Techtite's PC Game Reviews!

Disney's Atlantis: 

"Trial By Fire"

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A Techtite Review

Quite frankly, I think Disney shows a lot of guts, releasing a standard, 2D animated feature, in a summer filled to the brim with so much glitzier CGI, computer-animated fare (particularly Shrek, and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within). However, that's not to say they aren't promoting their latest animated feature, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, with everything they've got. This includes the latest action game by Disney Interactive, which always releases a game based on the latest Disney film in theaters. Many of these games are even pretty good, with last year's Emperor's New Groove action game being a very acceptable Super Mario clone. I wish I could give similar praise for Atlantis: Trial By Fire, though it seems to somewhat miss the mark.

This action game succeeds in one regard; licensing the Lithtech game engine, which last year delivered such critically acclaimed games as No One Lives Forever, as well as the likeable Sanity: Aiken's Artifact. Disney was able to use most of the better traits of this game engine to their advantage, including accurate 3D renditions of the film's characters (as we've all seen in advance in film trailers). However, you're unlikely to see these characters very much at all, except in black and white transmissions via your "talkie" transmitter (sort of an apparent video-phone prototype; shown here). In addition, for some reason, it was decided to make this game first-person perspective, so you rarely see your own character, either. This essentially eliminates one of the Lithtech engine's best features; the ability for in-game cutscenes. Given that this game is based on a film, it desperately needs such cinematics, yet settles for simple flybys of each level, instead.

Essentially, kids would buy this game to re-enact their favorite scenes in the film. However, Trial By Fire does not achieve this as well as Emperor's New Groove's action game last year. That game even had a surprisingly huge number of video clips from the actual film, that introduced and concluded every level of the entire game. By comparison, Trial By Fire is surprisingly sparse of background story of any kind. Sure, given that the game was released weeks prior to the film's official opening, they don't want to reveal too much of the film, beforehand; hey, no problem. However, the game needs a background story of some sort, which could just as easily have been done by the 3D polygon characters themselves. Instead, you're treated to short narrations before each level, with only the vaguest notion of why you're doing what you're doing at all. There is a "journal" option to help tell you what to do, though this is basically just a narrative form of the "objectives" list that opens each level.

This is just a small sample of limitations that give you the feeling that this is just a small, rushed, fraction of what was originally intended. Sure, the idea was to offer interactive moments of the film, coaxing you to see the film itself, though Emperor's New Groove last year achieved this far better. The best complement to the film would be an action game that tells the whole story, yet still keeps the funniest moments to be shown in theaters. With such a mishmash of levels, I doubt even seeing the film would keep me from feeling like this game is a mere abbreviation of a larger, better game, that was apparently scrapped due to time concerns. It's just a theory, though it's an understandable one.

The single-player game succeeds in offering a few puzzles, at least. The wind trials, for example, involve activating giant flutes in the correct musical pattern. There are other challenges like this, such as trying to dodge moving walls over lava, or trying to race a rising pool of lava to the top of a maze in time to reach an important artifact. These are amusing challenges, though still, they are too brief. One can say the same about game levels themselves, which seem somewhat similar. They're very colorful and inspired in visual appearance, yet they're each extremely small. Expect to be done with the whole game, and all of its 15 levels, in as little as two and a half hours. Very little kids may prefer it this way; anyone older than 10 will not.

As for the multiplayer game option, consider this game "Children's Quake." Atlantis: Trial by Fire tries to be just like that classic multiplayer action game, only more PG-rated for the kiddies. Shooting bad guys leads to little more than them magically disappearing in what one may as soon expect was a Star Trek transporter beaming them to safety; the way the enemies vanish is that pyrotechnic, yet G-rated at the same time. Weaponry is amusing yet equally childlike, and includes a "froster" to slow enemies down, and a "puffer" to blow them away. Kids might enjoy the multiplayer game options, of competing with others online, playing as actual characters from the film. However, again, the single-player game should have been far better, and quite frankly the multiplayer could have offered a bit more, as well.

It's the added gripes that drag the game down to thumbs-down territory. One annoying glitch (as was already experienced in the free demo) leaves you stuck in certain platforms, unable to do anything more than restart the whole game. This can be annoying, especially when there is no decent save game feature, and often the game forces you to restart the level at the very beginning...only to be at risk of getting stuck yet again. I'd label the lack of a decent save game feature "console-itis," if this game was to be released simultaneously with game consoles (with limited game save potential), though it isn't. Furthermore, there is no real excuse for not offering a decent save game feature, given how versatile the Lithtech game engine can be.

There really isn't anything wrong with a game geared towards kids, that is over in a night's worth of game play. In addition, the game levels are still very nice to look at, no matter how little you get to truly enjoy them, with so little to do in any of them. I guess my expectations were so high, after playing that cool demo CD, shrink-wrapped with my DVD of The Emperor's New Groove. As it so turns out, however, that demo isn't much smaller than the rest of the entire game. Bummer.

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