I'm a sucker for everything that relates to the Atlantis legends. I love the mythology around it, and I find it a source for inspiration and creativity. As I played Atlantis: Evolution, I have to admit that the story was quite captivating. Whether my own bias in regards to my enjoyment of Atlantean stories played into it or not, it's hard to say. If there's something that Atlantis Evolution is strong in, it has to be the story. Sadly, if falls short in many other areas.
Atlantis: Evolution is a point and click adventure game. You spend time moving through areas, pointing and clicking at things to activate objects and puzzles. Although there is, in my opinion, a solid enough storyline on the background going on, a lot of the puzzle solving and things you do in the game have very little to do with the storyline itself. Yes, accomplishing those things advances the game, but you don't get a sense that they are tied in with the story of the game.
The main character is Curtis Hewitt, a young photographer that is just returning to New York. The year is 1904. After an accident that sunk the ship Curtis had taken for his return trip, the young man ends up in a new and mysterious place. This seems to be the Atlantis of myth... but is it? Curtis finds himself following a quest not only to return home, but also to help unravel the mystery behind the rulers of Atlantis, the Atlantean gods.
TECHNICAL
The graphics, although a bit dated by today standards are actually quite decent in general. In particular the cut scenes that you get for nearly every single conversation interaction seems to be well done, albeit a bit repetitive. All in all, I didn't find any outstanding problems with the game in the technical area. It ran smoothly, there were no hiccups and no crashes.
The controls were responsive enough, although this is only after you come to understand how they work. Most of the interactions are simply point and clicking, but where to point and click? That's a good question.
The user interface is also simple, but again, this is only after you understand what you need to do. The manual does explain how to use it, but it can be a bit tricky some times. Basically, you use the left mouse button to click on things. The right mouse button accesses your inventory and from there you select things with the left mouse button.
CREATIVE
Lets talk about the music first. It's outstanding. Probably one of the best soundtracks I've heard for a game. Sadly, you only get music at certain times, however the environmental sounds do a good job of drawing you into the game. Based on the sounds alone, you can almost feel like you're there.
The graphics aren't as stellar as I would have liked. They are for the most part, pretty. The cut scenes as pointed out before are neat. However for most of the game, it's all very static. There is no wind, no movement of leafs. Water that could have used ripple effects doesn't have it, even when they show sharks moving in it. It's like this big painting that is somehow expected to capture the world. Characters that you sometimes run into might have some animation, but not a whole lot. Whatever effect the sound and music achieved in drawing you into the game is completely destroyed by the effort the graphics put in drawing you out of it.
Although the world sounds alive, it simply doesn't look alive.
Another issue with the backgrounds, and one that is particularly important for this genre is how busy they are. At one point, you end up lost in a jungle. You look around and it is very hard to tell where you came from or where you're supposed to go to or what you should be clicking on. I guess, from a certain perspective this is kind of realistic. I'm sure that being lost in a jungle gives you a feeling that everything around you looks the same, but in this game, it doesn't add to the challenge - it simply makes moving around very frustrating.
Voice acting. I've said the game sounds great, and it does... except for the character voices. The voice acting is very painful, the writing of the dialogue also started to get on my nerves. The main character delivers what are supposed to be witty lines, except they don't fit the situation. The main character doesn't sound like you would expect the main character to sound. It's another thing on top of the graphics that just detracts from your immersion into the game.
GAMEPLAY
So you've installed the game and you launch it. The first menu you see has absolutely no labels. None. It's a bunch of strange symbols that will only show you what they mean when you move your mouse over them. The options menu you can access during the game with the ESC key uses the same system. Why? I don't know, I guess it's supposed to make it look more Atlantean.
Ok, so we've managed to launch the game. Really, most of the game includes guessing and pixel hunting. You guess what you need to click on; you guess what you have to do with it and you pixel hunt for things to click on. It gets very, very frustrating after a while. The puzzles range from extremely easy to somewhat hard and most of the puzzles have very little to do with the game itself. In fact, it almost feels as if the puzzles were just a bunch of random mini-games thrown into the game randomly to give people puzzles to do.
This game could have been much more than it is. If you're able to solve all the puzzles in the first few tries, you'll probably finish the game in around eight hours. But some puzzles will take several tries and there's, again, the pixel hunting. I can't stress how much this aspect of the game got on my nerves.
After you finish it the first time, I don't see a point to playing it again. It didn't seem to me that there were multiple endings as the game is really quite linear. The game's saving grace is perhaps the ability to make you smile at times. There's a bit of humor in different areas of the game, some of it intended and some of it not. That by itself is not to support the game all the way through, though.
IN CONCLUSION
This game has a very nice story that was just poorly implemented. I didn't find it fun, although I admit I found myself wanting to finish it so I could get the full story. I'd recommend this game only if you're a hardcore adventure fan, and it works better if you're also a hardcore point and click adventure fan. If you don't fall in that category, you're probably better off getting a fiction book about Atlantis.
I played the game with the following PC specs:
Processor: Athlon XP 2500+ (1.87 GHZ)
Memory: 1GB RAM
Video Card: nVidia GeForce FX 5600 with 256MB of video memory
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy
If I had been able to play games while inside of my mother's womb, I'd have done so. The first system I ever had was the Atari 2600 followed by a Tandy Color Computer. From there on, I was hooked. I'm particularly attracted to role playing games (a passion that extended to tabletop gaming through college) and action/adventure games. I don't like puzzle games a whole lot, although I enjoy strategy games, particularly real-time ones, quite a bit. I can have fun with First Person Shooters, often finding them very cathartic, but I tend to avoid survival horroor games because I find myself too stressed out.
I was a software engineer until events in my life gave me a kick on the behind and I found myself exploring my true passion, writing. Other than gaming, I love reading, especially fantasy and science-fiction. I like my games to be challenging, but not frustrating. Although I don't want to see games becoming books with pretty graphics, I don't mind seeing solid storytelling in my games.
