THE CAPRI CONNECTION

 

 

Genre:   Adventure

Developer & Publisher:  S-G Software

Released:  July 2014

PC Requirements:  

Microsoft® Windows® XP, Windows® Vista, Windows® 7, Windows® 8
Minimum Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768   
3.6 GB free disc space
DVD Reader for Collector Edition
Windows® MediaPlayer

Walkthrough

 

 

by Jenny100

The Capri Connection

Introduction

The Capri Connection is the third game in the Capri Saga series created by Gey and Silvio Saverese (the first two games being A Quiet Weekend in Capri and Anacapri: The Dream). Unlike the first two games, The Capri Connection was made entirely by Gey Savarese. Also unlike the first two games, most of the locations are not in Capri itself, but in neighboring areas on the Italian peninsula, such as Amalfi, Positano, Pogerola, Procida and Naples.

It is not necessary to have played either of the previous two games to play The Capri Connection, though if you've played them, you may recognize some of the characters from the earlier games.

As with the previous Capri Saga games, the highlight of The Capri Connection is the beautiful photography of Capri and similarly picturesque areas on the Italian coast. There are two modes of play, the Adventure Mode and the Exploration Mode.

Story and Characters

You play as Dr. Nico Fredi, the protagonist character from Anacapri: The Dream. You are sitting in your living room watching your trusty old 27" CRT TV when "poof!" something weird happens and your TV is replaced by a modern LCD type TV. Your cabinetry is not the same either. In fact nothing is quite the same.

It doesn't take long for you to learn that your mind has been swapped with that of Dr. Nick Freuds, your counterpart from an alternate universe. You're now in his universe -- or at least your mind is now in his body, which is in his universe. And his mind is in your body in your universe. Apparently this has also happened to many other people, and is the result of an experiment by Dr. Costanzo Gravitiello gone horribly wrong and producing a "large Space-Time Rip." What's worse is that if things aren't set back to normal, both universes will be destroyed.

Along the way, you'll meet several non-human characters. Along a wooded path, you'll meet fairies, a leprechaun, and a witch. You'll meet a character from a romance novel who has mysteriously come to life. You'll meet a thousands-of-years-old drunken statue. You'll also meet a man (real life musician Almartino from Capri) who can teleport himself when he plays his musical instruments.

Your primary adversary is a woman (Mata Haprik) who is happy with the current state of things because her alter ego's ex-husband pays his alimony. Never mind whether both universes are destroyed, as long as her alimony is paid on time she is happy -- and she will do everything in her power to prevent you from setting both universes back to normal. She hires thugs to beat you up and steal your stuff. She buys (or steals) necessary inventory before you can retrieve it. She generally makes a nuisance of herself.

The Space-Time Rip also causes some characters from history to appear. You may recognize Lt. Nelson from the previous game. But not all the time-displaced characters are benevolent. A would-be conqueror from the past teams up with Mata Haprik and hires an assassin to take you out.

Frigo-T the Teletransportation Cabin (aka the teleporter)

You are assisted in your quest to save the universe by what looks like an old 1950's refrigerator (the Frigo-T) and the "Automatic Frigo-T Ticket Distributor," a device that resembles an unusually tall red fire hydrant (I guess it's actually an antique ticket machine, but I don't really know). The ticket machine doesn't work for free. Every time you take a trip to another area, you have to buy a ticket, and the ticket machine automatically extracts the money from your inventory. The ticket machine won't appear until you've done everything you need to do in at your location. Without the ticket machine, you can't access the Frigo. The Frigo requires a ticket to operate. Click a ticket on the handle, and you'll be able to access the screen inside. Push the button to operate. The Frigo will ask you where you want to go, then it will send you where it thinks you should go, which may not be where you want to go at all. So you don't really have a choice. This adds linearity to the game.

Why did they make the teleporter look like an old refrigerator? Well, if it looked like a new one, someone would steal it. And the time machine from A Quiet Weekend in Capri was in the shape of a small hydraulic press, and was thrown out by the maid, then put through a trash compactor and destroyed. So they chose to disguise the teleporter as something large enough that the maid couldn't throw it away easily. All this is described in one of your conversations with Gennaro Gravitiello and in the catalog of Costanzo Gravitiello's inventions, which you receive early in the game.

Other Game Controls

The interface is point-and-click with first person point of view. Although the point-and-click aspect is intuitive, other aspects are not. From the main menu you can view instructions that include both game controls and descriptions of icons.

When you start the game, you have a choice of "Center Screen" or "Full screen." "Center Screen" displays the game in a 1024x768 window, centered on your monitor screen and surrounded by black. "Full Screen" will stretch the image so it fills your monitor. On a widescreen monitor, there is no choice for pillarboxing and everything and everybody on the screen will look fattened (like in a funhouse mirror) if you use the "Full Screen" option. More on this in the Graphics section.

The interface can be confusing at first. For example, instead of clicking "Use" to answer your cell phone, you have to "Examine" it. "Use" is only for using an item "on" something else, either on something in the game world or on another inventory item.

The Start screen includes an option to turn hotspot highlighting on or off. There is always a cursor change when you hover your mouse over hotspots, but the "hotspot highlighting" surrounds active areas with a thin rectangular outline. The outline is black in XP, but gray in Vista, 7, and 8.

While playing the game, right-clicking will bring up icons for various controls. The scissors icon will take you to a screen where you can save, exit, or load a different save. The blue icon at the left brings up a laptop-type interface with pictures of the people you've met in the game. Clicking their picture allows you to view a transcript of your conversation(s) with them. One of the icons opens your inventory screen. Another one temporarily adjusts the volume of the music.

If you are using the "Exploration Mode," there is an icon that allows you to visit other areas. But in "Adventure Mode" all your "teleporting" has to be done via the Frigo and its red ticketvending friend. The icon that looks like the world only shows where you are on the map. It's a different icon that allows you to teleport.

There is only one map of the Capri area, which shows the locations you can visit. It would have been nice if there had been maps of the individual areas. Though most of the paths you follow are fairly straightforward, there are some that wind around down hills and branch in places, and it's possible to get lost.

Saves are stored as text files in the main game folder. They can be backed up manually. Saves are also compatible between language choices. For example, you could start the game using the English language option, save, exit, restart the game, choose Italian speech with English subtitles, and play from the same save. Alas, there are only nine save slots, and you cannot name the saves.

Puzzles

Besides inventory-based puzzles, there are a few set piece puzzles.

Many of the characters you meet give you puzzles to solve before they will help you. Their puzzles are related to their professions. The doctor from the Department of Mathematics gives you a math-related puzzle. The attendant at the Aquarium challenges you with a fish-related puzzle. The Oracle has a puzzle related to sorting out her garbled speech. The artist Mariolina has more than one puzzle for you to solve, each of her puzzles being related to one of her artworks. Sometimes she has already given the puzzle to someone else to solve, and you have to find that person to get the puzzle, solve it, and bring it back to her. Some puzzles are connected with their location rather than with a character. For example, Castel dell'Ovo has a great view of the surrounding area, and there is a puzzle there where you have to identify locations that can be seen from the vantage point of Castel dell'Ovo.

Some of these puzzles are quite challenging. If you get stuck on a puzzle and don't wish to continue trying to solve it, look for a white flag icon on the puzzle screen. Clicking the white flag will allow you to skip the puzzle.

Graphics

Like the previous two games, visuals in The Capri Connection are almost entirely made up of photographs (with the exception of the menu screens, the inventory screen, and the laptop-type screen that allows you to view transcripts).

As with Anacapri: the Dream, some screens are panoramic. A small button at the side of the screen allows you to pan from side to side. If the pan is too slow for you, double-clicking the button will speed up the pan. A few screens will pan up and down, with buttons for panning at the top or bottom of the screen. A pause icon allows you to stop a pan before it is complete.

Characters are photographs of real people. They are presented in a series of still images (not animated). Since there is no animation, talking about lip-sync is irrelevant.

The water at the beaches is often animated, but not always. The waterfall in the forest at Pogerola is animated, and looks quite nice.

Unlike most modern games, The Capri Connection does not automatically change your desktop resolution to suit the game. Each time you start the game, you are given a choice between playing "Full Screen" or "Center Screen" (windowed). Unfortunately, neither is optimal on a modern widescreen monitor. On my widescreen monitor, "Windowed" meant the game played in a box that only used a little over 1/3 of my monitor's screen area. "Full Screen" filled the screen, but stretched the picture horizontally. There was no option for pillarboxing (black bars on the sides) while retaining the original shape of the picture. I ended up reducing my desktop resolution before starting the game in "Center Screen" (windowed) which produced an acceptably large window.

To see an illustration of the problem with horizontally stretching a non-widescreen picture to fit a widescreen monitor, check the article called "Maureen O'Hara Vs. the Egg People" here.

As the article says, "When the picture is stretched out this way, thin people look fat and fat people look enormous." The author of the article calls these fattened people "egg people" -- not an egg sitting in the carton, but an egg laid down on the countertop, tipped over on its side, wider than tall. Horizontal stretching doesn't do the landscape any good either. Buildings, mountains, and waterfalls look shorter and chunkier than they should.

The developer suggests changing desktop resolution before running the game. The information is included in the game's Readme, and the "Screen Setting" suggestions, both on the screen you see when you first start the game, and on the developer's website here.

So the developer himself is aware of the problem, but was unable to fix it, probably due to limitations of the game's homemade game engine. He can only give directions for changing desktop resolution -- directions which will no doubt be ignored by those who are afraid of "messing up their computer."

Back when Anacapri: The Dream was released, most people were still using monitors that were not widescreen. They might have had an LCD monitor instead of the older CRT, but it would probably not have been a widescreen LCD. Today, most monitors sold for home use are widescreen.

Voice and Language Settings

You never hear your character speak out loud. Instead, other characters pause briefly, then answer as if he'd spoken to them. The Frigo speaks to you (or something inside it does), but the red ticket machine does not.

You are given a choice of language options, which can be changed each time you start the game: Italian speech with French subtitles, Italian speech with English subtitles, English speech with no subtitles, and Italian speech with no subtitles. If you aren't able to understand what was said, you can right-click and use the laptop icon on the left to bring up pictures of the characters. Choose the character you were talking with and you will see a transcript of all your conversations with the person. If you choose English with no subtitles or Italian with English subtitles, the laptop will display your conversations in English. Choose Italian with no subtitles, and the laptop will display your conversations in Italian. If you choose Italian with French subtitles, the laptop will display your conversations in French.

The same save will work for all the language options. However I did not find a way to access the language options without exiting and restarting the game.

Many of the voices for characters in the English version were done by American gamers, some of whom were recruited through Gameboomers forum and other adventure game forums. Though the English speech is better than in Anacapri: The Dream, it generally sounds too slow. This was a deliberate choice by the developer -- the actors were told to speak more slowly than normal so that gamers who weren't native English speakers would be better able to understand them. Of course that brings up the question of why there are no English subtitles for the selection with English speech, which would be even more helpful for non-native English speakers, as well as for native English speakers who have some degree of hearing impairment. The same goes for the Italian with no subtitles. What about non-native Italian speakers who want to play the game in the original Italian language while brushing up on their Italian? Slow speech may help somewhat, but subtitles help more.

Sound and Music

I'd rather have heard background sounds in the areas I was visiting -- the sounds I'd have heard if I'd been walking around Capri in person. Occasionally the music goes silent, and you can hear background sounds -- sounds of birds, sounds of the ocean. But there didn't seem to be much variety in the background sound, even when you did hear it.

You cannot turn off the music. You can reduce it down to 10%, but you cannot get rid of it completely. By right-clicking to make icons appear, then clicking the sound icon (located at the far right) five times, you can get the volume down to 10%. But reducing the volume is only temporary. The music loops, and each time it restarts, it will go back to full volume and you have to click, click, click, click, click the sound icon all over again to get it down to 10%. If you go to an area with different music, the volume will reset to maximum again, and you have to click the icon again.

Exploration Mode

As with the previous games in the series, it is possible to skip the Adventure game part and just wander around the locations included in the game -- a virtual stroll through the areas visited in the game.

Locations include Castel Dell'Ovo, Museo del Sottosuolo, Parco Virgiliano, and Rotonda Diaz in Napoli (Naples); La Chiaiolella, Ponte, Porto, and Spiaggia in Procida; Amalfi, Pogerola, and Positano in Costiera Amalfitana; and the House of Nico Fredi and Monte Solaro in Capri.

The "Log Art" area (House of Mariolina) is handled differently between the Adventure and Exploration parts of the game. In Adventure Mode, the artist welcomes you into her apartment and shows you the examples of Log Art that she has on display around her home. In Exploration Mode, you don't enter her apartment. Instead you are presented with a non-interactive picture of her front door and invited to visit the Log Art website at www.logart.name where you can read more about Log Art.

 Using the "Exploration Mode" could be confusing for someone who hasn't already played the game, and wonders why all these parks and resort areas have old refrigerators standing out in plain sight. Yes, Frigo got lonely and is following you around. His erstwhile friend, the red ticket machine, has deserted him.

Technical

I did not have any technical problems with the game after it was activated. Activation involved copying a 14-digit number that the game generated for me and emailing it to the game's developer. He emailed me back a 10-digit number. After entering the 10-digit number into a box on the game screen, the game started properly. If you purchase the game from some place other than the developer, activation may be handled differently.

The system requirements are very low, and the game should run on any version of Windows from XP through Windows 8. Windows Media Player is required, as well as a minimum graphics resolution of 1024x768. Since the game used online activation, I did not play it on anything but 64-bit Windows 8.1.

Comments

The Capri Connection didn't seem to be as long a game as Anacapri: the Dream, but that may be because of its linearity. Although you are free to roam within locations, you can't choose which location to visit. The ticket machine decides when you can leave an area, and the Frigo decides what area you can visit.

Recommendations

I'd recommend the game to any fans of the previous Capri games, as well as to anyone who'd enjoy seeing the beautiful photographs of Capri and neighboring coastal areas. Someone who has never played one of the Capri games before should be aware that the controls are a little "different" from other adventure games, even though they are point-and-click. Despite the limitations of the (apparently homemade) game engine, The Capri Connection offers a glimpse of a beautiful part of the world that you don't find in other games.

Grade: B

The game can be bought from the S-G Software website.

 

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