Score
Gameplay:	7
Graphics:	7
Sound:	8
FunFactor:	8
PlasmaFactor:	5
Overall:	7

Alida Review
August 3, 2004 by Brian Callam

by Brian - August 3, 2004

The game Alida is the culmination of five years of work by Australian game developer Cos Russo. Yep, that�s right. One person built an entire game that rivals the work of a mainstream team of developers. Released on the Mac about a year ago, Alida has now been released on the PC, published by Got Game. Being released on the same day as Doom 3 might have been a bad idea though.

Gameplay

Alida takes you on an adventure to find Arin, one of the Alida�s (a band) 4 members, who went to the island a few weeks ago and has yet to return. Alida is also the name of the island in which you are searching for Arin. You see, Alida the band�s record was a smash success, and broke every sales record there was. With their new fortune, they decided to build a theme park on an island off the coast of Australia. The island�s main attraction would be the largest guitar in the world, which they built. However, the band started becoming suspicious of each other, and when their CD stopped brining in money, and they hadn�t yet recorded a second album, they locked their fortunes away in their own vaults on different parts of Alida. The park never saw a single tourist. Now, Alida all but deserted, you must find Arin, who you will soon discover has been captured by someone, or something and is locked in one of the vaults. Be careful though, because if you open the wrong vault, you lose, so save regularly.

Alida is a point and click adventure game that seems to be inspired by Myst because it plays almost exactly like Myst. There are a lot of little puzzles that in reality are actually one big giant puzzle. Some of the puzzles are simple, only requiring you to find a clue and apply it to a puzzle that is probably on the other side of the island. Most of them are real brain crunchers though. I suggest having a notepad ready while playing because unless you take the easy way out by using a walkthrough, the game will be very difficult. If you get really stuck though, you can always go try and tackle a different puzzle, because most of them can be solved at any time. Something I found to be a plus was that there are no pixel-hunting puzzles, but you will have to keep your eyes open and be very observant if you wish to complete the game.

You won�t be interacting with other people much in the game. You will come across letters, newspaper clips, pictures, and even hologram videos, but other than that there isn�t much interaction. You will meet up with Arin later in the game, but communication is limited.

Graphics

Alida�s graphics are surprisingly well done. Although the island is pre-rendered, the scenery is beautiful. The water moves realistically, and the shadows of things like trees are greatly done. When the wind blows the trees, the shadows realistically sway with them.

However, since this game came out a year ago for the Mac, the graphics are slightly dated, but not much. It�s amazing that Russo was able to create a game with graphics this good by himself.

The biggest downside for the graphics though is the low resolution. There is no way to change the resolution, so you must play through the whole game at 640x480.

Sound

Alida�s sound varies greatly depending on where you are. If you are near the ocean, you won�t hear any music, just the soft sounds of the sea. If you are in one of the many cave-like areas, a dark, brooding melody will be emitted from your speakers. Needless to say a lot of time went into putting the ambient sounds and music into appropriate places. You will hear birds singing as you advance through the southern catwalk that happens to be surrounded by trees, and various other noises in other places. The opening cut-scene�s voice acting wasn�t very well done, but the FMV sequences from the hologram projector were significantly better. A few of the puzzles even involve sound too.

Fun Factor

I was initially turned off by Alida because it starts somewhat slowly, and you don�t get much background information in the opening sequence. The puzzles didn�t make much sense to me, but once I figured out the first one, the rest came more easily, although some of them I admit still stumped me for quite some time. The initial frustration may make you put the game down for a while, but once you get the hang of it, it�s a lot better. If you like games like Myst, and I know there are a lot of you out there, Alida will give you hours of enjoyment. Don�t let any early aggravation turn you off to the game forever though. It gets better and better as you go. If puzzle solving isn�t your thing then you will absolutely loathe this game because it has some complex and tricky puzzles.

Plasmafactor

When I first got the game I couldn�t figure out how to install it. It comes with 5 discs, but the press copy we got did not have a manual (I assume the retail does). None of the discs seemed to have an installer, so I just copied the disc�s contents onto my C drive. Now, although the requirements say you will only need 600 Megabytes of free space for this game, the total content on the discs turns out to be over 3 Gigabytes. I later found out you don�t actually have to copy the contents of the CD�s to your hard drive, but you don�t need the CDs to play if you do. Aside from that, I had the occasional hang-up whenever I returned from minimizing the game, but I don�t suspect many people will be doing that anyway. It should also be noted that this game has a pretty decent length. Its not too short, but then again its not too long either. Its just right.

 

Final Thoughts

Alida is a solid game, and although the story isn�t that great, the difficult puzzles, pretty graphics, and Myst-like gameplay make up for that. If you liked Myst or solving mysteries, get this game. It is almost a Myst clone but not quite. However, considering the success Myst had, that isn�t a bad thing.