Sue puts on a silly hat and counts to 10 (lots of times) in ....

Legend of Kyrandia 3 : Malcolm's Revenge - Virgin RRP œ44.99
(Animated graphic adventure for CD-ROM only )

Malcolm's Revenge is the latest in the Fables and Fiends series
from Virgin / Westwood and this time it's an all-singing,
all-dancing full talkie extravaganza on CD only, whereas Kyrandia
1 was disk only and 2 was in either format. One would expect that
making it a full multimedia experience would enhance the game
considerably but, sadly, this isn't the case. However I'll save
the bad news for later. Let's start by giving a bit of the
storyline.

Malcolm is the anti-hero of the game, an evil-minded jester who
was accused and convicted of murdering the King and Queen of
Kyrandia in the first game. His punishment was to be turned into a
statue - presumably the Kyrandians thought this was kinder than
executing him, despite his crime. But a freak lightning flash
frees Malcolm from his imprisonment and, take it from me, he ain't
happy.  In fact his immediate thoughts are of revenge on the rest
of Kyrandia, egged on by his evil conscience, Gunther. Hardly
surprising he is miffed, really, since we discover fairly early on
that he didn't in fact kill the King and Queen. They were killed by
an enchanted knife which he (so he says) was trying to stop.

Naturally the inhabitants aren't too pleased to see Malcolm again
though in typical nice-guy fashion they still don't bump him off
when they see him.  Nope, this time he is thrown into the castle
dungeon and ... told to make doilies! How cruel can you get?
(Actually you can find out if you open the doily making box and
see the poor bloke stuffed inside it - I can't imagine what _his_
crime was!). Fortunately he only has to make 10 doilies before he
is released but clearly a disguise is essential if he isn't going
to be making them for half the adventure.

Once he has a disguise, he can wander round with impunity, which
seemed rather strange to me since everything about him, especially
his voice, was still so obviously Malcolm that I was amazed no-one
twigged. Kyrandians must be dense as well as 'nice'. Even when
Malcolm converses with them in 'nice' mode (he has a choice of
attitudes, y'see), he still sounds pretty unpleasant and sarky.

It won't be too long before he finds a route off Kyrandia and heads
for another island, the Isle of Cats. Maybe here he can find
someone who will help him attack Kyrandia and get his revenge? But
naturally they want him to do something for them first ...

So the game progresses in typical fashion - get X from character B
and give it to A so they will give you Y and so forth. And here we
come to one of the great failings of Kyrandia 3 .

Repetition.

I'll say it again, shall I?

Repetition.

Now, if this was Kyrandia 3, I would have done that probably 10
times, and in another screen or so another 10. It'd drive you
crazy, wouldn't it? So will Kyrandia 3.  A simple example. On the
Isle of Cats you have to travel through the jungle.  You can do
this by cart or on foot. If on foot, you need a machete to stop
yourself being attacked by snakes. On each screen, you need to
clear plants with the machete to reveal the exits and some plants
have snakes in them. When they are revealed, you need to click the
machete on them quickly before they strike.  You also need to
collect randomly placed bones in the jungle and you need at least 6
of them. You might go through 5 screens without finding one, and
the next screen could have 2 hidden in it. Later you will have to
do the whole blasted rigmarole again ... but this time you need to
find 10 of them.

This idea of making the player repeat tasks happens time and time
again through the game. It's almost as though the designer
thought, hang on, if it's fun to collect one item, it must be ten
times as much fun to collect ten of them ...  wrong. It isn't fun,
it's boring and aggravating. It also makes you feel they'd run out
of imagination and wanted to make us feel the game was a lot
bigger and more complex than it actually is. If they'd written a
game about the Arthurian story, I got the feeling they would have
stuck 10 Holy Grails in for good measure ...

When you make a player repeat a task, you also run into the added
problem of repeated responses. A funny response from Malcolm, his
evil conscience Gunther or another NPC is amusing once, maybe
twice. After 10, 20 times, it isn't even remotely funny.

The random elements also add to the frustration. I know several
people who have played this game and had problems with the random
events which just weren't working. They seem to be so balanced
against the player that it is all too tempting to give up. One
player gave up about 2/3 of the way through the game, the others
got past that part but then got stuck right at the very end; it
took a phone call by one player to Virgin to clarify some very
murky points.

Why did I continue with it? Sheer cussedness, I think. I hate
leaving a game unfinished, but I did put Kyrandia 3 to one side
after a few nights' play and didn't go back to it for several
months because it was just so illogical. The game has been good in
parts, don't get me wrong, and some bits have been amusing and
well designed.  But its down points drag it into the realms of
stupidity on the part of the designers. If they write a Kyrandia
4, I doubt they'll find many takers after the fiasco of Kyrandia 3
which could have been excellent but failed miserably.

Have I finished it yet? Yes, thankfully. The end is very illogical
with some items very hard to get hold of - see my hint file in
this issue. The final credits are well done and amusing but don't
make up for my frustration during play.








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