Windows Phone Thoughts: Atlantis Redux reviewed

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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Atlantis Redux reviewed

Posted by Philip Colmer in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:00 AM


Getting Started
There isn't much to the installation process for Atlantis Redux - copy the files onto your storage card and run the executable. The downside is that you have to use File Explorer every time you want to run the game as it doesn't install an icon anywhere. The upside is that the installation is easy and uninstallation is just as easy.

The first time that you run the game, you have to enter a graphics code that you get when you buy the game. I struggled with this a little bit because my Axim doesn't show some of the graphics clearly but you only have to do it once.

Playing the Game
When you start the game, your initial options are few, as Figure 1 shows.


Figure 1: Starting the game.

Clicking on How to play takes you to a single screen giving you the controls on the PDA, as shown in Figure 2.


Figure 2: Controls for the game.

My first quibble was the option on the menu for "Sounds on" - it is actually in reverse. It says "Sounds on" when the sounds are playing and clicking on it changes the text to "Sounds off" and the sound stops. It might make more sense to reword this option to "Turn sounds on" and "Turn sounds off" respectively. An associated quibble is that that is your sole control over sound - you can't adjust the volume from within the game and you don't get the choice of music and speech - it's all or nothing. The music, whilst being of very high quality, can get a bit grating if you are trying to figure out a puzzle and you've been stuck for a while ... with the same loop of music playing over and over and over again.

To play the game itself, you can either start a new game or load an existing game. The software allows you to have six saved game slots, as shown in Figure 3. Each saved game is represented by a small (very small!) picture of the location you have gotten to. It would have been better if those pictures were just a bit bigger to make it easier to realise which scene was which. I would also have preferred to have a few more slots. I realise that screen size is a limitation but other games permit this by allowing you to scroll through the saved games.


Figure 3: Loading a saved game.

Starting a new game takes you to Peru in 2018 where you see a movie clip showing someone digging away and finding a crystal skull. Both the skull and the person digging play important roles in the game :-).


Figure 4: Setting the scene.

The movie then takes you on to Hoggar in 2020 where you play the part of a young archaeologist searching for a metropolis reputed to have been built by the ancient Egyptians.


Figure 5: Lost in the desert.

Once the beautifully rendered movie has finished, you find yourself in the desert. Navigation through the game is both simple and complicated - simple because you can move left and right in a full circle; complicated because in some locations (such as the opening desert scene), you have to watch the landmarks carefully in order to map where you've been and where you are going.

What I really liked about the navigation, though, was that you had the choice of using the D-pad or the stylus in the extreme left & right zones of the screen. The downside is that there isn't any support for left-handed people.

Once you've reached a part of the landscape where you can move, the centre display changes to indicate this, as shown in Figure 5.


Figure 6: Moving forward.

Pressing up on the D-pad takes that action, as does tapping on the screen. When you reach someone that you can talk to, the centre display changes to lips, as you can see in Figure 7.


Figure 7: Talk to them then.

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