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Last King of Africa HD
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Graphics & Sound:
Here's hoping that the iPad can do better than to become a clearing house for legacy game ports from PC and other platforms... It's not that Last King of Africa HD doesn't have much to offer from a gameplay perspective, but it looks dated. Originally released almost five years ago as Paradise, for PC only, Benoît Sokal's story of a young woman's adventure in Africa has only aged so well. The characters are depicted in more of a cartoon fashion, and the backgrounds are on their way to looking retro. It's almost enough to tip the scales toward retro-cool, but not quite. Imagine an unfunny Guybrush Threepwood in a more realistic environment, and you're headed in the right direction. Adventure games fit nicely on this platform, and there are a few smart techniques employed in Last King of Africa HD. Tapping anywhere on the screen gives you some visual feedback, letting you know if an object can be used in some way to drive the story forward. Puzzles tend to play on visual cues, as much or more than logic-based challenges. The interface is pretty spare, to the point that you may forget about items in your inventory that are tucked away off-screen. The navigation is handled by touching reference points on the screen, but without a compass we found it hard to orient ourselves while moving around in some areas. For example, you'll touch the right side of one screen to visit some new area, and then have to touch the bottom of that screen to return to the previous area. We liked the music, but what's missing is any kind of interesting sound design or voice acting. Again, this probably shows the game's age more than any deficiency on the part of its developer.
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Gameplay:
What may appear to be another Hidden Object game is actually a full-featured adventure, in the style of classic point-and-click titles. What makes Last King of Africa HD relevant at this point is the storytelling skill of B. Sokal. Other notable games like the Syberia series have placed him on the radar for gamers in recent years, and with good reason. The story in this game revolves around Ann Smith, who wakes up after a plane crash to find she no longer remembers anything about herself or her purpose in Africa. The viewers/players actually know more than Ann, which makes for an interesting narrative device. It's clear that she's going to meet her father, who has his own agenda for her, but she'll need to traverse a challenging landscape to find him. At this point, we have to pull back and say that the blend of gaming and storytelling is really quite good. Yes, there are all kinds of artificial errands Ann must run to comply with the rules of the gaming universe that can be tedious. Think of it as a predecessor to games like Professor Layton where the story moves in service to puzzles. Last King of Africa HD isn't quite that boxy, and it does pack in a generous amount of challenge that largely revolves around finding and combining objects in the environment. You can revisit areas within a stage to find hidden emeralds, which serve as a "game within the game" and holds its own reward. The drive to help Ann find her father and recover her memory is enough to keep the player engaged, as long as you can see your way past a rather legacy presentation.
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Difficulty:
Last King of Africa HD suffers from the kind of obscure puzzle solutions that were almost expected in classic adventures, especially the text variety in the very early days of home computing. The question developers face now is how much to "give away" and spoon-feed to players, versus holding out until they click or tap on the right combination of objects. This isn't a noisy game that is constantly throwing hints at you and prompting you in an obvious way, which fuels the focus on narrative. Early in the game, you need to get out of Dodge, and this requires a valid pass. To get this, you'll develop some film. If you know how film development works, the puzzle may seem rather obvious. Turning the lights on in the darkroom isn't a great idea... Equipment in a scenario like this one works in a simplified fashion, but you do need to combine objects in the right sequence to reach the goal. In some cases, Last King of Africa HD blends genres, moving from logic puzzles, to simple seek-and-find challenges, to constructing working objects. In all cases, it's a fairly challenging game that lends itself to cooperative play between parent and child, or an older gamer interested in something more challenging than popping bubbles or finding hidden objects.
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Game Mechanics:
The interface is almost too clean, as mentioned before. Tapping objects on the screen that can be manipulated shows you a little wrench icon, and you'll get some feedback in the form of on-screen messages. There isn't much manipulation of objects, as in sliding or drag-and-drop, so Last King of Africa HD won't be too taxing from a control standpoint. Some of the tapping felt imprecise, as in the game within the game that has you collecting jewels. The jewels are hard to spot in the first place, but tapping them didn't consistently result in a successful grab. A tap on the screen is basically a targeting device, and the more centrally located your object is, the better. At times. it takes a couple of taps to achieve the desired outcome, so we suspect that more tuning is needed to translate the mouse-click mechanic to the touch-screen mechanic. With updates through the App Store, this may be possible in the future, but we're not holding our breath. Even as it stands, Last King of Africa HD plays well enough to get its point across, and fans of this genre are likely to be relatively unconcerned about controls. If we wanted slick, tight controls, we'd play Sports games, eh? B. Sokal does a nice job weaving a storyline that holds the entire game together, but iPad should be more about showcasing new and exciting titles rather than back-catalog stuff from the PC marketplace. Entertaining, with reservations...
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-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock |
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