Lure of the Temptress (1992)

This game is the first to use the virtual theatre engine, and is therefore the first game to have NPCs that move around about their business in a relatively realistic manner. This makes the game important in the evolution of adventure games and even video games in general. Unfortunately this game has it’s issues. It has quite possibly the worst audio ever. The interface is often awkward to use and NPCs get in your way. The worst part about this game however is it’s story. It is extremely basic and clichéd, if it wasn’t an adventure game it could get away with this, but in an adventure game the story is absolutely crucial.

The game glitches out, the character that suposed to follow you get stuck and thus you are unable to progress in the game as you need him to do some jobs. the pathing is horrible. when i order my charater to talk with someone who is right at his side. the character will run around the screen even to the oposite direction from the character he is trying to talk to, making the experience frustranting in this state, this game is unplayeble. not wonder it was for free

I'm giving this 4 stars because *for its time* it was ahead of the curve. I had just replayed Broken Sword and read through the comments by Charles Cecil on Revolution's humble beginnings (really reminds me a little of Roosterteeth, especially watching their show RWBY take shape---very small crew in the beginning with classy but simplified art work) and saw that this was their first game. Plusses: well, the big one for 1992 would have been that it even had artwork. As a gamer who remembers Zork, I remember Infocom saying it would not bother with graphics till it felt it could do them well and they'd rather devote resources to good plots and puzzles and vibrant writing. Some of the descriptive writing in LotT is up there with the original infocom text games, and it was fun to take a little walk down memory lane and see an early adventure when graphics were new (hey, this excelled the original Leisure Suit Larry game!) Where it fell apart for me was in those graphics, and I'm not sure if this was originally a problem or the problems arose as a result of the game getting ported to the Scumm engine or whatever further tinkering GOG did to format the game for newer machines. As people spawned and constantly bumped into each other, it could take a certain amount of patience just to walk across the screen to talk to a character you'd just used "talk to" on. This was especially challening with the mechanic of asking your companion to do something---because of the odd pathing, it was possible to give a correct command and still come up with both your character and your companion standing still with "?" speech bubbles over their heads. So, yeah, even if it violates your code of honor, use the included walkthrough. Interesting to see how Revolution went from "ahead of the curve" with this to "Broken Sword," which even in 2016 sets the bar for story, puzzles, unique animation, and great characters. Off to play Beneath a Steel Sky now!

This game can only score nostalgia points, because other than that it is simply horrible. I gave it a go, since it was free here, and, I have to say, I can understand why it is free. The controls would be interesting, if the character would react to the commands immediately and not run around colliding with other characters and doing nothing for a few times before the same command is finally performed. Lots of other glitches as well, too many to mention here. As an adventure game, it is also pretty bad, since the puzzles have no continuity and are not very coherent either. You basically have to talk to people again and again until they give you the information you need or new tasks to do. Finally, if you don't count the time you spend going aimlessly in circles and trying to move from place to place, the game is very short and the story not very interesting either. I was left extremely frustrated and disappointed.

Other reviewers have already commented on the annoying nature of the Virtual Theatre system, so I won't say much more than I heartily agree. Most of the game's length comes from waiting to get control of your character back after he's bounced off every NPC on the screen, or from trying to snag the NPC you were trying to talk to after you've spent so long wandering around that both of you forgot what was going on. There was a glitch in my playthrough near the end, but it didn't seem to matter and I was able to finish. The ending was quick and anticlimactic (that's what she said!). What little 'fighting' there was amounted to a few button-mash moments that could've been skipped for all they mattered to the story. Conclusion: there are far better point-and-clicks to play, but it's hard to argue with the price.