The Final Word game review

Quest64 -- Imagineer/THQ

R.I.P.
This was a seven day project for my two boys (7 and 5) respectively. Sure they needed help twice with some mindless experience building (you know, run in a circle for four hours fighting bad-guy after bad-guy to bring up character stats). But, when all was said and done, they figured out all of the puzzles and fought all but one of the bosses (a mid-game boss) themselves... No, don't think that means this game is a breeze for kids though. These two routinely sit down and slam through Guardian Heroes (for the Sega Saturn) in a couple of hours on "Normal", and as fast as 1 1/2 hours on "Easy". As for the game, I was totally impressed, this is almost reaching my dream of a perfect RPG environment. In comparison, the Final Fantasy series without a doubt sets the standard for story telling, but for pure environment, Quest64 kicks its ass, and leaves me drooling for Zelda because I know it's just going to be so much better!

The most amazing thing about the environment is that everything has real distance... for instance, when you see that castle off on the horizon (yes, this game is all Mario type perspective), and it looks like it's way far away... well it is! And, you are going to be walking for awhile to get to it. And, as you walk it gets closer. And, that lake you saw in the distance between you and the castle, well you'll get to that eventually. And, have to figure out how to get past it before you can keep on walking to the castle.

And then how about that castle? (had enough "and"s yet?) Once you get through the main gates you have to wander across the town before you can get to the castle's inner gate. Then you have to walk through the courtyard to get to the main doors. Then you have to walk through the castle to get to the king (none of this throne sitting one screen away from the door crap here). This is all realistic distances and perspectives in a simulated 3-D world. ...I better quit drooling now before I have to clean up the keyboard... but it's really that cool. Honest.

The only down side is that once the game was solved, there was really no drive to go back and play it through a second time, possibly delegating the title to rental only status.

>>>>> 22.0/25 <<<<<		R.I.P.
Graphics		5.0
Sound		4.0
Gameplay/Control		4.5
Longevity/Playability		4.0
Overall		4.5
Total		22.0

(08/1998)