Lost Lands: Dark Overlord
This is a gorgeous, high quality title that I mostly enjoyed.
Options include separate sliders for Music, Ambients and Sound Effects; Resolution; Full-screen/Windowed, Custom Cursor, and - if you're playing on Steam - Cloud Sync.
There are three difficulties to choose from. I chose to go with Hard, since there's an achievement for playing through on that mode... I thought that I'd only have to play through once to get all of the 'cheevo's that way, but I don't think it's possible to get them all in one play-through unless you use the Strategy Guide every step of the way :(
The aforementioned Strategy Guide is built-in, and gives you step-by-step instructions for everything - including placement of every object on your HOS! The only thing it doesn't show you is the location of all of the collectibles. There is one on every location in the main game (68 locaitions!), and there are multiple types to look for! ie. Skulls, pine cones, snails, etc. If you're having trouble spotting them - and they ARE hard to spot! - there's a great guide on Steam, which you will find HERE.
We have multiple types of hidden object scenes to complete: Lists, placing things back in the scene, and by silhouette. Really a nice variety to keep things interesting!
There is a jump-to map (interactive if you're not playing on Hard), but you can't use it over five times if you're going for all of the achievements :\ When you use a HINT, instead of giving your a directional arrow, it will pop your map open with the location you need to go to circled. A time-saver for sure, but it makes it difficult to limit usage to 5 times!
Let's address that which lessened my enjoyment of this game. In case you hadn't already guessed, it's the achievements.
There are 24 achievements to be earned, but I feel that some of them are unfair. Besides using the map only five times, there are mini-game achievements for finding x-items in less than 20 seconds or completing a mini on your first try... Seriously? It wasn't until I got into the bonus content that I found that I can re-play those minis to get the achievements, so I stressed every time one of them came up.
As a side note, the in-game achievements do NOT reset when you restart the game, so you don't have to worry about getting them all in one play-through.
The story seemed rather lackluster to me. I found that I really didn't care about little Jimmy or the evils of the land. For this title, the enjoyment came from the gameplay.
CE Content:
9 Wallpapers
9 Concept Art
16 Video Clips
6 Music Tracks, which you can save to your hard drive
27 Mini-games (replay here to get missed achievements!)
4 Puzzles (not part of main game, if I recall correctly)
Bonus Chapter
There are 68 locations in the main game, and ten NEW locations in the bonus chapter. I am so happy that you get a REAL conclusion to the story in the main game, and that the bonus chapter is not just a tacked-on addition. It was just as high-quality as the rest of the game, and with some beautiful new locations.
This is a grade-A title - excellent in every way - whose enjoyment was lessened for me due to my achievement-hunting nature. It's gorgeous, the gameplay is interesting and varied, there is a ton of things to see and do... If you're an achievement-hunter like me, just try to let it go and enjoy the game. After all, it is a quality title to be enjoyed!
