The
Adventures of Fatman Demo
I played this game on a Gateway desktop PC,
with a Pentium 4, 1.5 gHz speed, 128 mg RAM, Nvidia Gforce2 video card and
a SoundBlaster Pro sound card. Downloading of the game itself only took a
couple of minutes with DSL, but the optional speech pack took about 15
minutes. Installation went smoothly, and I had no technical problems at
all while playing. I did not make use of the option to speed up walking
and game play, but in the full game I think I would use both.
The game has somewhat clunky, cartoon-like
graphics, which fit perfectly into the theme of the story. Your hero is
Fatman (and he is, too—quite an impressive overhang on that belt there,
buddy), who lives in the Fatcave, and drives a Fatmobile. The story is
laid out for you in an introduction, which seemed somewhat long, maybe
because I was itching to get started. Basically, a lab has exploded and
it’s up to you to solve the case. Of course you know why it
exploded, because you watched the introduction, but Fatman doesn’t.
Movement is totally mouse-controlled
(hurrah!!!), and a system of icons allow you to interact with people and
things. I found using the inventory just a little bit cumbersome, but it
wasn’t a great problem. The puzzles (in the demo, at least) are
inventory-based—my favorite kind. Just pick up everything that isn’t
nailed down and see if you can find a use for it. The few items that I
found in the demo were all used in “appropriate” manners—no blowing up a
rubber raft to block a dragon’s nostrils, for example! You use the
Fatmobile to get from location to location; it’s a neat car, but can be
dangerous if you’re not careful.
The speech was well done, although I swear
they stole the narrator from the old Green Hornet radio show! There did
not seem to be an option to turn the subtitles off and on, but at least
they had subtitles. The dialogue is the corny type that will have
you groaning—why am I laughing at this stuff? This all fits
perfectly with the story and graphics.
There are only six save slots, which wasn’t
a problem in the demo, but might be limiting in the full game. It’s
necessary to save frequently, because it is possible to die in this
game. In the full game, the “easy” mode will have a feature to put you
back just before the fatal move that caused you to die, but it’s not
available in the demo.
I’m not a fast game player, and this demo
required some thinking—in fact I never did get one point. There were
twelve possible points in the demo (over one hundred in the full game, I
think), which were awarded for finding certain items, or performing
certain actions. One of the items was VERY difficult to see, in fact I
wouldn’t have found it if Len hadn’t hinted that there was one more thing
at that certain location. Since I finished the game with only 11 out of a
possible 12, it is obviously not necessary to do everything that you get
points for doing. (Just for the record, upon going back and replaying, I
did get the full twelve points.)
Do I intend to play the full game—you bet!
Would I recommend it to others? Yes, with a reservation—if you only like
Myst-type, solitary exploration games, this might not be your cup of tea,
but I would still suggest that you try the free demo. You might be
surprised….
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GameBoomers
