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| Minimum Req.: (OS X
version): Macintosh G4 350 MHz or faster, OS 10.1.2, 185 megs of HD space Reviewed On: Macintosh G4 867 MHz, OS 10.2.4, 512 Meg RAM | |||
Intro In a day and age where game development has grown into a multi-year process requiring man power and millions of dollars, it's nice to see the little guy fend for themselves. Alida is a one-man project from our friends (or should I say friend) in the penal-colony-turned-country of Australia. Cos Russo is an artist, an animator, a game designer, and a very, very dedicated man. Spending a full 5 years of his life developing the game, Alida is purely Russo's creation--a labor of intense love for games. But how does it play? Well.... Gameplay: 7/10 Alida is a first person adventure game. Yeah, you may remember those. Games like Myst, and to a lesser extent 7th Guest and its sequel 11th Hour, were all the rage in the mid-nineties. Where, by using high resolution graphics (albeit static ones) and an immersive story, a one-of-a-kind experience could be produced. However, these games soon gave way to games featuring dynamic, interactive environments with moving polygons. As these games proliferated, first person adventure games went the way of, well, regular adventure games, seeing a release of a good, solid game about once a year (if we're lucky). But enough nostalgia. Alida is a story about a rock band by the same name and their rise to fame via the unprecedented success of their first album. Using the profits from that album, the group decides to do something really spectacular and undertake building a giant amusement park, the main attraction of which is a giant operating guitar (that also functions as one of the game's more interesting puzzles). So the group found an island in the middle of the sea and began construction on one of the biggest narcissistic odes to themselves since Cher went solo. Well, soon enough the band's manager starts setting up shady dealings and suddenly the whole project goes awry, and each member of the band holes up in their own part of the island and agree to put away their fortune in a central vault until all legal matters are cleared up. Keep in mind this all happens before their sophomore album release. Well 15 years later, and band member Arin is asked to return to the island to sort out some business matters among band members. After Arin fails to return, his wife looks to you, the player, for help. Well, sure, why not? Taking
a cue from Myst, Alida is a standard point-and-click adventure,
requiring the mouse, and only the mouse to play. When an object can be interacted
with, the cursor changes to reflect that, the same as it does for navigating--move
the mouse to the left part of the screen to move left and vice-versa for right.
With the controls being so simple, the emphasis of the game is puzzle solving.
Many of the puzzles are very well thought out, depending on clues found throughout
the game to solve them. However, many of the clues aren't even close to the actual
puzzle, and Alida often requires some severe back-tracking to complete a puzzle--forcing
gamers to step back and actually think about the logistics of the scenario, a
feature that some will enjoy while others will viciously hate. Some of the puzzles
are downright dastardly difficult, requiring the patience of Zen master to complete
(audible puzzles, I'm looking at you). There were definitely puzzles that incited
swearing, and some of the clues seemed a bit outlandish, but they were all solvable--just
requiring various amounts of patience (Alida is very intensive--expect
looooong play sessions). But for those of the impatient, raised-on-NES-and-eighties-TV
generation, Alida's website has a very descriptive and helpful walkthrough.
Gamers looking for a fast, twitch adventure should definitely, DEFINITELY look
elsewhere. But gamers still in love with Myst will feel right at home with Alida
and its unique environments featuring many new and interesting puzzles. In fact,
one of the more memorable features of Alida is its reliance on aural puzzles.
Being a game about a band, this makes perfect sense, but as a gamer, these sorts
of puzzles were pretty distinct from the plethora of adventure games already out
there, and added a new sort of difficulty to a genre in danger of extinction. Graphics: 7/10
Sound:
9/10 Overall: 7/10 [ top ] |
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