Dark Earth - opinions please?
Nostromo
Just got a few games on loan from a friend for a few weeks, this being one
if them. Looks involving & long, just like Tomb Raider. Is this worth
getting 'heavily' into (will I be able to complete it in, say, a month?),or
is it going to show up some bugbears after extended play? Could you please
include reasons for opinions & what other types/specific games you
liked/disliked...
Thanks buckets!
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Chris Barbagallo
Dark Earth - great game! But, it's NOTHING like Tomb Raider. Although
there are some action elements, it is mostly an adventure type game.
There no major bugs. It ran flawlessly on my system. Highly
recommended.
Chris B.
chr...@ziplink.net
Nostromo
Thanks Chris! :-)
Claude Martins
In article <359e1276....@news.labyrinth.net.au>,
Nostromo <nost...@spamfree.net.au> wrote:
>Just got a few games on loan from a friend for a few weeks, this being one
>if them. Looks involving & long, just like Tomb Raider. Is this worth
>getting 'heavily' into (will I be able to complete it in, say, a month?),or
>is it going to show up some bugbears after extended play? Could you please
>include reasons for opinions & what other types/specific games you
>liked/disliked...
Dark Earth is a superb game with only one major flaw: a weak ending.
It has a great backstory, about a hundred characters, lots of
locations, puzzles with more than one solution, different
game tree paths, subquests, gorgeous graphics, nice animation,
neat cutscenes.
It's not much like Tomb Raider; it's more of an adventure game
with elements of action combat thrown in. Combat is also not
always the best solution. If you've played the Alone in the
Dark series, or Bioforge, Dark Earth has a similar feel.
The backgrounds are all pre-rendered, and displayed from static
camera angles, while the characters and some objects are 3D
texture-mapped.
I finished it the first time over a weekend, so you can deduce
that the puzzles might not be too challenging for an advanced
player. There are no "inventory combination" puzzles... most
of them involve using the right object in the right place/
on the right person. Character dialogue plays a large part
in Dark Earth (even though there are no dialogue trees) since
the story is revealed through character dialogue (and some
scattered notes).
Highly recommended.
- Claude.
--
--
Claude Martins, Off: CCB-358, Dept of Comp Sci, York U., Ont, Canada
mailto:mar...@cs.yorku.ca && http://www.ariel.cs.yorku.ca/~martins/
"And then he showed these men of will what will _really_ is."
Syed Noman Ahmad
In article <6ng4sp$t5m$1...@sunburst.ccs.yorku.ca>,
Claude Martins <mar...@tiger.cs.yorku.ca> wrote:
>
>Dark Earth is a superb game with only one major flaw: a weak ending.
One more annoying thing is the save game feature. You can't
save your game any place you want, and when you do finally
find a place where you it's allowed, the game automatically
name them starting from 1... Then 2, then 3... so on.
Although you do get a snapshot with each saved game, but
overall I wish the game had handled this thing like other
adventures.
Nevertheless, it's still a VERY nice game.
--
Noman
Hendrik van den Berg
On 2 Jul 1998 16:50:58 GMT, no...@pasture.ecn.purdue.edu (Syed Noman
Ahmad) wrote:
>In article <6ng4sp$t5m$1...@sunburst.ccs.yorku.ca>,
>Claude Martins <mar...@tiger.cs.yorku.ca> wrote:
>>
>>Dark Earth is a superb game with only one major flaw: a weak ending.
>>[Lots of praise snipped]
>
>One more annoying thing is the save game feature.
snip
>Noman
Agreed - I picked this game up yesterday for £7.99 and I'm very
impressed overall. As a limey I find some of the dialogue
(particularly at the beginning) a bit high school. (A guard at one
point shouts "Holy Sun God" - straight out of Batman and Robin :). One
worry - after 90mins play I'm on the 2nd of two CD's, so it may be a
little short. (Maybe I've missed out on some things). Now the hero is
"infected" he seems a more adult and believable character. Went to bad
last night having watched a pretty sexy bar scene................(Eat
your heart out Lara Croft :).
Hendrik
David Morris
. One
>worry - after 90mins play I'm on the 2nd of two CD's, so it may be a
>little short. (Maybe I've missed out on some things). Now the hero is
>"infected" he seems a more adult and believable character. Went to bad
>last night having watched a pretty sexy bar scene................(Eat
>your heart out Lara Croft :).
>
>Hendrik
>
Not to worry, you will be doing quite a bit of disk swapping as the
upper city is on one disk, and the lower city is on the other. You
are far from the end.
I enjoyed the game all the way to the end. The ending is about the
worst I have ever seen in a game. You are asked to come up with
skills at the end, you have never been asked to do anywhere in the
game just to finish. It looked like they were running short on time
and money at the end just threw together a very difficult timing
sequence just to make the ending hard. Very poor design IMO.
David
Claude Martins
In article <6ngdpi$h...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
Syed Noman Ahmad <no...@pasture.ecn.purdue.edu> wrote:
>In article <6ng4sp$t5m$1...@sunburst.ccs.yorku.ca>,
>Claude Martins <mar...@tiger.cs.yorku.ca> wrote:
>>
>>Dark Earth is a superb game with only one major flaw: a weak ending.
>>[Lots of praise snipped]
>
>save your game any place you want,
True, but I found that Kalisto put more than enough save game
points, and integrated them with the environment. I never had
to move more than two or three screens from a save-game point
to get to where I had been before.
>and when you do finally
>find a place where you it's allowed, the game automatically
>name them starting from 1... Then 2, then 3... so on.
>Although you do get a snapshot with each saved game, but
>overall I wish the game had handled this thing like other
>adventures.
Yes, this is very annoying. I'd recommend anyone playing
Dark Earth to have a text file open in Windows, and every
time you save a game, write a short description of that
particular save game slot number in the text file. The
screen shot doesn't actually tell you that much, since
there is a lot of re-visiting locations over the course of
the storyline. Kalisto should have let us type in a
short description to describe the save games.
- Claude.
--
--
Claude Martins, Off: CCB-358, Dept of Comp Sci, York U., Ont, Canada
mailto:mar...@cs.yorku.ca && http://www.ariel.cs.yorku.ca/~martins/
"Can you fly, Bobby?"
Claude Martins
Hendrik van den Berg <h....@qub.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>Agreed - I picked this game up yesterday for £7.99 and I'm very
>impressed overall. As a limey I find some of the dialogue
>(particularly at the beginning) a bit high school. (A guard at one
>point shouts "Holy Sun God" - straight out of Batman and Robin :).
The dialogue at some points needed polishing, and the voice
actors' delivery was a bit, shall we say, overenthusiastic
at times.
> One
>worry - after 90mins play I'm on the 2nd of two CD's, so it may be a
>little short. (Maybe I've missed out on some things).
I thought the same thing, but the game is split by location
rather than by the game plot. You'll need to do a lot of
travelling between the upper and lower cities as the game
progresses. The CD swapping might get annoying.
> Now the hero is
>"infected" he seems a more adult and believable character. Went to bad
>last night having watched a pretty sexy bar scene................(Eat
>your heart out Lara Croft :).
Yum. I watched that scene two or three times (or four or five). 8)
- Claude.
--
--
Claude Martins, Off: CCB-358, Dept of Comp Sci, York U., Ont, Canada
mailto:mar...@cs.yorku.ca && http://www.ariel.cs.yorku.ca/~martins/
"Get away from her, you _bitch_!"
DJ CUSTER
ages.the last guy dosent realis that you get on cd2 every time you go to the
lower city but the game is huge.
dave langley
Mark Freid
and to top it off, I saw it at the local Electronics Boutique in the
bargain bin for 20 bucks... think it's worth it?
--
Mark Freid
===================
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DJ CUSTER <djcu...@aol.com> wrote in article
<199808032252...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...
Syed Noman Ahmad
Mark Freid <can...@yiffco.com> wrote:
>Never played it, but it got nothing but (mostly) good reviews..
>and to top it off, I saw it at the local Electronics Boutique in the
>bargain bin for 20 bucks... think it's worth it?
It is.
--
Noman
Kevin Peck
bought it but just got done with MM6 after 2 months of solid play and
thought the wife would kill me. She likes the Lucas Arts games but playing
the demo for this one showed it to be too much action for her tastes.
Mark Freid <can...@yiffco.com> wrote in article
<01bdbfe3$aec3f080$d2a1...@PC5158858.MDC.COM>...
> Never played it, but it got nothing but (mostly) good reviews..
> and to top it off, I saw it at the local Electronics Boutique in the
> bargain bin for 20 bucks... think it's worth it?
>
>
JamesK7766
Gareth Cort
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Gareth Cort
Varois83
Catty
<Gar...@cort.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Ł4.97 in Beatties, Luton!
>--
>Gareth Cort
You are kidding? Beatties sells computer games?!
Catty who is now checking out the Yellow Pages for the nearest branch
Mark Freid
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Mark Freid
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Kevin Peck <kp...@news.bridge.com> wrote in article
<01bdc23b$defa3340$b6994ca7@oapwkc12>...