“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

In 1992, when adventure games still reigned supreme with PC gaming nerds, LucasArts released one of their most beloved titles, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. It had everything a fan of both the adventure genre and the Indiana Jones movies could want.

You get to play as Indiana, traveling the world, fighting Nazis and solving the mystery of a lost civilization. What more could a fan ask for?

Fate of Atlantis is another in the long line of SCUMM adventure games. It uses the now famous point and click interface where the bottom half of the screen is used to make sentences wherein you “use kerosene on spiral design”. As you would expect, the bulk of the game consists of talking to the NPC’s, collecting various items and using those items to solve puzzles.

Being Indiana Jones, you also have to do a little archeological research. To keep things interesting, Fate of Atlantis has a set of solutions found in Plato’s Lost Dialog (a book within the game you have to retrieve) that are randomized. There are also three different paths you can choose which even more drastically change how to solve the game’s puzzles.

It’s up to you whether or not you want to head out into the world on your own, with your former colleague Sophia Hapgood, or with fists a’blazing. On the wits path, Indiana goes out on the adventure solo, relying on his wits and charm to solve the puzzles. The team path allows you to defer to Sophia, who will help you get on the good side of otherwise unfriendly characters. And of course the fists path requires lots of keyboard based fisticuffs.

No matter which path you choose, your mission is to figure out what happened to Atlantis and stop the Nazi’s from acquiring it’s rumored hidden power. All in a days work for everyone’s favorite globe trotting, beefy guy punching, whip wielding archaeologist.

Why did I pick this game?

As a fan of both adventure games and the real Indiana Jones films (you know Crystal Skull doesn’t count), I am amazed I didn’t play this game sooner. This is a recurring theme when it comes to the LucasArts series of adventure games. Outside of Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, I mostly played the Sierra adventure games, like Space Quest.

That isn’t a knock against the LucasArts games in the least. I just personally didn’t have access to their games back then. That’s the real reason I chose Fate of Atlantis. I had always heard good things about it, but never had a chance to play it for myself.

How does it hold up with time?

There are two big factors that go into an old adventure game holding up. First, is the story entertaining? In most games, story isn’t really all that important, but what always drew me to adventure games was that feeling that you were playing through a Saturday Morning Cartoon.

Despite the fact that the voice actor for Indiana Jones sounds nothing like Harrison Ford, the voice work and story are both well executed. It’s a little on the cheesy side, but the quirky sense of humor associated with the LucasArts games is definitely intact.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, do the puzzles hold up? This is the tricky one. Now that the answer to any puzzle can be looked up in a few seconds on GameFaqs, it’s a lot tougher to determine. Was a puzzle just too confusing or poorly designed, or would you have eventually solved it? Having finished several classic adventure games back in the day as a collaboration with friends, I think Fate of Atlantis would be one that we wouldn’t have spent too much time getting completely stuck in.

When I did find myself getting stuck and referring to a guide, none of the solutions were so obtuse that I had a “I never would have thought of that” moment. I do condone looking up the answers if you are so stuck in the game that it is sapping your enjoyment.

The biggest thing that didn’t hold up for me was the combat. Thankfully, it is completely optional in both the Wits and Team paths.

All in all, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis still holds up as a great example of the adventure genre. If you haven’t played it yourself, you should really give it a shot.

Tags: adventure games, Friday Old Games, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Lucasarts, PC, Point and Click

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2011 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.