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The Ward

Score: 90%
ESRB: Teen
Publisher: On Deck Interactive
Developer: Fragile Bits
Media: CD/2
Players: 1
Genre: Miscellaneous

Graphics & Sound:

It has been a while since I have been impressed with a game. The games I have played lately have been alright, but they just haven't been anything that I haven't seen before. The Ward was impressive from the opening cut-scene. It was fast paced, with promises of thrilling adventures to come. After you actually start playing the game, you might notice the graininess of the graphics, but that doesn't take away from the fun in playing the game. The sound effects and music track were especially nice. The Ward offers nice 3D effects in its sound track and won't go quiet. Space itself might be a vacuum and quiet, but that would be boring. The Ward reminds me of movies from the seventies and eighties which is a nice change from some titles that tend to go for the grunge tracks. The Ward also offers many people a game that won't tax your system too much, which is a plus for people with older machines. Not everybody can afford the ultimate gaming PC with all the bells and whistles. You will be able to interact with most everything in each room and you will need to interact with equipment, aliens, and computers to get from one part of the story to the other.

Gameplay:

In The Ward, you are David Walker, a young astronaut from Apollo XIX. While out inspecting seismic events on the moon's surface, something attacks your fellow crew member, killing him. You are alone without a ride home..until that something comes for you. After the cut-scene, you wake up on a moon base without any instructions to know what to do. Luckily, the instruction booklet will give you a little bit of history and will even you give you a synopsis of what you might come to expect. Expect aliens that look a lot like the popular gray, large-eyed alien from the tabloids. Expect ancient civilizations that you hold the key to in your DNA.

The best thing about The Ward is a very well thought-out storyline. The Ward is a thinking person's game with plenty of puzzles to keep you baffled. If you are the type of person whose brains start to hurt after a couple of puzzles, you can play the game in Easy mode without the puzzles. You will do a lot of conversing with various characters, especially in the part of the game that takes place in the human colony (the second part of the game). As in all adventure games, inspect everything and take my advice, don't give up on something after the first try. If you do, you will not get too far. The Ward is divided into three sections: the Moon Base, the Human Colony, and then finally, the Alien ship.


Difficulty:

The Ward offers two difficulty modes that you can set once you install the game. The first is Normal and will have all the puzzles turned on. Easy mode doesn't have all the puzzles, but The Ward is still challenging. You have lots to do and lots to remember. For example, to get through one door, you first have to take off a piece of the panel to flip a certain switch before the panel will work. What do you remove the panel with? I hope you inspected everything so that you found a handy gadget. On this panel are carvings and an alien language that is indecipherable. That little mystery is in the first couple of rooms and it gets more challenging from there. You are up for the challenge, aren't you?

Game Mechanics:

The Ward is a point/click interface that makes the game accessible to many age groups and intellect levels. Your pointer will change on top of something that you can inspect or use. To walk through the environment, you will left click on the portion of the screen that you want to go too. If you right click, your inventory will come up where you will have access to all the things that you picked up. Another piece of advice, if it is not nailed down, pick it up! During conversations with other characters, you will only be able to talk to that character until you are done.

Overall, The Ward is not a perfect game, as it doesn't have the best graphics, but it is a great diversion from your day to day grind with an engaging story.


-Wickserv, GameVortex Communications
AKA Eric Wickwire

Minimum System Requirements:



PC compatible, Pentium 133, 130MB hard drive space,32 MB RAM, 8X CD -ROM, Windows 95
 

Test System:



GX-450xl running Windows 98, 256 RAM, Creative Sound Blaster 64CPCI with Boston Acoustic Digital Media Theatre, STB Velocity 4400 with RIVA TNT chip, DirectX 7, 32 Mb RAM, 6X24 DVD-ROM.

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