Anachronox : Revisit

Stop. Stop right here. Don't read another word of this revisit. Anything I say will only spoil the wonderful experience that playing this game is. So stop reading right now, log onto E-Bay or any other place you can find four-year-old games for sale and buy it. No arguments. Still reading? Fine. I could try to pick my way around any possible spoilers in this revisit, but instead I'm going to dive straight on in. So read on if you really want to. The main hook of Anachronox is its storyline. Anachronox comes from developers Ion Storm - the makers of Deus Ex, so as you can guess your in for a treat. The game sets out with you playing the role of Sylvester "Sly" Boots - a private detective. A private detective living on an alien built planet, whose inhabitants have all died of a mysterious plague. You job? To save the universe. You see, the universe expanded out from the big bang. Then due to the amount of matter in the Universe, it collapses again, and out of that ball of stuff, a new universe explodes. Only now, some ******* in a universe previous to your is dumping material from his universe into yours, so that his universe won't collapse - it will go on for ever, and you will never have existed. Now, if that isn't a great storyline I don't know what is. But the real beauty of this game is that that is only a tiny part of the whole. Anachronox paints a world around you, filled with some of the most fabulous locations and characters you will ever meet in a game. Mad priests, mad planets, mad robots. And best of all, it's a comedy. Some of the jokes are actually very funny and in many cases unexpected - some you see coming a mile off, but still have great fun when you get there. Like the alien Red Light Zone. Shudder. It occurs to me that I haven't actually said what Anachronox is yet. Well, it's a party based RPG. The main part of the game is played as a third person action-adventure game. However, bolted on to this is a turn based strategy combat element, elements of star-ship piloting and a huge range of other mini-games, that far from breaking the pacing of the game, or jarring with the rest of it, simple form part of the beautiful tapestry of the gamely. Speaking of beautiful, the graphics. Anachronox uses the Quake 2 engine, so as you can imagine it's not the best looking of games - but the innovation shown in the level and character design shines through. Some notable examples are wandering around the Anachronox station itself at the beginning and seeing people walking on ceiling gravity paths, and then being able to walk to where they were - and the (major spoiler ahead) planet that shrinks itself down to human size and becomes a party member. Genius. Anachronox is probably the best game I have ever played. It's quirky, mad, and utter utter genius. It rewards exploration, has a great combat system ("it's not about testing your reactions, it's about having a bigger gun" - the biggest is a planet based nuclear missile strike from the afore said pint-sized planet). One small note of warning though. In the MysTech mines, leave the level after using the moving platform to cross the lava and the lever to operate the door disappears. And you have to start again. But hey, you probably missed a load of Totally Arbitrary Collectable Objects the first time round.

Miles.

http://www.planetanachronox.com/