Animation Arts, the studio behind the fabulous Secret Files games, have brought us a new hero named Fenton Paddock in Lost Horizon.I was lucky enough to get my hands on a preview of the game consisting of the first couple of chapters and, as expected, it exudes the same high quality that was evident in Secret Files.
The overall style of the game resembles a good adventure film and this is parodied in the main menu presented as a 1930’s cinema frontage.Think Indiana Jones equipped with army survival skills and adventure gamers’ innovative usage of objects rather than the whip and gun
The game opens with a series of high quality cutscenes that will introduce the player to the characters, the story background and minimal puzzle solving integrating the gamer beautifully into the adventure.
The Inventory tool bar and using the Examine screen option to display all action spots
The story begins in Hong Kong in 1938 where our male protagonist Fenton has got himself into a spot of bother with the local Triads. This is not unusual in Fenton’s life as trouble seems to find him wherever he goes and it isn’t long before he also falls foul of The Third Reich. After he manages to shake the Triad, Fenton is summoned to Lord Weston, the British colonial officer of Hong Kong who needs Fenton’s help to rescue his son, Richard who has gone missing in Tibet. Tibet is unchartered territory during this era and Fenton has no choice but to turn to an old friend Kim (our female protagonist) who is in possession of rare maps of the Himalayan region. Unfortunately Kim by assisting Fenton has now also run foul of the Triad and therefore he takes her with him.
Rainy Hong Kong evening
It is in Tibet that Fenton and Kim discover that they are not the only ones searching for Richard and have a series of confrontations with the Nazis. As it turns out the Nazis have drawn up a list of ancient artefacts but why? sadly it is shortly after this point that the preview ended *sigh*
Character icons are used to select who you are playing as
In many respects a lot of the winning qualities of Secret Files have been transferred over to Lost Horizon. The 3D polygonal characters are beautifully crafted as are the hand drawn backgrounds of the varied locations. Within Hong Kong for example, you get to visit a British Colonial embassy, Hong Kong harbour, a backstreet bar (Fenton’s local haunt) , a typical Hong Kong apartment and the airport and all are displayed on a hotspot map so you can conveniently jump between the locations .
Snow and Fire effects
As in most standard point and click games the inventory items are displayed along the bottom of the screen and appear when you hover your mouse there. There are also examine screen (which will show all the action spots on screen), the tasks (a reminder of the current task) and the menu option.
The Speaker’s image appears when in conversation
Apart from the beautiful graphics there have been some nice effects integrated too. Snow, Rain and fire all enliven the screen as do little touches such as billowing smoke from a chimney.
Overlooking the Nazi base camp in the Himalayas
The puzzles are mostly inventory based and there is often a chain of puzzles to complete before achieving the end result. For instance you have to get a ball to distract a cat so you can get some flies to give to a small boy before he will give you your wallet . There also seems to be a logic puzzle in each chapter so far eg. Jigsaw , pipes (you can select different difficulty levels for these). Another type of puzzle involves switching between the characters of Kim and Fenton to help each other.
The voice acting too seems to be top notch. So far there have been Hong Kong chinese voice actors from the very young to the elderly, upper class British, and German all with some of the best accents I have heard in a game. Interestingly your choice of dialogue impacts the outcome of each conversation however, if you dont get the desired result its a matter of trying the conversation again and choosing a different option. Thankfully the dialogue trees are small but for some reason the dialogue box itself is rather large.
A small forgiving time puzzle
Lost Horizons just doesnt seem to have a weakness at all and this is one title I can’t wait to get my hands on the full version !
