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79 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A 3-star Game, May 14, 2006
Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars
It pains me to write this review. It really does. I am a huge fan of Benoit Sokal. I am a huge fan of adventure games. I believe that Mr. Sokal's reputation for excellence and the future of the genre might suffer as a result of this game.
THE PROS:
* Beautiful graphics
* Ann is a lovely girl (arguably the best "face" in gaming)
* Excellent voice acting
* Amazing cut scenes
* The leopard was generally very well done (though he looked like a dark grey shadow in 2 settings I can think of)
* Good (not great) story
THE CONS:
* The gameplay
That's it. Nothing else. But so many things depend on it. Examples immediately follow.
- my MAIN source of frustration: finding items was horrible. Most of the time I thought I was playing "Mystery Case Files: Huntsville". The items BLENDED into the surroundings with a dedication that was WHOLLY unnecessary. Many times, after the endless meandering and pixel hunting, you don't know what you've picked up until you open the inventory and look to find your latest prize. Even getting water (in a place overflowing with fountains, pools, ponds, baths etc) was frustrating - SHEESH!
- sometimes the cursor does not change so you have to click in faith; sometimes it indicates the wrong action (again - you click in faith)
- sometimes when talking to people they walk out of the scene and then you're talking to nobody - seriously.
- sometimes you click to walk in one direction and Ann insists on walking in the opposite direction
- sometimes, in the bedroom in the harem, you click to speak to the maid and you walk away
- sometimes you walk through people
- no matter the gender of the person, if an object is not to be used by/with that person, Ann says she won't give it to "him"
- sometimes the cursor refuses to appear at all
- sometimes you run down a path, there's a screen change and Ann comes out facing the direction you just left - result - you run back down the path you just left
- once, you drop a hook. You know something happened but not sure what until Ann says "Now how am I going to get that back?" And she doesn't even say, "How am I going to get the HOOK back" so if you don't know what you had in your inventory, too bad.
- playing as the leopard is frustrating - the nights were too dark for proper navigation. After really trying, I skipped the 'hunt' the first 2 times (the second time I got a mini cut scene without knowing how I did it exactly). The third time I actually achieved the objective - again without knowing how I did it.
There was one other thing. The colours were so washed out. I know that it set the mood, but it seemed that every single tribe, village, individual had something against anything that wasn't a muted grey or brown. Even the plants weren't a riot of colour and they should have been.
The story (while good) wasn't gripping for me, though a large part of that might be because the gameplay took so much of the fun out of it. I was concentrating so hard on getting that *&^% cursor to work, finding the &*^%^& items, that I couldn't let the story take me away.
As for the ending, I didn't think it was awful. It ended unexpectedly and it seems Mr. Sokal left us to draw conclusions, but unlike a lot of these games, the assumptions were well set up. And I can see room for a sequel (I won't elaborate as it would necessitate spoilers). I don't know though if a sequel (in this case) is a good idea. Even if Mr. Sokal eliminated the glitches, he may have already lost a good bit of his audience because of this game.
I am sorry that Mr. Sokal felt compelled to declare this game gold before it was truly ready (with a start-up company the bottom line may have been thinning). I assume the seeming 'rush to stores' because of the obvious quality of the Syberia series versus ...... this.
In closing - one TIP - right click to bypass conversations.
Sigh. This was disappointing for me. Even so, I was tempted to give it 5 stars just to raise the average rating here on amazon. Even with the gameplay being what it is, it still is not a one-star game.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Merely serviceable, but could have been outstanding, June 24, 2006
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
Benoit Sokal, the Belgian graphic artist behind Amerzone and Syberia I and II, returns with Paradise courtesy of his new company White Bird Productions. Originally titled Lost Paradise, the game traces the journey of amnesiac Ann Smith as she seeks to unravel the mystery of her identity through the fictitious African nation of Maurania. There are four distinct worlds to explore, fantastical creatures, and numerous characters that seek to aid or harm Ann on her quest.
I held off on buying Paradise until the official US Patch 1.1 was released (available at Ubisoft.com) after reading numerous critical reviews of the poor design and programming. However, even with the corrections to cursor sensitivity, in-game cutscenes, and other adjustments, the game is still prone to bugs and the occasional crash.
If the leopard segments were made crucial to the plot, there would be more reason to include them. As is, allowing the player to choose to exit the non-mandatory leopard stages makes them feel throwaway at best. The realtime graphics also look weak and outdated in comparison to the prerendered environments. The ending is shocking and very, very brief for the frustrated hours of fighting through glitches and bugs. Paradise had the potential to rival Syberia, but due to sloppy, rushed design (if I had to sum up Paradise's gameplay in one word, it would be "unfinished"), Sokal didn't deliver on the E3 2005 hype, and the deceptive blurb on the box "Paradise is poised to be the most exciting adventure release of 2006." Even though gamers gripe about setbacks and delays, I would much rather have waited an extra six months to a year for a finished product free of glitches (and more rendered cutscenes en lieu of spotty, jerky puppetlike character animations) that lived up to Sokal's artistic vision.
The Good:
+ Graphics
+ Music
+ Imaginative settings and creatures
The bad:
-Giving away Ann's story from the very beginning doesn't allow the player to discover Ann's motivations as she recovers her memories
-The leopard segments don't serve to advance the plot; poor design and implementation ruin the appeal
-Bugs, bugs, and more bugs that result in missed clues, endless hotspot clicking, and illogical options
- Sloppy / nonexistent beta testing (only two beta testers listed)
- Character animations (instead of rendered cutscenes) are missing crucial objects, so many cutscenes are hard to follow or make no sense
-Objects do not appear in characters' hands
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Paradise - This game has cured me of ever pre-ordering a game again., May 9, 2006
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
I bought this game strictly because Benoit Sokal was involved. I had been wowed by his Syberia games, and was looking forward to another wondrous tale set in a new, exotic location.
There is a TON of pixel hunting in this game, which is aggravating. To make matters worse, the curser floats off a bit, so you are constantly fighting with it to make it go where you want it to be, and combine that with the pixel hunting, with some of the things you are looking for not being very obvious, or worse yet, not accessible the first time you go through a screen, and the game becomes even more annoying.
I could have lived with all this, plus the fact that the further into the game you progress, the more buggy the curser got (showing a pick-up icon when you are supposed to talk to someone, or an action icon when it really should be an arrow to walk out an open doorway), but the ending is truly awful. The last five minutes of gameplay made no logical sense, had no psychological basis that I could think of unless there are huge gaps in the story, and does not resolve the story-line at all. Plus I can see NO WAY for this story to be spun out into a sequal.
Truly a disappointment, and not what I have come to expect from Benoit Sokal's work. I really wish I would have waited, instead of rushing to get this, as my money could have been spent elsewhere, and I would have had more fun.
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