Top Secret Magazine Dark Side of the Moon

Southpeak's first adventure game, Temujin, released back in 1997, had set out to combine realistic digital video scenes with the interactivity of graphical adventure games. They failed to do either one well enough to be anything more than another mediocre adventure game.

A year later, using the refined Video Reality graphics engine, comes Dark Side of the Moon. Not the album you might know of from the rock group, Pink Floyd, but rather a sci-fi/mystery adventure game. You play the character Jake Write, whose uncle supposedly committed suicide on a moon named Luna Crysta in the Cepheus-6 star system. Luna Crysta is a huge moon, rich in valuable minerals where many miners flock to, in the hopes of striking it rich. The moon is inhabited mostly by miners and is run by a huge megacompany called Brave Hope Corporation. Brave Hope Corps. does business with the miners, buying and selling mining claims, and also, when running across a big find, mining it themselves to reap the rewards. Then there are the Cephieds, who are natives to the moon and are treated much like slaves, forced to work long, laborious hours with little or no return. The Cephieds are a very mysterious species, seemingly more than what meets the eye.

The game starts with a flight to Luna Crysta. You are onboard a shuttle about to land on the moon, where you are introduced to the interface and several important characters. Going over your inventory items, and reading your latest E-Mail messages, you discover that your on you way to Luna Crysta to steak your claim on a mine that your uncle has left to you. As you take your first steps on Luna Crysta, your also introduced to the ways of a life as well as the tight security on a small moon inhabited by a bunch of greedy miners.

As you explore and meet new people, you find that everyone seems to know about you, as well as your business there. They also seem to know more about your claim than you do. Rumor has it that your claim is worth more than everything mined from the moon altogether. Needless to say you have a bunch of people trying to get their hands on your claim, some wanting to buy it, others willing to kill for it, which makes you wonder how and why your uncle really died.

Wandering around, trying to figure out what your supposed to be doing can be a challenge in itself. Expect to spend at least an hour, if not more,

Your one stop miners shop

receiving an Email from your not-so-nice sister

just catching up on the recent history of events that have taken place on Luna Crysta. To help get caught up, you'll have to get information out of everyone you talk to, so try not to make them mad unless your sure you've gotten all the answers you can get from them, otherwise you might miss an important clue to a puzzle or something.

Dialogue is done through scripted sequences, which means you are presented with a list of things possible things to say at that moment. Overall quality of sounds and video are fairly good, other than the occasional anomaly such as skips and speed warps (when the video and sound speed up or slow down). Though usually this is not a concern, if ill timed, it could mean the difference between hear/seeing a clue to solve a puzzle, and completely missing it and just being stumped.

Unfortunately you'll probably be stuck at some point or another, more often than not, you'll rack your brain trying to figure out complicated, though entirely possible puzzles. While there is no difficulty settings to help you, there are plenty of clues to find if you pay close attention. Though if all else fails you can always wait, and resort to the internet's many available walk-through web sites for help. Overall, its better to have puzzles that are slightly over difficult, than just way too easy.

Dark Side of the Moon is a good solid adventure game with a very entertaining plot with plenty of turns and twists. It's only 2 major discrepancies are a fatal blow to the value of the game. Its constant CD swapping and slow movement interface can cause much frustration. CD swapping can get tiresome very quickly, so having to do so over and over as you search for an item can be very tedious. As for the movement, while movement animations are quick, turning your view is another story. It takes at least 10 seconds to turn all the way around, 360 degrees. And even then, most of the time its unclear where your supposed to go.

Overall, Dark Side of the Moon is a great adventure game.. if only you could get it on a DVD rather than swapping the 6 discs constantly, and if they'd fix the movement and video issues, this would be a 'B' or even an 'A' game, but until then, it'll remain just a 'C'.

Company:
Southpeak Interactive
www.southpeak.com

Category:

Adventure

NOTES:

Interest: 82%
Control: 65%
Graphics: 78%
Sound: 75%
Originality: 80%

TOTAL : 76%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium 166 MHz processor

Memory:
32 MB RAM

Hard Drive:
150 MB +

Sound Card:
Windows compatible sound card

Video:
2MB SVGA Video Card