ANACHRONOX

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

When the mighty fall all manner of people who once praised them
are there to jeer. Look what happened to Michael Cimino after "The
Deer Hunter" and nearly happened to Steven Spielberg after he
decided to make "1941".  Now once upon a time there was a game
developer called Ion Storm headed by a Mr Romero who had
previously stunned the world with games like "Doom" and "Quake".
Mr Romero staked his and his company's future on three games, two
of which were :  Deus Ex - hugely successful - and Daikatana which
was allegedly so bad and took so long to appear that it was bound
to be a failure. As a result the once highly touted studio was
forced to close.

But they made a third game called "Anachronox".. Two weeks after
its appearance Eidos studios were so unhappy they closed Ion Storm
and though it would be surprising if we never hear from any of the
participants again it's unlikely to be tomorrow.

Which is a pity. Deus Ex was a splendid game although I had my
reservations; I never played Daikatana; but I did play Anachronox
and really liked it - alas with provisos. However if someone had
told me that this was the best selling game of the year I could
have believed it; Eidos though were I think happy to rush release
and then forget it. With some decent marketing - who knows?

The games Anachronox most reminded me of were the two Final
Fantasy games that have been ported for the PC - both of which
were very enjoyable to say the least. It's a futuristic RPG - the
planet Anachronox is a miserable place dominated by gangs where a
strange new substance called Mystech has appeared although nobody
seems certain as to what it is or does. The lead character is a
down and out private eye called Boots who starts the game by being
thrown out of his office window and slowly works his way up to
superhero eventually (of course) saving the world with the help of
his cronies who he picks up along the way. And quite a batch they
are - a geriatric ex-scientist, a robot, a chemist, a miniature
planet (I kid you not), an female knife thrower and of all things
an ex-comic book hero.  Stats alas are automatic but there's
plenty of chance to upgrade weapons and learn new battle
techniques; Also once you learn the secret of Mystech it
masquerades as your magic spells and becomes vital if you hope to
defeat the very nasty baddies all waiting to send you to oblivion.

Apart from the doom and gloom in Anachronox you get a chance to
visit a number of diverse worlds which include the world's
ultimate democracy and a large ship where ex-comic book heroes are
being imprisoned by an ex-comic book villain.  The latter was by
far the most original episode and also produced by far the
toughest puzzles. Playing time for me was 25 hours which I think
was realistic as the only times you really are likely to get
killed and have to reload are the very beginning and one or two
"end of level" nasties before you reach the very end and the
nastiest villains of all.

Gripes? Well I usually like to complete all subquests but one I
found impossible - although all it involves is taking photos of 8
rare creatures. I never managed to sight even one despite scouring
the area where they were supposed to be according to the fansite.
It is also never explained how to get your battle special moves or
for that matter how to get your best weapons - if you don't talk
to everyone and explore every area from the start at each return
visit you may miss the vital person who can give you the
skill/weapon. But my biggest gripe came with the controls: the
default setting for my mouse was too insensitive and on shutting
down it always returned to the default implying that the game
doesn't store your settings. Also it never shut down after I'd
quitted - one has to go to Windows task manager and remove the
file or reboot if after leaving the game you want to play again in
the same session. Minor gripes but ones that should easily have
been patchable although I doubt that patch will ever be released.

However I must confess I liked it enormously. I'm sure you will
too.



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