Well, here I am again with not a lot to do (and yes, I know some of you may say I could do some revision for my A-levels, for example, I already have done six hours of that today, and I'm tired of it) so I thought I'd continue what I started last week: the series of reviews of the Lands of Lore computer games.
Lands of Lore I was a pretty basic game, actually, in terms of both programming and plot (and probably quite a few other things as well, come to think of it, but I can't remember any right now). It's the sort of game that I, if I were really inclined, could probably programme a pretty decent copy of all by myself. Lands of Lore II, though, is much more complex. There is no chance I would be able to manage to make a copy of this one, even if I were inclined to, which I'm not.
In Lands of Lore I, you could be facing any one of four directions at any time - north, east, south or west. In Lands of Lore II, you can face in any of 360 different directions. You can go off in basically whatever direction you want (except up and down, unless you happen to fall down a hole, which in this game generally leads to your death) and it's quite impressive. Obviously, therefore, the programming is much more complex. It's not based on a co-ordinate system, as I suspect Lands of Lore I was. In Lands of Lore II, you can stand wherever you want to, on just about any pixel you choose.
As well as this, the player's ability to manipulate the environment is vastly improved. When in Lands of Lore I you came across lakes and tried to walk across them, you were generally greeted by a red message that came up and said, 'You can't go that way!'. If you come across water in Lands of Lore II, you can walk straight into it. Depending on how deep the water is, you can also drown (and if you happen to be attempting to walk into the big lake in the Huline Jungle, you can be eaten by some odd fish thing), which is a vast improvement, I'm sure you'll agree. In this game, you can light torches (admittedly by attacking them, which isn't quite so realistic), and can attack trees and get some kind of result (usually some yellow kind of liquid which you can pick up). You can pick fruit off trees, and can knock over barrels and roll them down hills. In contrast to Lands of Lore I, in which the extent to which the player could manipulate the environment was clicking on buttons, this is absolute heaven!
So Lands of Lore II is vastly superior to the earlier game in this respect. In graphics too it is pretty much amazing (except when you walk right up to something, in which case you get just about the same effect you normally get whenever you put something right next to your eyes - big shapes that you can't make out). There are about twenty different levels, all of which look incredible. The Huline Jungle and the Claw Mountains are perhaps my favourites - although I suspect the geography is somewhat dubious. Is it actually possible to have a tropical jungle almost right next to ice-bound mountains? I don't know, but I'm guessing probably not. The movie sequences in this game look like they were actually filmed. It's very very well done.
Those who have read my review of Lands of Lore I will remember that one of my major rants against the game was the monsters, almost all of which were incredibly stupid. Lands of Lore II's monsters are quite good in comparison. We have Gladstone guards (who, as opposed to the first game, can actually be defeated), little spiders (oh no!), skeleton warriors (quite cool looking), black panthers with two heads (interesting), red dinosaurs that breathe fire (ditto), blue things with lots of heads (quite difficult to kill), blue spiders (not the most well thought out monsters, regrettably), Huline warriors (who only have to be your enemy if you want them to be), green birds who can shoot poison (and are thus best avoided), big green scaly things (which are really hard to kill), funny grey things (also quite hard), rock formations that shoot purple blobs at you (very imaginative!), zombies (boring and not hard to kill), white versions of the two headed panthers (saved a bit of animation work, I'd imagine), some flying things that are intensely annoying (but challenging), bits of brown sludge (the only truly disappointing monster in this game), and various clones of the main baddy, Belial. These monsters are really quite good fun to square up against. One of the other big improvements in the field of monsters is that they are clever enough to start running away when you're killing them, whereas in the first game, they'd just stand there getting killed. Yes, the monsters here are interesting. I like the monsters in this game much better than those of Lands of Lore I.
There's also the interesting matter of pharmaceutical combinations (or, to translate, mixing things together). Some items in the game can be combined with others to make new and much more powerful items, for example, ironwood sap and amber (both useless) can be mixed together to give you a Champion Stone, something that increases your strength for a limited period. This is really clever and a very interesting concept. I don't play that many computer games, but I don't know of any others that let you do this.
I've got this far without actually mentioning the plot of the game. It's much more complex than Lands of Lore I. That was basically just goodies versus baddies. In this, the player can choose whether they themselves become a baddy and fight against the other baddy to become chief baddy, or whether they'll be a goody and rid the world of Belial just for the niceness of it. Basically, you play Luther, son of Scotia (the baddy from Lands of Lore I). When she died, she attempted to send her shapeshifting magic to you, but it got kind of mangled in transmission, with the upshot that you frequently morph between your human form, a hulking great beast and a tiny lizard, without any control. At first, you are out to rid yourself of this curse. You go to see the Draracle, who directs you to the Southern Continent, where he says the Huline will help you. (He's lying, because they have no idea!). You spend some time being nice to the Huline and eventually go across the Bane river to the Savage Jungle, where you are on the lookout for an ancient Huline Temple which may hold the answers you seek. Unfortunately, you can't get in without first going across to the Claw Mountains and stealing a Dreamstone from the Citadel of the Ruloi. Unfortunately, you can't do that without killing the Lharkon at the entrance to the mountains, which you can't do without getting a silverleaf. And guess what, you can't do that without doing a multitude of favours for a bunch of dead Dracoid individuals. Finally, once you get across into the Citadel, you get the Dreamstone and come back. You put it in the appropriate place in the Temple and are transported to the City of the Ancients, from where you can get into Belial's Laboratory, where he is working to resurrect himself (?). You have to kill him. The forces of good - Dawn and Bacatta from Lands of Lore I - are also out to find you, seeking to control your magic for their own ends. You can choose to behave evilly - for example by killing all the Huline - which alters some bits of the game, and apparently gives rise to a different ending sequence, which I've never managed to behave quite evilly enough to see yet.
So the plot's very clever. So is the programming, and the graphics are superb. I love the idea of combining items, and the monsters are well done as well. You'd naturally expect to decide that this game is much better than the original, given all this praise I've been dishing out.
But there's something not quite right with this game. It's not really anything you can put your finger, but it just doesn't seem to mesh together properly. You get the impression that different bits have been done by different programmers who not only weren't working together, probably weren't even telling each other what they were doing, so when it was all pieced together at the end, you get something that doesn't fit. The interface is downright annoying - to open the inventory, you have to obscure half of the screen to see what you've got. When you're fighting, the monsters can run all the way around you, meaning you have to keep swivelling with one hand and clicking the attack button with the other, requiring a great deal of co-ordination, especially if the monster can move fast. Sometimes, like in the case of the blue spiders, they actually go underneath you, and you have to look down and hit them. It's really annoying.
Lands of Lore II had all the ingredients of a great game, but when mixed, they didn't seem to work. It's by no means a bad game; in fact, it's way way better than the sequel. But the simplicity of Lands of Lore I seems to work much better.
Read the review of Lands of Lore I!