I've played Haven Park with a 6-year kid. Perfect game for his age: calm, cute, not challenging, rewarding. For me being a spectator it looked like a perfect training simulator for kids to play games. The controls are simple, the quests are intuitive, the story is teaching. This game has some management, evolution in an easy-to-get form, some ideas to think of. It would be better if building prices used icons for resources, not words. This way the kid will easier understand how much it costs. :) Experienced gamers may find this game short and easy, even boring. I think it is just not for them. It is fine for kids, playing together with their parents or grandparents. It is a calm, curing game, . A good game.
Authors tried to invent interesting campaign, found solutions that you will scarcely find anywhere else, drawn great graphics. But with THAT MANY issues it was hard to find any pleasure playing the game, e.g.: -constructor forgets orders -building selection panel may reset and close with no reason -unit passing though the crowd likely stucks -your units start searching depth for attack only when they are in enemy crowd. Thus 5 enemy submarines destroy 20 of yours -mines are laid half screen away from where you asked -going to auto-repair, units go through enemy base, not to adjacent repair deck -units are visually too similar. Buildings are too -micromap shows units as blue dots on blue background. Or your units are pink, enemy units are coral -you will never guess meaning of button pictures -front and back interface panels can't be distinguished -no waypoints = a lot of micromanagement to move any turret "Cool features!" -"realistic water makes you slow" You'll watch for 1 minute for a turret to change its depth -"hidden caves!" You can't see them and can't help your units when they get into an ambush -"large final mission to summarize player's experience? Phuh, we'll make a labyrinth instead!" -"we have nukes! Like in StarCraft! Drop them anywhere!" Enemy can't prevent bombing. "Here is "closed area" where bombs can't fall, they will fall in random place instead!" What about bugs? -if you accidentally destroy building to capture, after 20 minutes you will find that you can't finish the mission -objectives say something like "destroy base on southwest", while actually it is on northeast -after mission restart your upgrades are kept We know too many examples of even earlier years where none of such issues appeared. After finishing White Sharks campaign I'm curious about the other races, but I can't return to this game. Now I know the reason why it wasn't popular in its time. This is sad how that amount of work was overrun by the amount of issues.
Having read all these reviews that praise the game, one may think it is all about stealth and sneaking. A puzzle-like gameplay can be imagined, where you have multiple ways to "solve" the mission and full freedom to combine different ways. In fact, all puzzles end very quickly. After a couple of interesting sneaking missions you get into tunnels, ruins, sewers, fighting with zombies and lizards just like some weird sort of Indiana Jones and not a thief. Sometimes you will have a refreshing breath of "stealth" gameplay and a story, but while digging in the tunnels and running another lap to find the last 15 coins in another old temple you may forget how good it was that rare times. Sneaking to avoid the enemies and to not to trigger an alarm in many times doesn't worth it: the levels are designed the way where you often need to run through the same place many times. And avoiding a guard every time of 4 or 5 is really annoying. You can't have any plan to go through the mission and to plan where to spend you arsenal of arrows. To end up with sneaking, almost 1/3 of places are not sneakable: the lights cannot be turned off, two or three guards are patrolling the rooms with noisy marble floor and you don't have enough moss arrows to hide your movements. The only sneaking option you may have in this situation is to sit for few minutes, waiting for guards to go away. But if they detect you - their radars turn on: they will never lost you and will find you even if you hide in a deep shadow around two corners of a corridor. The story is short, the levels are long and lack in details, the game gives no reach gaming experience and in many places looks like a time consumer with no reward. In the end it turns into what it tried to not to be: into a strange first-person "fencing and shooting" with rare sneaking elements. I've bought it in a bundle so I'll try next games in Thief trilogy, but won't ever return to Thief Gold again.
