Final Odyssey:

Theseus Versus the Minotaur.

The Story

Travel through this game figuring out the puzzles, avoiding the baddies and traps, and picking up clues and weapons.

The Game

This game has graphics reminiscent of the Super Nintendo Zelda games. Your view is a 3/4 top view looking down at the playfield. Your character, armed with a crossbow with unlimited firepower and other weapons he must collect during his travels, must be guided by joystick through the maze.

Movement, firing and gameplay is mainly through the joystick. You simply move, shoot, and activate switches placed on the floors by walking over them. There are some keyboard keys to add dimension to the game, such as weapon selection. The switches and teleports are keys to the game as you need often to activate these things in specific order. The switches cause the wall configurations for portions of the maze to change. Teleports, well, surprise of surprises, teleport your character to a predetermined location. Keeping track of these things is crucial to the game.

The traps involve everything from spikes and arrow launchers to rolling boulders and enemies that can appear from within walls and the floor to try to hinder your progress. You then need to either try to get around them or dispatch them with your arsenal. The different weapons have differnet capabilities but only the crossbow has an unlimited supply of ammo so you must choose your weapon carefully for each situation.

Playing this game straight out of the box is easy, but a quick glance at the manual will certainly help you out. "What manual?," you might ask after looking in the CD-ROM case and not finding one. The manual is on the CD, in the form of both text, in a slew of different languages, and voice, in English with a rather pleasant lilting accent only.

Bugs And Other Unforeseen Issues

The only bug I've encountered so far is in the documentation program. Not a simple text file, but a program replete with scrolling text and digitized voice, I found the text in a garbled font on an 060, 3.1 Amiga 1200. Luckily, as an English-speaking person, I had the voice I could listen to.

Graphics, Sound, And General Multimedia Effects

Graphics: The graphics are neat and well done. This is an ECS game that does not look bad even on AGA machines. About as good as you will find in this sort of game. It is nice to see the occasional program that does not leave everyone else behind every now and then.

Sound: Your standard stuff, shots, music and jingles with nice stereo effects and true voice online manual.

This is one of those puzzlers that makes great use of the Amiga ECS chipset. The fact that it is not AGA does not detract from this game at all.

In Conclusion

This game, incorporating puzzles spanning over 5 worlds, good animation, five weapons, and 3D sound effects, really makes even older Amigas shine. The only Amiga this will not run on is a standard A1000. In fact, all you need is a controller, hard drive, RAM and a CD-ROM drive. An A2091 covers the ability to add all these things. It is great to see a game that will cover such a wide range of machines, be playable, and not look bad on an Amiga 4000T. Due to the sheer size of the game, it will certainly have staying power. Get ready for some late nights, as your reward for completing the quest is a two-player game of some kind. I'm still in world one so I have to finish up here to get back to playing.

Results

Final Odyssey: Theseus Versus the Minotaur
Maze Puzzle Game

Vulcan Software Ltd.
72 Queens Road
Buckland, Portsmouth, Hants, PO27NA
England
Paul@vul-soft.demon.co.uk
http://www.vulcan.co.uk/

ATTRIBUTES

PERCENTAGE

COMMENT

Installation: NA Gameplay is straight from the CD. Doesn't get much easier than that.
Playability: 94% A great puzzler game with a nice, steady pace that gives you time to really explore this labyrinth without getting a headache.
Graphics: 87% Great for an ECS game which gives it compatibility with nearly all Amigas. Nice scrolling and character animation.
Sound: 85% Fitting with many nice points.
Documentation: 70% A scrolling text with voice program on the CD. Gets pluses for having multiple languages (text only) and a pleasing voice (English only). Gets minuses for not working properly on the 060, 3.1, A1200 I was using and, while nice, can get annoying when you only really want to look up something, though it is thorough.
Performance: 90% Very smooth and responsive game.
Controls: 85% Easy enough. Joystick and a few keys. Reminiscent of game console games. A "just sit on down and play me" kind of feeling.

Overall Score:

83.4%
A definite excuse to buy a CD-ROM for all Amiga owners and one of the first new titles on this media for older Amiga owners. Documentation can be a problem on some Amigas and I had to take off some points for the usual PAL-only display.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
All Amigas, Hard Drive, 2 MB RAM (1 MB Chip), 68000, Joystick, 2X CD-ROM Drive
(Required)
68020+, AGA, More RAM, Faster CD-ROM
(Recommended)

-By Anthony Becker
Write to him at e-mail address commodoreuser@juno.com