering around parts the game isn’t that long either and with some patience you’ll finish it in no time. It’s not bad for a first attempt and well worth checking out. The fact that it is available for free on GOG makes it a no brainer.