| Over the many years I have been playing computer games, the theme for the games I have played has always leaned towards action, primarily in the FPS and RTS arenas. However, such sprees of mayhem have, on occasion, been interrupted by the odd adventure game. Now, in my books “adventure game” is any game that focuses on more cerebral elements such as problem solving and patience as a means of finishing a game rather than killing and destruction. Into this fold I group games all the way from Myst up to the Thief series. I realize that many of you will disagree with this definition of “adventure game”, but since I am the one writing this review, too bad.
In the past, one game that I enjoyed very much was a little game called Bioforge. Problem solving mixed with quite a bit of hand-to-hand combat made it, in my mind, a great game with lots of variety. In many ways In Cold Blood from Dreamcatcher Interactive reminds me very much of Bioforge (although with less hand-to-hand combat and more gunplay). In Cold Blood is for those who like a mix of action and some rudimentary problem solving. If such a mix sounds like your type of thing, read on and find out in In Cold Blood is for you. Gameplay Without a doubt, the story line of ICB is the best thing going for the game. This is not say that the rest of the game is terrible, because that is not the case. The ICB plot is one of the best stories I have seen in a game in a long time. Set in the near future, the game begins with your character, British MI6 agent John Cord, being brutally interrogated by some rather nasty individuals with thick, Slavic accents. As the scene unfolds, Cord finally breaks and begins to tell his story to the interrogators, at which point, the actual gameplay starts. From this point on, the majority of the missions are played out as if Cord is recalling recent events. A consequence of this is that in the event of an untimely death during a mission it is simply played out as Cord being unable to clearly remember how things unfolded, mostly due to the beating the interrogators have dealt him. The missions take place over a variety of different locales, from mines and research centers to land trains and even a submarine. You control Cord as he moves through each mission, viewed from a fixed camera that switches to predefined positions as you move around, similar to Bioforge or the Monkey Island games (and probably many other game that I have not played). While for the most part the camera is positioned in an appropriate manner, often it can lead to frustration as you try to interact with certain objects in the game. This was especially true with doors located at the sides of the screen. Depending on the viewing angle of the camera, it was sometimes all to easy to misjudge Cords direction and position as he tried to pass through a door, usually ending in him crashing into the wall on either side. Most of the time this was a minor annoyance, and as long as Cord was walking you can usually hit the doors first time. However, when trying to get through a side door while running (when being chased by a armed robot for instance) proved to be quite a challenge, often leading to him being gunned down. The in-game control system doesn’t really help matters either. Basically you control Cord’s forward and backward movement with turns accomplished by rotating him to the left or to the right. Sidestepping is accomplished by using the Shift key in conjunction with the left and right keys. The controls setup does not allow for separate sidestepping keys to be set up, which I really missed during the game. In fact the entire control system in my opinion was somewhat lacking and limited (it became very obvious that this game was a port from a console since it really felt like I needed a game pad to play). An option for screen relative movement (in other words, the directional controls move Cord back, forward, left and right relative to the screen) is included, but seemed more designed for joysticks and didn’t really help much with keyboard, at least not for me. There were many times during the game I needed to execute some quick maneuvers that the control system just didn’t allow for. This meant reloading and trying certain parts of the game repeatedly until I got lucky. Keyboards users like me will probably encounter some frustration with the control system. Getting back to the missions again, they are setup in a very similar manner in that you will have to determine the best route to take to solve each mission. Actually, I should qualify “best route”, since in reality there is only really one way to finish each mission. However, going about solving the missions can be done in slightly different ways. Most of these choices revolve around defeating the various enemies. You can kill them, knock them out (at least the humans anyway), or simply sneak past them. Beyond that, there is one solution for each mission, and you need to find it. Some of the puzzles you encounter require a little bit of practical reasoning and foresight, which makes for some nice variation during the missions. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the “puzzles” seem to be simply finding the right computer terminal to perform some task or talking to the right technician to open the next door for you. Certainly none of the puzzles some close to those found in the Myst series for example. This means a lot of running around from location to location trying to find the missing element needed to progress.? |