Hey, bubby, dinosaurs are big business. Just ask Steven Spielberg. Between Jurassic Park, We're Back and The Flintstones, he's turned it into a pocket industry. You can't blame the folks at Cryo for wanting to get a piece of the Mesozoic action. They put together one humdinger of a great looking game alright, Lost Eden, and Virgin Interactive was happy to distribute it. There's just one problem: there's almost no game.
But let's start at the beginning. It turns out that all those science teachers were wrong, and dinosaurs did live at the same time as mankind. And the men weren't just goofy primitives either. We're talking about fully civilized guys. They actually got along pretty well with most of the dinosaurs around. So well, in fact, that the dinos were more than happy to help with the construction of big citadels to protect against the only dinosaurs that didn't like the humans much, the Tyrannosaurs, or the Tyran, as they were called then. The man who made all this cooperation possible was known as the Architect, and he was beloved as a god. Then his son came along and messed everything up. I won't go too deeply into how this guy manipulated the delicate relationship between humans and dinosaurs, but it might give you a clue to know that he was called The Enslaver.
Then along came a particularly vicious and cunning Tyrannosaur named Moorkus Rex, who got all his Tyran buddies together to wreak havoc on both dinosaur and human. All the survivors retreated into the citadels.
This is where you enter the game as Adam, prince of the Citadel of Mo. (Hey, Mo! Hey, Mo!) You are guided by friendly dinosaurs toward fulfilling your destiny as the new Architect. You travel around the countryside trying to persuade the dinos that humans are still okay, and that they should help build more citadels.
This is not a bad storyline, and, as mentioned before, the visuals are nothing short of spectacular. The movements of the dinosaurs are very lifelike, and the camera tends to swoop a lot. This should not surprise anyone who is familiar with other Cryo titles, such as Dragon Lore and Commander Blood. The problem is that this game is not even slightly challenging to anyone who is remotely familiar with adventure games. In fact, the puzzles are so easy, and there are so many really obvious hints lying around, that this game occasionally verges on the insulting.
One of the more frustrating aspects of the design is the complete lack of any dialog decisions on the part of the player. Apparently, Adam is a mute, although there is no mention of it in the game. Other characters just start talking to him, and he is given nothing to respond back. They talk for a few sentences, then they pause. This is the player's cue to do the one thing he can do, click the mouse. This is apparently the equivalent of nodding the head or saying "Go on," because the converser picks up where he left off. Interactivity, ladies and gentlemen.
There is a second, slightly more challenging part to Lost Eden. After managing to learn all you can about the history and your destiny, you go out into the world to actually do something useful. This must be where the "strategy" in "adventure-strategy" comes in. But the whole thing seems to revolve around nothing more than finding out which species of dinosaur likes apples and which prefers mushrooms or gold or bird's nests. Then you find some and give it to them, and they are willing to help. Oh, yes, one more key strategy element: don't get killed by the Tyran.
There is, actually, one good thing that has come from the overdone simplicity of this game. The interface is just as easy to use as the game is to play. It also looks neat. Your mouse cursor is a rotating cube, and when you move it over a "hot spot", the icon changes to let you know what you can do. If there's a character you can talk to (or, rather, that can talk at you), a character icon appears. If there's something you should take a closer look at, you get an eye. To pick something up, wait for the hand icon to show, then click. Very, very easy, and I hope this interface gets used again one day, in a better game.
It's a profound shame that a product with such sophisticated graphics is so shallow, but it's hard to call it a surprise. It's just one more example of what is becoming common in the industry. Most companies choose between gameplay and graphics, and far too many choose graphics. Lost Eden might give some satisfaction to very young or very inexperienced players. Otherwise, it's basically a nice screen saver on a CD.
