Alabama Smith: Escape from Pompeii
2.5
5
2
2
Great game, with one major catch
I thoroughly enjoyed Escape from Pompeii. It was moderately challenging, with a great deal of variety, from hidden objects that you actually use within the scene, to finding the difference between two similar scenes, to logic puzzles. The soundtrack didn't get on my nerves - a fairly rare occurrence with most casual games for me.
This game warrants a solid 4, if not 5 stars. So why only 3? Two reasons, actually. One, from what I can tell, this game leaves on a cliffhanger that never really gets explained in the sequel, though this detail I could have lived with. The real issue for me was my saved game. It was non-existent. There wasn't any way to save manually, and upon further "research" through the forum, I discovered my problem: I'm running Windows 7.
It would seem that anything more recent than Windows XP will not hold the saved game. There doesn't seem to be a fix for this, at least not one I could find; hence, the 3 star rating. I got around this by simply minimizing the game whenever I needed a break, and just re-maximizing the window when I was ready to play again, but it would've been nice to be able to actually close out the game.
That being said, I'd highly recommend taking this one for a spin, particularly if you don't mind sitting all the way through a game (this one's a perfect length - you probably won't beat it in an hour or even two, particularly if you are solving puzzles on your own and watching the cutscenes, but it won't take weeks of playing for hours and hours straight either), or if you are running XP or earlier.
December 10, 2011
Lame
I played this on the iPhone and didn't like it at all. The story line was weak (with an obvious rip-off of Indiana Jones), it was way too short, and was not at all challenging. I finished the whole thing in less than 2 hours, and I kept waiting for it to improve. It never did.
January 29, 2012