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Hamilton's Great Adventure

Score: 80%
ESRB: Everyone
Publisher: Fatshark
Developer: Fatshark
Media: Download/1
Players: 1
Genre: Puzzle/ Adventure

Graphics & Sound:

Hamilton's Great Adventure is a breath of freshness to the puzzle genre, a genre that seems to be nothing but tile-swapping or hidden-object gameplay these days.

Hamilton's Great Adventure has an interesting stylized visual look to it. Hamilton looks to be a frumpier looking Indiana Jones, complete with brown jacket and fedora, while the lands he treks through, South America, the Himalayas, deserts and even a lost continent, are full of color and life, even if the only things actually moving are the parts on the gameboard itself.

I guess a lot of that had to do with how well the backgrounds to each of Hamilton's levels sold the overall feel for the area. Whether it was the jungle-tops that you are suspended above or the tops of massive stone buildings under your skinny walk-ways, the effect of being high up and having to trek across traitorous passageways was really effective.

The game's sound also did a good job of selling the feel of the different types of levels. While all of the background tunes had that heroic feel to it, they also seemed to fit in the different environments in which Hamilton and his bird, Sasha, found themselves.

Outside of the levels, the game takes on a comic-book style as an older Hamilton regales his granddaughter of his adventures. These scenes also feature text-based dialogue with some mild voice-acting not really reading the text, but giving off sounds, or reading some of the words in order to give a feel for how the dialogue should sound.


Gameplay:

At first glance, Hamilton's Great Adventure seems like your basic maze-running type of puzzle game. Your goal is to navigate Hamilton across each level and reach the doorway at the end. Along the way, you will have to pick up the door's key, as well as avoid many different kinds of obstacles and use your feathered-friend to throw switches that are out of Hamilton's reach.

It's the addition of Sasha that really adds an interesting depth to what could have easily been just another puzzle game. She will fly around the map, with the guidance of your mouse, collecting berries and flipping switches all at the same time that Hamilton is working his way across the map. While this takes a little getting used to, being able to effectively control both characters simultaneously not only reduces your time in each level, but can even be necessary in some of the game's more time-sensitive puzzles.

That's not all Sasha is good for, though. There are some enemies that will actually hunt down Hamilton and keep him from progressing. Sasha has the ability to squawk a distraction so that Hamilton can get by and continue making progress in the level. This, combined with the fact that you will need to try and get all of the treasures on the level, including those that only Sasha can obtain, before exiting in order to get the highest score possible, is where Hamilton's Great Adventure's replay value comes in.


Difficulty:

Hamilton's Great Adventure does a good job of starting you off slowly with basic puzzles that don't require much effort, but slowly introducing new types of tiles and obstacles that will cause you more and more trouble.

At first, I had no problem running through levels in one try. The only thing that really slowed me down in these early puzzles was my desire to get all of the treasures. As the game drew on though, I found myself either having to sacrifice tricky treasures or attempts. Yes, the game keeps track of how many times you tried a level before actually solving it, in order to progress the story. Because of my completest-nature though, more often than not, I would try several times rather than deciding to skip over a piece of treasure.


Game Mechanics:

If you want to get good at Hamilton's Great Adventure, you really have to work on being able to control one character with one hand, and another with the other. Hamilton himself is guided by the W-S-A-D keys on the keyboard, while Sasha uses a point-and-click system to fly her around the map.

At first, I found myself moving Hamilton into various locations, stopping and allowing Sasha some time to fly around and collect the various berries I could see. However, as the game progressed, I found I had to not only get comfortable using both at the same time, but that there were more and more puzzles that required flying Sasha to various levels as Hamilton had to make steady progress across the level. Thus, the need to be able to control both simultaneously. As I mentioned earlier, getting the hang of this early on will not only prepare you for later challenges, but also reduce your time in the levels and increase your score.

Overall, Hamilton's Great Adventure is a fun puzzle game that has enough depth to make it worth most puzzle-game fans' while. It's definitely worth checking out the demo on Steam if nothing else.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows Vista / Windows 7, Dual Core 2.4GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 1GB Hard Drive Space, Shader 4.0 compatible Video Card (minimum: Nvidia GeForce 8xxx, AMD Radeon 2xxx), Direct3D 11
 

Test System:



Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c

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