Reviewed: December 15, 2004
Reviewed by: Jason Porter

Publisher
The Adventure Company

Developer
Atlantis Interactive Entertainment

Released: October 15, 2004
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

7
8
7
7
7.5

System Requirements

Atlantis Evolution features a large cast of lively characters, an interesting story and is definitely an ambitious game. But between all of the storytelling, imaginative backdrops and memorable characters, the game can sag a bit.

The story's pacing is generally well done, though at times the developers seem too eager to divulge the secrets of New Atlantis. There was more than one instance of casually dropped NPC dialog ruining what could have been a shocking and grand revelation a few hours later into the game. However, the story maintains enough of its surprises to hold some interest. Besides, the world of New Atlantis feels so well realized, it's worth playing just to 'visit' it and imagine what it might be like were it real.

As with any adventure game, Atlantis Evolution is a lot like a very pretty Choose Your Own Adventure book: point, click, see what happens next. While Curtis can certainly 'die,' there's no penalty if he does. Just click to go back to the previous screen and try something else. It's a lot like taking a peek ahead and then choosing a different path. As an aside, I have to admit that some of the death sequences were unintentionally quite funny. Curtis just looks so clueless as to why certain things happen to him, and a simple button click sends him back to the realm of the living. Making the death cinematics interesting and entertaining doesn't hurt the enjoyment of this game at all.

The cursor changes to indicate interactive items, characters and scenery, or a direction to move in. An inventory panel conveniently holds collected items until they need to be used, when they can be easily selected by bringing up the menu and clicking on one.

The gameplay meat of any adventure title isn't so much the interface, though, as it is the puzzles. Evolution is much more intent on telling a fascinating and generally well-imagined story than it is concerned with presenting devious puzzles or subtle mysteries.

This is too bad, really. Almost all of the game events simply require Curtis to walk everywhere and talk to everyone in a particular area until he finds all of the loose items he can hold and throws them in his inventory. Each item generally activates one or two devices, which are then used to advance the story and unlock new areas to explore. There's no puzzle other than making sure you've looked everywhere. The closest thing I could find was the presence of some poorly fit mini-games. They didn't feel like a part of the main game at all (one of the first was a very basic-looking Missile Command-type game, for instance, somehow embedded in a statue...?) and seemed like a bone the developers were throwing in the hopes that the lack of satisfying puzzles and brain teasers would be ignored.

More than once I became stuck at a certain point in the game, not because I had to figure out a complex puzzle or solve some mystery, but because I had managed to accidentally miss one item on a previous screen. A failsafe dialog system could have helped this, but there isn't one. Curtis narrates as though you've already found everything you need, offering nothing in the way of clues for the player who might have walked right by what appeared to be a very average stick or bucket.

The overall effect is kind of shoddy. Evolution feels more like a trumped-up "Where's Waldo?" than a series of rewarding challenges to be overcome. With no action to speak of, it's important that adventure titles have at least some challenges to figure out. Evolution's all feel artificial, and even the greatest story in the world is just a story without some substantial gameplay to back it up.

All of the cutscenes are rendered using the game engine, with nice lighting and weather effects and crisp, clear models. Some of the people seem a bit stilted and unrealistic, but when no motion capture technology is used, that's generally what happens.

During play, Curtis is invisible, since the game has a first-person view. The worlds around him are vibrant and lively, though, with clouds of insects, various other moving flora and fauna, and people who do more (usually) than just stand there staring at you. On each screen, the point of view can be rotated a full 360-degrees. The graphics segue between angles smoothly, with a slight blurring effect as Curtis's gaze turns more quickly.

However, the game still uses a series of screens, rather than a unified world that can be moved about in at one's leisure. While this allows a high level of quality for each screen's graphics, it would have been nice to actually feel like Curtis was moving around in real time.

Sound effects are important to any adventure game, and while Evolution doesn't have all that many, they are all well done. Futuristic technology and primitive forests both sound like they should. The sound effects of this game lend a lot to the feeling of being immersed in its world.

Voice acting, however, could have been better. Curtis has one of the best voices in the game, but even his voice was only so-so. For other characters, deliveries are stilted at best, and often come off sounding like a high school play recital rather than voice work for a nationally released game. Many characters emphasize the wrong words. Other times it's just a tragic case of having the wrong actress or actor for the part. The NPC Miranda, who is supposed to have a smoky, cynical-sounding voice, sounds like she is making a desperate effort to sound that way - a sign that the actress hired really didn't have the type of voice the developers were looking for. This is the fault of the developers, but the net result is no different: Evolution has poor voice work.

However, despite the long, intriguing storyline, loads of interesting NPC’s and constant environmental interaction, something very important is missing from this title: fine tuning, especially in the area of puzzles. The environmental interaction is there, yes, but most of it involves picking up object A and using it on object B to get a bit of story or open a new area.

Chances are that this game won't get finished quickly by most people, and as I've said before, it's richly imagined enough that it's worth a visit to the game's world for its own sake. However, there's not much in the way of puzzles or challenges to delve into. The occasional "figure this out" moments are lost in a sea of repetitive actions that barely qualify as figuring anything out at all, let alone a challenge.

However, it's a simple game to figure out and it just doesn't feel all that rewarding to play through. There are very few puzzles in it. Most of the time simply exploring an area is passed off as the puzzle. Have the game's developers lost faith in their audience? We want depth, we want frustratingly obtuse symbol puzzles, we want brain teasers that wring our feeble minds out until we get it right. That's one of the most enjoyable things about this genre of games, and going light on it only hurts Atlantis Evolution in the end.