What is
it?
Nobody
expects the Spanish Inquisition! Well, perhaps by the time of Lost
Chronicles of Zerzura they did. The game is set in 1514 and starts
in Barcelona, Spain. By this time the Inquisition had been through
several cycles of activity in Spain (and the rest of the Iberian
peninsula), but by 1514, things had gone relatively quiet. This makes it
a little surprising that it was this period that Cranberry Production
and dtp entertainment chose for the setting of their new game. Perhaps
the chronology owes more to that famous icon of the period, Leonardo da
Vinci, whose interest in flying machines is referenced more than once by
the main character, Feodor, who is himself an inventor of flying
machines.
Either
way, the Lost Chronicles is actually not as new as you might
think. The German language version was released back in February 2012,
and so what I've been playing is the English translation ... because my
German speaking days are some 20 years past, I'm ashamed to say.
One other
thing to mention whilst we're introducing the game is that Cranberry
Productions may already be known to some as the developers of iterations
2 and 3 of the Black Mirror series of games. And dtp entertainment have
quite the back catalogue of games of various styles.
Is there
a plot?
The game
begins with the telling of the tale of the birth of a baby against the
background of an attack by the Spanish Inquisition. It doesn't end well
for the mother, but the baby and his older brother are rescued. We jump
to Barcelona, in 1514. The baby has grown up, and Feodor (the baby) and
Ramon Morales (his older brother) are inventors with a particular
interest in flying machines. The first interactive scenes begin with the
brothers attempting to test a new flying machine they've built for the
Senor Conde; they're on the cliffs above Barcelona, hoping to avoid the
interest of the Inquisition, amongst others. From here, we follow the
brothers through various scrapes to the lost city of Zerzura, somewhere
in what would now be Southern Libya.
What's
that? Isn't it rather a long way from Barcelona to Southern Libya in the
early 16th century, I hear you ask? Well, yes, but then, the brothers
Morales are inventors, and inventors of flying machines at that! Mind
you, they don't fly all the way ... that would be too easy. No,
there's some flying, some sailing, quite a lot of walking, and some
camels between Northern Eastern Spain and Southern Libya; about 4,000km
in fact!
How do
you play?
Lost
Chronicles of Zerzura
is a third person perspective, point and click adventure game. Most
locations portrayed in the game are very detailed, pre-rendered
backgrounds, into which the animated characters and effects are placed.
There are a variety of indoor and outdoor locations, from the shops,
houses, streets and quay-side in Barcelona, to deserts and ancient ruins
in North Africa. Most of the locations have a lot of hotspots that will
prompt Feodor to do or say something, but beware, with a lot of the
descriptive ones, once you've clicked and heard the comment it won't be
repeated. This is a nice feature when you're trying to eliminate your
options when you're stuck, but it's so easy to miss some of the
descriptions too. I don't *think* I missed anything critical on the
occasions when this happened to me (interruptions happen in the real
world after all), but I can't be one hundred percent sure.
As we've
come to expect with modern point 'n' click adventures, the mouse pointer
changes when it passes over a hotspot; a magnifying glass for
interesting places, a door for exits, a speech bubble for conversation
starters, a hand for potential inventory items, a pair of intermeshed
cogs for something with which you can use another item (whether you
currently have that item in your inventory at the time is beside the
point). You can always hit the space bar and the game will show you all
the available hotspots in the current scene as well, though this can be
turned off in the game settings.
Your
inventory shows up on a strip at the bottom of the screen, and you can
usually right click on items for more information. There are plenty of
occasions where the solution to a puzzle requires a combination of
inventory items, and sometimes it requires more than two.
There are
cutscenes to progress the story, some within the game environment, and
others as apparently animated hand-drawn sketches as you might find in
Feodor's notes. And speaking of Feodor's notes, he keeps a diary or
journal throughout the game in case you need to look back to remind
yourself of your current objectives.
Most of
the game's puzzles are in the normal scenes, where you need to talk to
the right people or use the right object (or combination of objects) in
the right place, but there are also mini-games for more detailed
puzzling. You don't have to complete each mini-game in a single go;
there's always an exit door so that you can come back and try again
later. If you've activated the Additional Game Help option, there's also
an auto-solve option on the mini-games so that you can skip them.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your point of view)
skipping a game does not show you how the puzzle is solved, so
you can replay the game in the future and still have a go from fresh.
As with
all good stories, you need a soundtrack to back them up. The soundtrack
of Lost Chronicles is up to the job. It is full of Indiana
Jones-like adventurous, orchestral themes, with good (but surprisingly
subtle) upturns when you hit certain points in some of the puzzles; it's
almost an upbeat, musical cheer: "Yay, you got it! Now on to the next
challenge!"
Any
novelties?
I've
never had to actually apply my intellect to inventing things in a game
before like I had to in the Lost Chronicles. There are a couple
of puzzles where you have to guide Feodor through the process of putting
potential elements for an invention together in his note book. This was
an enjoyable process, because it didn't just involve working out a
mathematical progression, or finding the right key for a lock, or
squeezing coloured plants, but was designed to allow me to use
mechanical knowledge and engineering intuition. At least, that was what
I thought until one of the puzzles of this type fell into the class 'try
every combination until it works' stratagem. Still, Lost Chronicles
has a good go at trying some non-obvious, more interesting puzzles than
some.
Oddities
Right,
let us recall for a moment the time and the place in which Lost
Chronicles of Zerzura is set. Early 16th century Barcelona, the
Mediterranean, and Libya. Now, I understand why you wouldn't cast a true
Barcelonian accent as the main character in an English game (it's quite
a strange, lisping accent to my ears at least), but why does the main
female character (who hails from a certain Mediterranean island) have a
rural South-Western British accent? Someone from the UK will know what I
mean by a Somerset or Devon accent, though I realise that won't mean
anything to many readers. Some of the vocal choices are a bit odd...
nay, downright perverse in this particular case, and this makes me
wonder about the voices of the other non-British characters in the game.
Apart from this quite jarring surprise, the rest of the game is well
acted, and in fact, I soon learned to ignore the Somerset farmer's
daughter's accent in favour of the rest of her performance, which fitted
just right within a professionally told story.
Conclusions
My
experience of Lost Chronicles of Zerzura was not that it is a
stand-out, ground-breaking game, but that it was a strong, story-led
romp through medieval Spain, the Mediterranean and Libya, historical
oddities and vocal misdirections aside. It is a good game, with plenty
of content, varied puzzles, a range of locations, and some off-beat
characters.
It's a
game I'll happily recommend to friends and colleagues around the
water-cooler, but not one I'd select if I were asked to name my top 5
games. I think I'd have to warn them about some of the voice
acting though!
Grade: B
What do
you need to play it?
Minimum
Requirements:
-
AMD
or Intel single-core processor @ 1400 MHz
-
512
MB RAM (Windows®XP) / 1,024 MB RAM (Windows®Vista) / 1,536 MB RAM
(Windows® Vista x64/Windows® 7)
-
AGP/PCI-E
Graphics card with: Shader Model 2, DirectX®9 compatible, - min.
128MB VRAM (ATI Radeon 9800 or NVidia GeForce 6800) / Integrated
(onboard)-graphics: Graphics with Shader Model 2,
DirectX®9-compatible, min. 128 MB VRAM (Intel GMA x4500, ATI
Mobility Radeon 9800 or NVIDIA GeForce Go 9800)
-
DirectX®9-compatible sound card
-
Microsoft Windows® XP, 32 bit, Microsoft Windows® Vista, 32/64bit,
Windows® 7, 32/64 bit
-
DVD-ROM, mouse, keyboard / ca. 6 GB hard disk space
Recommended Requirements
• AMD or Intel Single-
or Dual-Core Processor @ 2000 MHz or higher
• 1,024 MB RAM (Windows®XP)
/ 2,048 MB RAM (Windows® Vista x64/ Windows® 7)
• AGP/PCI-E Graphics
card: with Shader Model 3, DirectX®9 compatible, min. 512 VRAM (ATI
Radeon x1300 (and later) or NVidia GeForce 7000) / Series (and later) /
Integrated (onboard) graphics: ATI/NVIDIA graphics with Shader Model 3,
DirectX®9 Support, min. 256 MB VRAM
• DirectX®9-compatible
sound card
• Microsoft Windows® XP
(32 bit), Windows® Vista (32/64bit), or Windows® 7 (32/64bit)
• DVD-ROM, mouse,
keyboard / ca. 6 GB hard disk space
(I used a
home-built 64-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 PC running on an AMD Athlon 64
X2 Dual 5200+ processor, with 6 GB RAM, and a Sapphire Radeon HD4670
512MB video card, with on-mother-board, built-in sound card)
The game can be
purchased from
The Adventure Shop or
Viva Media.
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
December 2012
design copyright©
2012
GameBoomers
Group
