In 1870, the original trip around the world by George Francis Train, who called himself “Citizen Train,” took 67 days, and started and ended in Tacoma, Washington, where a plaque now commemorates the trip. It is thought that Phileas Fogg’s circumnavigation of the globe, beginning on October 2, 1872, from and to London, England, was based upon Citizen Train’s journey. The plot of Jules Verne’s book has Phileas Fogg making a bet resulting from a disagreement at his gentleman’s club, the Reform Club, concerning an article in the Daily Telegraph claiming that circumnavigation of the globe in 80 days was now possible due to the opening of a new railway route in India.

The plot of the game 80 days follows the circumnavigation of the globe in 1899 by Oliver Lavisheart, who is helping his uncle Mathew win yet another bet relating to Phileas Fogg’s trip around the world 27 years earlier. Another purpose to the trip is to recover the patents of four of his uncle’s inventions from four different cities that are on the original route of Phileas Fogg’s circumnavigation. Sometimes the best thing to do when you are doing a sequel or game based upon material that has been used and perhaps even over used is to try something different, or go in a different direction. Coming up with a new plot based upon the same travel route works well so that while we are doing something familiar that we may have seen in movies, books, television shows, and other games, the plot and characters are fresh and new. I enjoyed the plot.

The game is a traditional adventure game, where the hero has to solve quests and puzzles to progress from one location to the next. Added to the mix is the time clock, which, based upon the difficulty setting, is either an easy (tourist), average (globe trotter), or hard (adventurer) time schedule to meet, in other words, time moves faster at the harder difficulty levels. You can also measure your time against Phileas Fogg’s original trip.

The puzzles are the typical adventure type which I love. You pick up everything you can find and use it someplace and some time other than where you found it. There are also physical puzzles that involve running, jumping, and climbing to obtain access to certain interactive items, such as the three gates that contain the tomb robbers in Cairo. Another puzzle type had you matching up symbols to graphics, pulling levers, an inverted teepee puzzle, rewiring a circuit box, and putting balls onto a eight-pointed star. I enjoyed solving the puzzles.

Adventure games are fun because you meet interesting people in your journey through the game. 80 Days has 100 characters to meet and interact with that may or may not help you progress the plot and move you on your way around the world and back to London.

Pressing the left mouse button allows you to skip dialogues, so that if you are stuck in a particular location in the game you are not forced to listen to the same conversations over and over again as you replay the game sequence until you get it right. A feature that I did not like was the save point feature. The game automatically saves the game at predetermined save points in the linear plot. Many games have automatic saves at strategic save points and also have a save anywhere routine that is more typical of a PC game.

PC games do not need to use save points. Also, I know of no reason why the new advanced technology console games with hard drives need save points. The player cannot save the game at any time during the game. You can only save the game at certain points, called save points, during the action. Save points are bad, because they force you to play over and over again the same sequence of puzzles or character interactions if you are stuck at a point almost at the same save point.

A really cute feature in the game is the production numbers, found at the end of the Cairo, Bombay, Yokohama and San Francisco. In Cairo Scheherazade, a harem woman, with good lungs, sings “Run Like a Hero” (which reminds us of “Walk Like an Egyptian” by the Bangles). While Scheherazade sings, the camels, trader, archeologist, harem girls, cops, and others dance to her song. The production numbers not short and I had a blast loading them to show my family and friends, who also found the production numbers amusing and entertaining. The singing and the music is surprisingly professional and high quality.

I loved the interface; it has a small mini map in the upper left side of the screen. The map has arrows that lead you to your hotel and quest goals. When you press the tab key your current quest text appears under the mini map. After a time the text disappears, but you can bring it back with the tab key when your memory needs refreshing.

The upper right corner of the screen has a constantly running clock. If you are like me, and you do not like timed puzzles, so pick the easiest difficulty level (tourist) and the clock no longer poses a problem. You can take your time solving puzzles and exploring the terrain at a more leisurely pace. Difficulty levels also determine how much money you have to solve those monetary constraints.

The inventory appears at the bottom center when you press the “I” key. Once inventory is open you can scroll back and forth with the O and P keys or the mouse wheel until the item you want is in the center window. Once in the center window right-mouse-clicking in the action area will apply the item to the area at the cursor location. Usually an animated sequence will follow, showing you how the action of the selected item worked on the cursor location—unless you picked the wrong item to use, in which case, nothing happens.

Another essential feature is the tiredness of our hero, Oliver. In the bottom left portion of the screen is a colored tiredness gauge. When Oliver uses energy, the bar will shrink until Oliver runs out of energy and there is no colored bar left. Oliver can get energy boosts by eating food, or completely renew the energy bar by paying for and sleeping in his hotel room or, in some cases, in another resting location, such as the archeologist’s tent in Cairo. If you run out of bar you will fall asleep in the street, where someone will find you and take you to your hotel where you will rest for the night.

There is no printed manual, but there is an 18-page manual in Adobe format on one of the two 80 days CD-ROMs that come with the game. After seven pages of legalese, installation instructions, and system requirements, there is a seven-page description of how to use the controls and heads up display in the game followed by a short three-page walkthrough of the first ten minutes of the game play. I felt the manual was well done with a good index and lots of useful information.

The full-color three-dimensional graphics in 80 days are phenomenally good, with features like real time shadows, textures, anti-aliasing, light sourcing, and 1024x768 pixel resolution. The game environment is full-color 3D, but still retains the familiar graphic adventure game play found in traditional 2D games. The characters and environment are all portrayed in three dimensions.

The manual recommends using 128 MB of VRAM Direct X 9 compliant 3D accelerated video card and at least a 2GHz main processor. I played the game on a 3 GHz main processor and a PCI Express 16-bit ATI Radeon X800 card with 256 MB VRAM. While the recommended and required system configuration shown in the manual is quite modest, if you don’t use a fully blown system, you may have some graphic and puzzle solving problems that may prevent you from finishing the game. The graphics still stuttered on some situations, such as falling off a ladder or other “unexpected” graphic events. Once I figured out how to climb ladders, I had fewer problems with the video.

The settings are very well done. Cairo, Bombay, Yokohama, and San Francisco are portrayed well in the 1890’s period and with an architectural accuracy that shows someone did their homework. Sometimes I just enjoyed walking around and looking at the scenery.

The animations were a little stiff and perhaps could have been done a bit better. What they lose in smoothness they make up in cuteness. Oliver does a cute little dance every time you find money.

A really neat feature that I liked immensely was riding around on rentable magic carpets, retro big-wheel bikes, camels, elephants, and motorcycles. There is no mayhem allowed. You cannot run over pedestrians or crash into other vehicles, so mothers can be sure that their children will not be engaging in inappropriate behavior in the game.

The music in the game is all from the 1970s and 1980s, based upon rock bands from the Disco and post-disco era. The surprisingly good renditions of familiar music have new lyrics and slightly different musical scoring than the songs they imitate. I enjoyed the music immensely, and while it was not from the 1890s, which is the setting of the game, the music fit the situations and action quite well. The music was a pleasant high point of the game.

Sometimes the hot spots in the game were hard to find. The windows in the lighthouse where you are supposed to throw the tear of darkness would not light up for me until I carefully maneuvered our hero many times and finally got the exact spot needed. All this maneuvering took time and if I was playing on a higher difficulty level might have cost me the game.

I found 80 days a wonderful enjoyable game with very few rough edges. The game is very well done, but could have been done a little better. Thank you for a job well done.