Top Secret Heart of Darkness

Heart of darkness, at first glance, looks like a kids game. After only a few seconds of playing you soon find out that HOD has a very evil side to it. Kids, this game is not for you.

You play a kid after his dog. His dog it seems gets sucked into a strange world during a solar eclipse and it's up to you to save him. The story is simple but it works. After all this kid built his own spaceship and ray gun so anything is possible.

The game is a Old School side action game (think old pre-3D Mario) where you jump, shoot and run. The game is easy to play but hard to master.

The game looks and plays like a old Amiga favorite of mine called Out of This World. The game is fairly much the same in terms of action and the setting. The aliens/ Monsters are very nicely designed and the animation is top notch.

The game lured me in with simple looking action but I found the look and feel of the game very much on the dark side. Some of Andy's death screens are pretty nasty and the enemies are guaranteed to give the creeps to the smaller set.

2battleship.jpg (9469 bytes)

Zap dem meanies

1battleship.jpg (9903 bytes)

Not a nice place to visit

The game has some nice little movies during the game and it helps move the story along. The game is a dark game. Some of the enemies are very disturbing. The whole game has a "kid" like nightmare feel to it.

The best thing about the game is it keeps bringing you back for more. With over 170 odd screens and 8 worlds to battle through, you will be busy for a while if you can hack it.

The one caveat of the game is it is hard. Not tricky, just plain hard. Some screens will take 3 or 4 tries before you master them. Some things block you and the only way to figure them out is to die and die and die. Then after that you begin to figure out what you need to do.

Not always fun but the game has a save game feature that automatically saves your progress.

The animation and character design is top notch and is really fun to watch. I would say anyone who likes a good action game will like this one, more so if you like you games on the dark side.

Company:
Interplay
www.interplay.com

Category:
Action

NOTES:

Interest: 90%
Maniability : 90%
Graphics: 92%
Sound : 92%
Originality : 70%

TOTAL : 89%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium or Better

Memory:
16 MB of RAM

Hard Drive:
70+ MB

Sound Card:
100% compatible sound card

Video:
1MB SVGA video card

Matthew Dussault