Road To India

by Microids

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005Q5NL
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 11, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,657 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the wait!, September 26, 2001

By 

Sarah - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Road To India (CD-ROM)

I have eagerly awaited "Road to India" since its May (French-language) release and have waited four months for the English version. It just came in the mail today...I finished it in less than four hours. But what a game! Allow me to explain:

Pros:
+Excellent character animation, realistic facial expressions, gestures and movements
+Stunning 360-degree panoramas of New Delhi, Taj Mahal, Darmesh`s house and Kali temple
+Photorealistic streets and buildings in New Delhi--the colours were so intense I had to give my eyes a rest now and again!
+Music that uses traditional instruments, Indian pop music in one scene
+Background direction-sensitive noises, especially animal noises: pigeons, monkeys, rats, a kitten...it draws you into the gaming environment completely
+Real-world logic: finding everyday items and improvising in a tough situation--no endless number-punching or rearranging à la Myst
+Talk to the animals (even if it IS a dream)!
+Engaging storyline with multiple twists and turns
+Cutscenes are beautifully animated and the cutscene music is incredible, especially the love theme
+The game is played in two different formats: daytime takes place in modern New Delhi, nighttime takes place in mystical India (Taj Mahal, Kali Temple)
+The transitions between the dream world and the real world: soft filmy border and pastel colours vs. bright, glaring colours, peeling paint, stained pavement...
+Easy-to-use interface

Cons:
-Occasional synching lags, especially noticeable with the street boy
-Some of the Indian accents are rather...questionable
-Game is short; it took me less than four hours even though the Microids website suggests 20 hours of gameplay
-Long load times after cutscenes may detract suspense
-Streets are deserted...what happened to India`s overcrowded cities?

Final vote: This game was worth the wait! Computer games have taken me to China, Atlantis, Ireland, Tibet, and Mexico, but this was my first virtual trip to India and it was a smashing success! The colourful characters, exotic architecture, and plot twists were a pleasant surprise, and even though the trip was short it was a very memorable one! A+++

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really Enjoyable, if Short, February 24, 2004

By 

wysewomon "wysewomon" (Paonia, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Road To India (CD-ROM)

IN _Road to India_, you play Fred, an American engaged to a Hindu woman. As the game opens, she is boarding a plane to India to visit her family. Soon after, Fred receives an unexpected "Dear John" letter. When he goes to India to find out what's going on, he witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping, with his fiancee as the target!

I didn't play this game for a long time, mainly because of all the negative reviews here. Now that I have played it, I wonder what all those negative reviews were talking about; despite a few flaws, RTI is one of the most enjoyable games I've played in months. The graphics are lovely, the music is appealing, the interface is exceptionally easy to use and understand and the puzzles are sensible, if somewhat simple. Having just come off an interminable game where the puzzles made absolutely no sense, RTI was a breath of fresh air.

Most of the puzzles are the classic inventory and communication sort: get someone to help you by giving him an item or find an item that will allow you to accomplish a task. I was thrilled that, in general, you used inventory in a realistic way in this game. That is, you didn't need to find a special knife to cut this particular rope (for example) when you already had five knives, or use your nailfile to loosen screws when you had a screwdriver. There was no random application of inventory, hoping against hope that something would work. If this made the game easy, it also made it relaxing. Thank you Microids!

There were several unusual sound puzzles--you had to listen hard in this game! And there was a lovely use of animal characters. If there were a couple of red herrings and puzzles that seemed to have no purpose, it was an acceptable trade-off.

This game did run pretty slowly. Loading new locations took some time, as did simply moving from screen to screen. I did not understand the reason for this, but found it only mildly annoying. There was some disc swapping and cut scenes occasionally stuttered. I think there could have been more time spent tweaking the program to eliminate these things, but again, it surely wasn't bad enough to condemn the entire game.

Yes, this is a fantasy India--sometimes resembling _The Temple of Doom_--not a historical India. Half of it takes place in a dreamscape. I actually liked the use of the dream sequences, which made me think of _Morpheus_ or _Amber_. I didn't find it at all offending or unusual that archetypal items like the Taj Mahal and the Indian rope trick should appear in dreams, but if that disturbs you, this game probably isn't for you.

At under ten hours from start to finish, Road to India isn't a long game. It's worth playing for all that. I recommend it highly.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's no Bladerunner, October 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Road To India (CD-ROM)

No way is this a great game, but neither is it terrible.

Controls: Easy to use, but for some reason the options control on this game did not allow me to actually change any of the options. Didn't like the game enough to bother looking for a patch.

Motion: This was a big minus for me - it's slide show style, you click on something, there's a lag, and then suddenly you're there. No sense of motion. Once you're there, you do get 360 view, up and down and all around, but the picture does this stretchy blurry thing as you move the cursor around, which made me not want to look around too much (I kept feeling motion sickness coming on).

Graphics: Graphics were pretty good, although I've seen better. The options problem did not allow me to try out 32 bit rather than 16 bit, maybe that would have helped a little, I don't know. The scenery was pretty realistically drawn, and if I'd been more involved in the game it might have been enjoyable.

The story: Your girlfriend is kidnapped and you're trying to find her. Pretty staightforward and easy to follow. Can't say I really cared much about any of the characters - no character development at all.

Dialogue: Boring. Nothing original here at all.

Puzzles: Just hard enough. Didn't need a walk thru. The usual collect stuff and then use it. Unfortunately you pick stuff up and then can't really examine it, so I'd pick something up that looked vaguely like a stick, but couldn't get a closeup look at it or any more information to maybe describe it. So I was quite surprised when it turned out to be a flute, and only solved the puzzle by randomly pulling out every item and trying it out. Same with opening a door - needed to get a key that was on the floor inside the door, but couldn't even see that there was a key there, so was surprised when after randomly combining items my character suddenly reached through the door and managed to get the key with a tool I had made (out of materials I couldn't identify until they were put together).

Soundtrack: Not very interesting. Sound effects were ok, but nothing to brag about.

Biggest disappointment here is that everywhere you go is deserted, except when there is an animation. Animations were excellent, but when you're walking around trying to solve puzzles and find things, there's no one around and your character is so boring that he doesn't even have anything interesting to say to himself.

It's an ok game, good for a few hours of entertainment, but there's really no flair, nothing to really engage you.