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Treasure Island
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Graphics & Sound:
Ah, the wonder of public domain and its ability for artists of any time to return to classic stories over and over again. Actually, Treasure Island is a pretty good interpretation of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson story, and there haven't been too many versions of the book in videogames. Movies and television on the other hand, I think we can do without any more Muppet Treasure Island's or Treasure Planet's.
Visually, the game does a pretty good job of showing the sea-faring world of the mid 1700's. The graphics of the game were particularly enjoyable, and while nothing was photo-realistic, both the environments and the characters are brought to virtual-life pretty well. The only real issue I had with the game's presentation was the voice acting. For the most part, the game's vocals felt very phoned in and emotionless, and considering the sheer amount of dialogue in a game like this, that can be a big problem. On a similar note, the lip-syncing was so out of whack that it was a bit of a distraction the few times when the camera was close enough to see their lips flap. Since Treasure Island was developed in Germany and brought to America, I can forgive that, especially since it really isn't something you will see too often. At least there weren't any odd translation issues like I've seen in other games brought here, because that is always unnerving. |
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Gameplay:
Treasure Island takes you through the story of young Jim Hawkins as he dreams of leaving his family-owned inn and seeing the world. His wish is granted when some unfortunate run-ins involving one of Jim's customers and that man's former associates leads Jim on an adventure of pirates (most notably Long John Silver) and, of course, treasure hunting. The game does a fair job of sticking close to the original story, and only diverts noticeably in ways that would have been too hard to stick close to for an adventure title (most notably the fact that Jim's mother is dead at the beginning of the game since having her run around with him would have been more trouble than it is worth).
Treasure Island is your basic point-and-click adventure that will take you through a fair split of inventory-based puzzles, dialogue trees and logic puzzles. Thankfully, the game does a pretty good job of balancing these three elements, because focusing too much in any one area often leaves the game feeling a bit lopsided. That really isn't the case here as having to work your way through conversations and then moving on to inventory-based tasks flow rather smoothly together to form a pretty good experience all around.
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Difficulty:
I actually found Treasure Island to be a bit of a challenge, which is something I haven't been able to say for a while with regards to adventure games. Unfortunately, this wasn't always because of the toughness of the puzzles, but occasionally because the exact tasks I had to do weren't quite clear. This didn't happen too often, but when it did, I got annoyed, and the answer was inevitably trying out all of my inventory items on everything I could click on. Like I said though, those occasions weren't too frequent, and the game does offer a bit of a crutch for those who don't mind asking for some help. This crutch would be the "Hot Spots" option in the Menu. With this turned on, holding down the Space Bar causes areas you can click on to glow bright yellow. At the beginning of the game, you are asked what kind of treasure hunter you are: one who looks under every rock, or one that uses a map to find exactly where to look. Your answer here determines if the Hot Spot option is turned on or off at the beginning of the game, but don't worry, you can turn it on or off whenever you want without penalty.
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Game Mechanics:
Treasure Island gives the standard inventory system an overhaul with the ability to not only rotate your collected items, but also zoom in and out in order to investigate them closely, something you might find necessary while hunting for lost treasure. Besides this interesting twist though, Treasure Island is your basic point-and-click adventure. The only other differences in controls is the need to right-click in order to "look at" something, which you know to do by seeing an eye icon over the hot spot. All other actions are performed by left-clicking on them, which might get a little confusing when you first start the game since it isn't exactly the standard, but this difference should be quickly overlooked.
"Treasure Island" is a story that really does beg for an adventure title, and this game does the tale justice. While the game offers a solid mix of puzzles that will leave you both scratching and banging your head, none of the obstacles thrown at your are so insurmountable that you will just want to walk away. Adventure gamers wanting to revisit a classic story should find this game enjoyable, but it won't really appeal to anyone who isn't already interested in Jim Hawkin's adventures.
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 2000/XP, 1.4 GHz Pentium 3 Processor, 256 MB RAM, 1.5 GB Disc Space, 16x CD/DVD-ROM, 64 MB DirectX 9 Compatible Video Card, 16-bit DirectX Compatible Sound Card |
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Test System:
Windows 7 Ultimate, AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core 2.20 GHz, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c |
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