France and Spain are currently suffering through terrible fires, and though they are on a smaller scale than the ones in North America, because of Europe's much greater population density a large number of people are being affected. Thus it appears in the news quite prominently. The fires in northern Canada, by contrast, though ten times larger and worse, only affect very small communities, often of Native people. Not so newsworthy, I'm guessing. My point? I suppose even if acts of war, terrorism, murder and other forms of hatred were outgrown and no longer practiced, we'd still have our hands full dealing with Nature. Here is a map of wildfires burning in North America on Sunday. See and weep.
We are literally burning our own home planet.
In gaming news, we are not only playing a lot of PC games, but for the past several Sundays we have revived our board game passion, along with MECCG. For the past two Sundays we have been playing Teotihuacan: City of Gods. It's a complicated game to learn, but once it is in hand it proves to be one of the best games we own. It also has the most beautiful game board I have ever seen, with lots of tiny details that don't have anything to do except make the board look better. Some photos amidst a recent game:
Now on to PC gaming. We just finished all 4 available chapters of Agon: The Mysterious Codex. The first three chapters were released as a unit back in 2006, while Chapter 4 came out in 2008.
Chapter 1--London: This takes place late on a rainy night in the offices and storage rooms of the British Museum. It is the early 1900s. The game features 360 degree motion, and the graphics are actually pretty decent. We played the game on Steam. Players must use books, maps, telephone, typewriter and make a guard fall asleep. Though short, this was a good opening segment and teaches the player how to move and handle objects. There is an inventory and it will grow quite large by the end.
Chapter 2--Lapland: This chapter takes place in an arctic winter environment. I recommend playing it in the summer! We first arrive at a very small and very lonely railroad station in the middle of nowhere. The stationmaster is passed out drunk in bed. We must get the stove going and solve some major puzzles, a few of which are impossible without walkthru help. The puzzles tend to become quite nasty very quickly. Solving a Morse Code puzzle (make no spelling mistakes!) playing an organ to call a reindeer taxi, and reading more letters all take time. Overall, I liked the atmosphere in this section, but was glad to finally move on to the small village.
There are 3 points of interest in the village, the main one being the tavern. We must get the village girl on our side, so it's time to cure her sick dog. She will eventually lead us to another reindeer taxi, and we are off into the cold and snowy wilderness. The final part of the game again becomes a bit nasty, but problems were solvable without a walkthru. Often the most difficult part was locating things, so hunt carefully for inventory. The very final puzzle in all chapters 2-4 is playing a different board game against an opponent. I had to lose about a dozen times here before I finally won, triggering the next chapter. All in all this was a fun segment, much longer than the first chapter.
Again I liked the segment, though some of the train station puzzles were simply too hard to work out logically.
Chapter 3--Madagascar: On to the tropics and time to get warm again! We arrive (after a lot of reading) on a tropical beach in the morning .later returning near sunset. In between we visit a hostile native village and two sites withing the jungle: a cemetery and a tree house homestead. Here there is one inhabitant, an old sailor. His companion lies in the cemetery. The story is quite rich and it takes a while to get all of it. Again some puzzles can be solved through logic, though some cannot. We got through the cemetery one okay, but the telescope puzzle was simply too bizarre to even try to solve. At the end of it all (there is a tidal cave which is pretty cool) comes another board game, again taking me about a dozen times before I finally won. That ended the original game, with more chapters being promised. There should have been thirteen altogether, but alas only 4 were ever made.
Final score for the first 3 chapters: 80%
Chapter Four--The Lost Sword of Toledo: After a hiatus of two years, chapter 4 came out. This game is a full game unto itself, about as long as the first three chapter combined. It should have been shorter, but it really gets bogged down at the start with reading and hearing the background story. Hardly anything happens that the player can control for a really really long time. This undoubtedly contributed to its bad reviews, which put the kibosh on any further chapters. Thus the game ends here, after 4 chapters. While the story is worthy of an entire film, it is simply too complex for what should have been one chapter of a bigger game. I see on Steam that some players have put in 100 hours on playing chapter 4!! If one doesn't use a walkthru in this game, one is doomed to a life of frustration and being stuck in Toledo (Spain).
The puzzles are usually way too complicated. Even the first big one, the music box puzzle, had me scratching my head and using a walkthru (I am a musician). There are three parts to opening the music box, and all of the solutions are pretty much ridiculous. There is also a maze in the sewers. No one likes mazes, yet here it is. As for the photo puzzle (taking, developing and printing the photo), hours and hours and hours could be spent here experimenting. This is not fun. Then comes the big headache, the kaleidoscope puzzle. It can be skipped over. Use a walkthru instead. It's still complicated.
Though seriously flawed, Chapter 4 will provide amusement with a good walkthru. I liked the graphics and the use of comic book art to fill in transitional passages in the story. The story was good, too, though it is a long one. And of course the old professor is one of the better adventure game characters out there. With reservations (have a walkthru handy) I do recommend the Agon series. It's an old game, but parts of it are quite good. I actually won the final board game on my first attempt! It's unfortunate that the remaining chapters never came out. However, the professor's great grandson arrived in 2019 with two adventures. We will eventually give those a try, though being from the same studio I don't hold up too much hope for fair and doable puzzles.
Chapter 4 final score: 74%.
Mapman Mike
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