Simon the Sorcerer 3D

It's become traditional to criticize Simon the Sorcerer 3D. Its poor appearance and previously buggy history did it no favors upon release. And although it's now playable, it still sits as one of the poorer examples of an adventure game series trying to adapt to a 3D engine. That's not because of looks, though - it all comes down to a fundamentally flawed design. The original Simon the Sorcerer had a nice juxtaposition of cutsey fairytale world with a somewhat cynical, sarcastic central character at its centre. The sequel began to scew Simon into a much nastier character who added an unhealthy dose of sexism to his already less-than-desirable personality. Simon 3D continues on this path, making him an even more obnoxious and unpleasant person to be around. Adventure game protagonists don't have to be likable, but you do have to want to spend time with them especially when you feel frustrated. Simon 3D is easily the longest of the series thanks to the enormous 3D world in which it is based. There's not actually all that much more there than in the previous games but the sheer size of things and Simon's slow speed means you'll spend many hours listening to his quips, put downs and witnessing his nasty leery smiles to camera. It quickly gets tiresome. The game eventually deploys a few different systems for speeding around the map (the eagle is particularly good) but when they finally come and you'll rue the fact that you've crisscrossed the map several times already. The Simon games rely on a British sensibility for their humour. The first two games tended to use verbal humour, sarcasm and irony to drive things along but Simon 3D is built on a lot of specific British cultural references and that feels like a big mistake. The game does attempt to build some puzzles out of the 3D world but too often there are sequences which rely on quick movements with broken controls and poor camera angles. It's frustrating, poorly written and mostly mean spirited stuff.

Though the 3D is atrocious (even for when it came out!) This title, Still holds up for it's unique comedy stylings, which are often self mocking, due to the awful graphics and company politics. Though it's Still not as good as 1 or 2, but certainly a worthy addition to the series (before the German's bought the series and drained all the humour and charm in only the way that a German can! ((If they Keep it going till "Simon The Sorcerer Nein!" i'll be impressed. It Should've ended at 2 But 3 is fitting in it's own way!)))

Back in the day, when 2D graphics were getting old school, game developers decided, that bringing everything in 3D was the must thing. This also happened with adventure games, such as King’s Quest, Monkey Island and Simon the Sorcerer. In most cases the change was clunky, but some what enjoyable. In Simon the Sorcerer 3D it was a disaster. The biggest problem, besides the horrible looking and badly textured characters, is the big game world, which is empty and boring. You spend most of the time running, or teleporting to selected areas, around and try to look for something sensible to do. Also the controls are badly lacking. In a short conclusion Simon 3D is a very disappointing game, even if you have low expectations. The humour of the previous games is there, but the game play is so poorly executed, that I just can’t recommend the game.

Underrated game. It gets a bit tedious at some points if you don't know what to do, and the dialogue isn't great. Some of the characters are annoying, several puzzles are tediously hard. You have no idea what to do most of the time. In fact, it's really quite annoying. But if you grab a kiev and listen to some better music it's awesome.

The 3rd and final game from the official trilogy before being rebooted by a German company (Thanks Nostradamus!) which disappointed everyone by going 3D and concentrating on this concept. To be frank, it is not a bad game but there are some certain annoyances. In terms of graphics we do lose lots of details which previous games had, but it does make up for a rather very unique art style which I don't think anyone ever came up by combining low polygons with mosaic-like textures. This allows anyone that still uses Voodoo 3D Accelerators to be able to play this game, however there is a certain nitpick. In open areas the game is badly optimized under Direct3D, even modern PC components won't let you get that smooth 60 FPS, instead, go for Glide rendering and use a wrapper such as nGlide or dgVooDoo instead. As for the gameplay it uses the keyboard with tank controls to move Simon, no mouse at all. While the areas are big it is certainly the game's main weakness, especially at the beginning where you don't know what to do, it is recommended to rely on the phone booth which acts as a fast travel to move around the areas most of the time, which luckily certain locations are available. The game does have the same moon logic puzzles which previous Simon games have, but additionally, with 3D graphics, there are additional minigames which refreshes the game more, albeit some can be wonky. As for the audio and writing it ain't bad, i do like the music and the writing gets better from Chapter 3 and you can see some NPCs having the same voice actors and the Brian Bowles once more voices Simon himself. One additional cool factor is the use od CD/DVD drive to solve a certain puzzle, just be sure to have Auto Run On or at least set Windows to launch the software immediately and open the lid, if ya don't have a disk drive, perhaps use a virtual disk and command it to open the lid via File Explorer (Not tested).