Amerzone

                   Reviewed by Lol Oakes

The basic story of Amerzone is that you have to find a rare egg
and finding a way to travel and return said egg to Amerzone.
Basically you're just a delivery boy.

The game is played over 7 chapters and comes on 4 CDs so I thought
that it would be quite a long game, but alas I was wrong. I
managed to finish the game inside 2 days which was about 5 hours
of gameplay. And you should consider that of the 5 hours of play I
must have spent about 3 of them finishing the first chapter.  The
trouble is that the game is not only very easy but in some of the
chapters there's hardly anything to do.

The opening chapter was very involved and had me racking my brain
on several occasions, I had found the transport and also after
reading a manuscript knew where to find the egg but couldn't work

out how to stop the elevator on the required floor, however once I
had solved this problem the rest of the game was a doddle.

Although the game was easy I was enjoying it until I got to one of
the later chapters. I was on this island and confronted with a
large mechanical contraption made of wood which I had to get
working in order that I could get my hovercraft up the waterfall.
When I saw the problem I thought that it was going to take a long
time to complete but all I had to do was turn one wheel and pull
one lever and that was it, most disappointing. There is some good
news though, people who are tone deaf - e.g. Jim O'Keeffe and Noel
Gallagher!! - won't have any problems as there are no music
puzzles in the game.

My overall verdict on the game is that it was very much a missed
opportunity, it could have been so much better. It looks very nice
and the sound is quite good but the puzzles (apart from the
opening chapter) are almost non existent. We bought the game
secondhand for œ10 so it didn't cost an arm and a leg but I
wouldn't tell anybody to buy it for its full price. It's just not
worth the money, so if you can buy it secondhand or wait for it to
come out on budget then ok.

     This is Lol Oakes for SynTax sitting in front of my PC















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