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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Microids Released: April 24, 2025 Requirements: OS: Windows 10 or higher Processor: Minimum, Intel Core i5 9th Generation/AMD Ryzen 3 4100 4 Cores 3.8 Ghtz; Recommended, Core i7 9th Generation/AMD Ryzen 5 4500 6 Cores 3.6 Ghtz Memory: Minimum 8 GB RAM; Recommended, 16 GB RAM Graphics: Minimum, Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti/AMD Radeon RX 580 8 GB; Recommended, Nvidia RTX 2060/ AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 25 GB available space
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By flotsam Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy Microids Back in 1999, before Benoît Sokal gave us Syberia, he designed a game based on his own comic strip L'Amerzone. It was generally well received, and I played it a few years later. I remember being impressed, the visuals and the environmental elements being what come to mind. What we have now is a remake, enhanced and tweaked, and apart from saying I am still impressed, what follows is based on playing this as a stand alone experience. You play an unnamed freelance journalist, tasked by Mondial Magazine to interview French scientist and explorer Alexandre Valembois about his career. Living as a recluse in a Brittany lighthouse for more than 50 years, your letter of instruction states that despite his unsavoury nature, he remains the only expert on the little-known Amerzone. Arriving at the lighthouse, your intended interview soon becomes so much more. Even at an early stage, what will be apparent is the sumptuous nature of how the game looks. To describe it simply as eye candy would be doing it an injustice; there is a realism to most everything that is impressive, especially in an adventure game. You could quibble with some aspects, but from start to finish it was an environment I enjoyed being part of. That was further enhanced by other elements as well. One was that almost exclusively, the soundtrack plays under cutscenes, leaving your exploration to be accompanied by the variety of ambient sound that exists. I often think music is overdone, and turn it right down for that reason. This for me was the perfect balance; at certain non-playing times I could sit and watch and listen to the (very often) epic music, but when exploring a location it was the sounds of that place that accompanied me, uninterrupted (and dare I say unsullied) by unseen instruments. You might feel differently but I would happily take this construct every time. So too the realistic perambulation, and the activity that occurs when, say, you duck under a log or climb a ladder or put on a diving helmet. Not to mention the character modelling, voice acting, and lip-synching; all the pieces add to the quality of this very ‘real’ place. Other little things appealed. The seat-belt sign for instance that is displayed in your transportation vehicle, the realistic noises that occur by inserting a floppy disc, and the cultural reference (and the possible Steam achievement) to another major franchise right at the end was a delight. And then there are the animals. They appear throughout, sometimes front and centre, other times just dynamically in the background, and they never become boring. Much of the game puts you in control. For instance, at the start of the game you choose either traveller or adventurer mode, the latter offering a more challenging experience, with fewer helpful documents and less precise hints. You can though choose to turn off hints altogether, but can also change your preferences as you go. You can also double-click to jump to the end of a walk from here to there, and cut out walking entirely if you find the fast-travel map for each location. I confess I did almost none of the latter, as it tended to detract from my immersive experience. The game is very much point and click with supplementary keyboard commands, and again you have options (e.g., right click brings up an icon menu which enables you to access (among other things) your inventory or just press Tab. You can almost put away the keyboard altogether should that be your preference. Amerzone plays in the first person and utilises point to point movement to get around, and at each new point you can look completely around and explore the location in detail. The Alt key will highlight hotspots (a reason to keep the keyboard :-)) of which there can be quite a few, and curser icons will indicate what might be done there (look, take etc.,). At times you will need to mimic actions with the mouse (pull, slide, turn etc.,) in order to engage. You will be exposed to quite a bit of information and will take a lot of it with you. Letters, newspaper articles, posters, drawings; much of it is relevant to your primary objective, but much is also relevant to subsidiary investigations you can engage in. These don’t need to be completed, but, as the game says, they "will enable you to discover additional content and delve into the secondary elements of the story." You will also compile a diary, and come across Valembois’ journal. Don’t forsake the latter. Information you uncover can be key to moving on, as can the items you gather. The little backpack icon will indicate an item can be used, and clicking will generate a pop-up menu of your available items. Click whichever you might want to use. The size of the inventory never gets too big, but if the menu includes some directional arrows, it means there are more items than can currently be seen. Pop-up tutorials occur at certain points, mostly in the early stages but also when new things require explanation (e.g., using your vehicle’s grappling hook). There is a lot of stuff in the beginning, and it might feel a little overwhelming, but spend some time playing in the various inventory fields and it will quickly feel more comfortable. The game plays in chapters relating to different locations, and you move between those locations in a vehicle that you can transform into a number of different configurations – a plane, a submarine, different types of sailboats and a helicopter. Finding the relevant disc to enable the transformation is a recurring puzzle in each new location. Some of the cutscenes which feature your travel ‘rides’ are worthy of mention. I looked forward to each new version of my vehicle just to see how it would take me onwards. The bigger story is a mystical even lyrical one, underpinned and overshadowed by regret, naivety, environmentalism and despotism. You can discover the details for yourself, but redemption is perhaps the driving imperative. Bits and pieces of it are more than a little fanciful, but suspend your disbelief and I expect you will be generally well pleased. It isn’t a hard game, especially with the hint system. I played on traveller, and the hints were more than sufficient to provide direction as to what to do next. You also get pop-ups about your next objective, which more often than not was direction enough. That said, there were one or two times where I wondered why on earth would I think to do that. Amerzone exclusively saves automatically and only has one save point (although you can have three games going at once). It was a minor thing for me, given I rarely make multiple saves, and it not only saves regularly but also tells you how long its been since it saved if you try and exit. Once you finish the game, you also have access to every chapter, with information about how much of that chapter you have completed, as well as the split between primary and secondary material still to be found. Overall I completed 75% of things, with only 100% in one chapter and a low of 61%. I will go back, but other games beckon right now. In conclusion, I loved this. I played on: OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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