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For
those of you who have always dreamed of becoming the
squeaky clean hero, the type in whose mouth Krona wouldn't
melt, had better avoid Ark Pandora since it's
not that type of game. If you're the sort who fancies
being a murderous pirate, a man for himself and no one
else, then Ark Pandora and you may well make
perfect companions. The story flows like this: Society
isn't that stupid and in their wisdom they've imprisoned
you, the pirate, on a fantasy island where you can do
no harm. Chopping peoples' heads off, capturing other
peoples' treasure and shouting rude words in honour
of the skull and crossbones may all be jolly good fun,
but it's a bit anti-social -- hence your remote prison
island penance, and you're stuck there till you draw
your last breath. Well you would have been had it not
been for the evil cult that suddenly sprung up overnight.
The villagers are now a most scared bunch indeed and
since none of them are particularly used to fighting
and things like that they turn to you, offering freedom
if the island is rid of the demonic religion. A non
too easy task, since brains as well as a fair amount
of brawn is needed.
Fred
the pirate is an athletic sort of cove, who can at the
drop of a key leap into the air: handy for the avoidance
of any floor-bound creatures that might be encountered.
Fred also has the amazing ability to run left and right
at a fair furious pace. That's at the top half of the
screen, though, where Fred is shown in his full two
dimensional glory as well as a slice of the surrounding
scenery. Underneath the graphical bit are a number of
icons for more subtle manipulation of Fred. Ark Pandora
is an adventure, and a graphical one at that, and the
six icons along the lower half allow access to many
of the commands found within many text adventures. To
toggle between control of Fred at the top and icon control
at the bottom, you hold down the fire button and pull
down on the joystick. An arrow is at your command and
when placed over an icon and activated, the little sprite
bursts into life and issues a window. The six commands
are as follows: Look, Inventory, Drop, Use, Take, Save/Load
and Quit.
When
controlling Fred at the top of the screen, the joystick
lets the pirate go left, right and jump, fire uses the
object icon currently selected. There are a lot of objects
to be found but only a limited amount may be carried
at any given time. Using this control method, Fred can
only be moved in the scene currently occupied, and flipping
to the next screen is done by using movement icons --
under the graphic display up to four arrows indicate
possible exits; position the pirate over one of these
and it's possible to exit in that direction.
[This
pic of the screen designer wasn't in the original review]
There
are goodies and baddies on the island; animals are usually
good bets to avoid since walking into them depletes
valuable energy. This life force is constantly displayed
and if it hits zero then you're dead. To fight the baddies
there is a sharpened star which can be collected and
then thrown at them. This causes them to explode and,
not unsurprisingly, renders them quite harmless.
To
complete Ark Pandora a lot of the usual adventure
type stuff has to be done, ie rescue people, use objects
and kill the nasties. Apparently the path to freedom
is quite tricky and Rino know it. Quite nicely the cassette
inlay explains that if after a few months AP
is still eluding a solution, then a stamped addressed
envelope sent to them will guarantee an answer sheet.
Can't say fairer than that.
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