Review by Oliver Lan Name: Huygen's Disclosure Publisher: Microforum Format: CD Type: Action/AdventureRequires: 2 versions - 8Mb and 16Mb 8Mb --- O/S: WIN 3.1 - 95 Processor: 486-66+ RAM: 8Mb+ Graphics: SVGA CD-Rom: X2 Soundcard: All major cards supported 16Mb ---- O/S: WIN 3.1 - 95 Processor: P75+ RAM: 16Mb+ Graphics: SVGA CD-Rom: X2 Soundcard: All major cards supported Tested on: O/S: Windows 95 Processor: Pentium 120 RAM: 32Mb Graphics: Matrox Millennium 2Mb WRAM CD-ROM: Quad speed Soundcard: SB AWE32 Controls: Mouse
Huygen's Disclosure
Sun-tan lotion. Great stuff, but something that (unfortunately) doesn't
come in too handy over here. Well, according to Huygen's Disclosure that
may all be about to change. Sounds good? Those promised greenhouse 
effect extra few degrees coming to warm up our days and let us cast off
our wooly sweaters for all time? Well, guess what, it's not quite that
simple. Better get a few more bottles of Factor 24 than we first
thought...
According to the game's all too credible time-line, in a mere two years scientists finally discover that the greenhouse effect is nothing like not working (although given the current temperature over here in Britain, you could have fooled me). There is also the rather large problem that the ozone layer has almost completely gone. So, things are pretty bad. In fact, so bad that by 2015 Martial Law is declared in 90% of countries and predictions are that mankind will be extinct by June 2020.
Oh dear!
All right, looks like we'd better all start having fun then - last month for the human race - should be one hell of a party, eh?... but what's that? Save the world, you say? Contrived nonsense to achieve the impossible? Oh, you cynic you...
But yes, there is a way (there is always a way...), you see Titan, moon of Saturn, just happens to have this gas, you see, Rachellium, and that bonds with oxygen to... - look, it's the answer, all right. But guess what, just to make it more interesting a) there's life on Titan, and b) they need one person (and only one person) to go get this gas (somehow) and thus save the entire world...
Looks like the beginning of an adventure, looks like the beginning of... Huygen's Disclosure.
[OK, that last bit was corny.] er, sub-title? what sub-ti...
So, yet another game to be consigned to the ever bulging 'all graphics no
gameplay' waste bin? But wait! This is no simple game-on-rails;
according to Microforum it's a completely new breed of action-adventure
game. Hmm, so what's it all about then?
I said, what's it all about then...?
Right, anyway, basically the game is composed of three elements, even
genres, all sort of thrown together and mashed up - Adventure, Action and
Video is the sort of nicey official way of calling it, although to my Which, OK, doesn't sound too good, and unfortunately that's just because
it... well... isn't. But it's not too bad either, and having said all
that you've probably looked at the score already so I'll just get on with
it. Taking the adventure bits first, these are what you first see.
Looks reasonable, you might think, playing this bloke wandering around
some reasonably drawn areas with objects and the like, icons for look,
pick-up, etc. And that would be OK. Unoriginal, but OK. And
unfortunately originality is not always a blessing, and you do get the
feeling that Huygen's Disclosure is trying to be just too many things at
once.
You see, they couldn't have a normal adventure. So what you get is what
at first looks like a Graphic Adventure, until you try to move. But you
can't. The mouse pointer is trapped in a tiny inch square at the top
right of the screen. And try as you might, you just can't get it out.
'But I want to walk over there!' you might say, only to realise in horror
that the lack of mouse control can mean only one thing... the keyboard.
Yes, to move around in Huygen's Disclosure you use the Keyboard, in a
very sort of Alone in the Dark kind of way; you press forwards to go
forwards, left and right to turn, and back to go back. Which all sounds
sensible enough, but then you try walking around like a turtle from a
LOGO program (forward 5 paces, left a bit, forward a bit more, oops,
missed, right a bit...), you get the point. It loses all sense of
fluidity from the fact that to turn you (for some unknown reason) have to
stop dead, and it loses all sense of novelty when you realise you have to
manually drive your little man about (even though he's actually walking)
everywhere. So most of your time is spent just getting around, even when
you know exactly where you want to go. It's also spent just looking for
something to do.
Sorry? Do you mean something special by that?
Well, yes, because looking is exactly the point. Unlike other
adventures, there's no way of knowing what items are actually items and
what are just there to make everything look pretty. Which could be
considered a good thing - eliminating the old scan-the-screen method of
playing adventure games (where you just move the mouse everywhere to see
what lights up). But then again, are your powers of observation what you
really want tested in an adventure? I mean, if you want to scour your
way through pictures for hours on end you'd buy a Where's Wally book, and
probably spend hours of joy absorbing every inch of every page. You'd
also be quite sad. But anyway, back to the issue at hand, and what this
basically means is that you can spend ages staring at a puzzle when the
answer is literally (well, OK, unless it's got eyes maybe not quite)
staring you in the face. Not good.
And I haven't even mentioned the combat bits yet.
Combat bits
Right, well, all this just wasn't original enough, so they thought they'd
add an extra twist. Combat. And finally we find out what that damned
little mouse grid thing is for. It's meant to be for aiming. You This is not good. It's a good thing the early monsters are particularly
un-lethal, because you've pretty much irradiated the entire floor before
you can even hit the damn things.
And of course, there are still those video bits.
Those video bits
[Stop that! -Ed]
OK, well, after all I said, they're not actually very much to do with the
gameplay, which is pretty much adventure-ish. But they're there all
right, just to spice it all up a bit. Walk to the left off this screen -
ah, we'll show a clip of you (from your perspective) walking down a
corridor. Walk a bit here... the same (exactly) thing. Every now and
then you have to click in the screen as it all goes past, but it's hardly
strenuous. And all it means is that you spend even longer navigating
around, with not enough control to make it exploration. It's just
boring! The areas are huge, some of them, and you have to spend ages
navigating around, either just watching yourself walk through screens of
nothing (painstakingly keyboard controlled) or even just watching the
scenery go by.
Ah well.
You see, the game could've been all right. Could have been quite good in
fact, had they just left it as an admittedly bog-standard but reasonably
engaging adventure. Which it is, in places. There are times playing
this game when you can really see a decent adventure beginning to shine
through, times when, for a brief moment it all works. The concept is
good. The setting is reasonable. The interface is fine (for the
adventure bits). And the puzzles, when they come, are quite befitting
of a decent adventure. But they had to go and add all sorts of
"interesting bits" and spice it up all over the place, and it just ends
up as a bit of a mess.
And quite frankly, the story-line's a bit silly, too. I mean, come on,
they've got creatures called Wubbles. And you do not want to know how
they attack. Oh, all right then, they fire excrement (sic) out of
their £$*%&£!...
ANYWAY, to sum up, an adventure that tries to be too original for its own
good. When it was good, it was very good, but when it was bad it
was awful...
mind Adventure, cr*p shareware blaster and 'annoying bits where you just
sit, watch, and click a bit' would probably do better.
click in the grid where you want to fire, respective to your position and
direction. And that lets you fire up or down, and so make it really 3D
and cunning, right? Wrong. Why couldn't they just have you point and
click (oh sorry, too unoriginal). Instead, you spend ages just shooting
into no-where, a problem made catastrophically bad by the fact that your
shots are only visible when they actually hit something. So if you miss,
there's no way of knowing why, or by how much, or where you actually hit.
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Rating: 6/10 (Fair Effort!)
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