GoT

A verse composed by Tchoup in the maw of Great Saladini.

Review: Gobliiins 4


Part 4 of a classic series of adventure games is always going to be something to look forward to, some with trepidation, some with unbridled enthusiasm. Lets give praise where praise is due however because there certainly are parts of Gobliiins 4 where no praise is due and which may have been the reasons for poor results by a lot of people who played it. And there are great parts that sometimes don't get a mention.

Storyline: So begins the epic search for the kings pet Aardvark Riri, and this is the majority of the tale. We chase Riri from screen to screen searching for the little rascal. Along the way you meet some interesting characters (the creators seem fascinated with scary/weird vegetables) that sometimes seem ludicrous and sometimes just plain stupid. Some of them were quite funny and the Goblins reactions to various things that happen are also quite hilarious and had me giggling away. The little suckers even laugh at each other if one should get hurt attempting something a bit silly.
The overall storyline has no real satisfaction or excitement, luckily the game has some amazingly fun and sometimes very challenging puzzles, to keep you going. SCORE 4/10


Puzzles: We have Tchoup the Detective who collects all sorts of rubbish and puts it in his pockets. He also interacts like quite a little Diplomat with most other characters in the game, that is, he's polite when he needs to be and demanding when that is required. Perluis the Magician is the bearded little guy with the magic staff. He will not be interested in collecting rubbish but attempts to use his staff to bewitch various objects. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails (with hilarious outcomes). If it works you'd expect a plant to grow or a stone to raise in the air. Even expect things to shrink to miniature size or Perluis himself to levitate. The last guy is Stucco the Strong. Stucco is as dumb as they come, which for Goblins as a race, is pretty bad, ask any fantasy buff! However Stucco brings muscle to the adventure. He's able to punch, push, pull, kick and lift pretty much anything. He's also dumb enough to walk into quicksand, water and just about anything else. Stuccos main past time involves climbing plant stems as you'll quickly come to learn. One of the most challenging things you'll come across in a lot of the screens is moving the Goblins to various parts of the screen. In the small pictures above, picture A shows a dirt cave. Getting the Goblins to the right side of the cave and back again is necesarry in order to complete this particular puzzle and this is the most challenging part of this particular screen. Once completed (that is you've found the exit) you are then given the option of leaving the screen (as you are with all screens). Sometimes you may have left something on the map that you're required to take with you so you can't leave until you have picked that up with Tchoup. Other times you may want to stick around until you've found the golden tooth.

Golden Teeth: In each of the first 13 levels of the game you will be able to find a Golden tooth if you look hard enough. If you do so you get to visit a bonus map (which was great fun) near the end of the game. Sometimes its easy and sometimes you have to punch, prod and magic just about everything in order to find it. In one screen I had the game bug out on me and couldn't get it. Only after searching for the solution on the web did i realize the game had bugged out. I'm sure I didnt' need to make it seem as hard as I did I probably made the game bug out by continuously doing things I didn't need to.

I found a LOT of the puzzles challenging and I found that probably 90% of the puzzles (rough estimate there) are actually quite relevant to the situation. Not always obvious, but usually relevant. One thing i did enjoy, to my own frustration, was that there are objects in the game that have no use but will have you trying to use them over and over again because you might think they're something, when they arn't.

Spoiler:

In picture B above, you may be able to pick out the chess board on the lower left part of the screen. It has no apparenty use. But you can pick up a chess piece and place it back on the board.

One of the only things I could even think to gripe about was the overuse of certain puzzles.

Spoiler:

like putting a seed in the ground, growing it and having Stucco climb the stem. This was done way too many times!

All over i found the puzzles to be very very satisfying when you complete them. I found myself going "oh my god!" out loud when i solved various puzzles and I found myself having to restrict my play to a map or two per day because I had a tendency to want to have a crack at the next map because I was becoming quite enthusiastic about the whole thing. Never the story though, always the puzzles. SCORE 9.5/10


Graphics: First impressions..... poor, very poor. In the manner that the screens are not very well drawn and the 3D animated goblins (when most other things are 2D) become quite unattractive to look at when they come close to the screen. Their animations are basic at best but it sometimes appears that they're doing something quite hilarious which leaves me wondering whether the designer put a lot more effort into parts that he/she thought was more fun and neglected the more laborious parts.
To elaborate on this; I started to really like the look of the game after a while. Some screens were a massive turn off whilst others were absolutely gorgeous! I was frustrated time and again when being presented with a map or background that appeared like it took no imagination to create, with terrible conflicting colors and un-interesting looking objects, when every so often a lovely screen would come up that was a joy to both look at and play on. Some of the screens in between levels also meet the same criteria. Some of them are very cute, have a look at the two directly below here:
Other screens just aren't nice to play on at all and become very boring very quickly. I think one of the things that the creators have tried to do is to keep to the original look of the Gobliiins games. If you go back in time and have a look at some of the others you'll see what i mean. The look is very similar, yet has been expanded upon. Which is why I havn't been too critical in giving a result because I think the designers have tried to make a new looking game that sticks to the original artwork type look of the old games, but they failed. At least they tried. Or so I like to believe. Either way, a poor mark is on the cards, I think in this day and age a lot better can be done, especially for a lovely title such as a Gobliiins game. SCORE 3/10



Sound: The Goblins don't speak english....as you'd probably have expected. They speak Goblineese or Goblinoid or some other Goblin tongue. Its a mumble jumble language and the written form of it almost looks like binary code. Luckily it gets translated (albeit poorly) for you so that you can understand. This whole thing is kind of cute and some of the grunting, squealing and laughing can be quite funny at times. It never really gets annoying or anything like that, which is good. There is a very basic musical score that plays periodically also but all over you could do quite well to have your own MP3's playing in the background. SCORE 5/10

Controls: The controls couldnt be much better. The Goblins are very easy to switch between, its just a click of the mouse pointer. They are insanely easy to operate - point and click - and they run with a simple double click. You can make them all do things at once (which is often actually required) and they do not get stuck on the screen anywhere and at no point did i have any control issues. The only issue i ever had was when they are all standing on top of each other or you need them to be standing near each other, it can get a bit crowded and a little overwhelming. SCORE 9.5/10



Presentation: The game is poorly presented. Apart from a cute little manual with a funny opening poem and a DVD printed with cute Goblin artwork, theres not much more that's good to say about the presentation. It takes way too long to load between screens and the presentation just seems overall messy at times. Sometimes theres words that go over borders etc. SCORE 5/10

Overall? If it wasn't for the poor presentation then the game would have scored a LOT higher because it really was quite entertaining. Still, very playable and I recommend it as a bit of Goblinoid entertainment. 60%

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